Solar Maximum 2024

It could be the beginning of a new series of sun-related observations. My sleeping 8-inch Orion SkyQuest Dobsonian with additional solar Mylar filter needs a new start. There was not much (read: no) telescopic nocturnal cloudless sky observing too, no moon observing... (at work as labourer in shift system doesn't give much time to look upward). Perhaps during this summer's furlough, or during days or weeks of economic unemployment. The future is rather uncertain.

In case of pronounced sunspots: observations of them via telescopic projection on a retro-reflective white screen, shortly after sunrise and shortly before sunset, to see chromatic dispersion phenomenae related to the optical phenomenon Green Ray (or Green Flash). During such very-near-the-horizon circumstances, the upper part of a giant sunspot shows red and orange colors, the lower part blue and green, the central part is just black. I want to talk about this kind of optical phenomenae with my colleagues at the workfloor, during break. Alas... it is not a common daily topic to talk about. They want to hear all about down-to-Earth subjects (money, soccer... etcetera...).

Speaking of aurorae, are there astrobinners in here who have ever heard the "sound" of the aurora? (some sort of swishing and/or crackling noises, probably related to simultaneously appearing Saint Elmo's Fire at ground level). See: Earthquakes, Tides, Unidentified Sounds, and related phenomena (William R. Corliss, The Sourcebook Project, 1983).

Strange question: if the whole of the sun's surface would be the umbra of one giant sunspot, what would be the "brightness" of the sun's disc? Still too bright to look directly (without sunglasses) at it? Or... the sun as some sort of greyish colorless appearance? Was there ever a transit of planet Venus across a large sunspot? (must be interesting to see the silhouette of Venus's black orb against the umbra of a large sunspot).

Observing the sun's projected image on a white wall or on a white retro-reflective screen, as seen from very nearby the projecting telescope's eyepiece.
Here's something interesting for those who live somewhere at the uppermost floor of a building near a large expanse of water (the sea / the ocean). Aim your projecting telescope at the brightest section of the sun's glitterpath on the surface of the (mostly restless) water. The result: a most peculiar kind of CINEMA inside your observer's room! To get the most ideal results, not the slightest bit of daylight is allowed to enter the room, only your sunward telescope's tube is "in contact" with the "outside". If possible, the room's interior should be, well, "pitch black", with only the projected and enlarged (brightest section of the) restless glitterpath as lightsource. Every now and then: the silhouette of a boat or ship passing by...

I have made some sunspot measurements from my photos. On one of them, by making measurements and some calculations, I estimated the sunspot group AR3615 to be 217,000 km or 17 Earth-diameters long! I would like to do a full write-up in this forum when I have time on how exactly I arrived at that number.

I also created a visual observing form that I would like to use before the eclipse. I'll attach it here at a later time and I would appreciate any thoughts and suggestions.

I hope the creation of this forum topic will inspire other users to take up solar astrophotography. Here's how I do much of my solar work:


My Main Solar Setup


My Solar Shield

​​​​​​But I've also done solar work with smaller lenses, also afocally through my telescope and even handheld with my DSLR:


The Sun - March 30, 2024 (High ISO Test)

To date, for my processed DSLR image stacks, I tend to minimize cropping in order to show the image scale that a particular lens gives. I typically do about a 90% crop to remove any fading effects from overlapping layers as I am taking untracked photos. In my collages, I cropped the images to content and scaled them evenly for comparison purposes.