September 25, 2011 Viewing Session - The Sun

Warning: Never look at the sun directly with a telescope. Only view using proper filters or projection method.

I took out my little 50mm refractor telescope out that I got from a garage sale (not the telescope I use for my night time sessions). I figure I'd use it to attempt projecting an image of the sun onto a white piece of paper to show off sunspots on the suns surface. I used the shadow of the telescope to get me near where I needed to be with the sun since I didn't want to look at the sun directly. Then I put the piece of paper near the eyepiece about a foot or two away and got the sun in view. Attempting to focus was difficult since this telescope wobbles so much when touched. Takes about 30 seconds for this thing to calm down after touching it. Once I got the sun in focus I used my digital camera to take pictures of the image that was projected through the telescope and onto the white paper. The sunspots are the black dots, many of which are actually the same size as Earth or bigger.

I was unable to make out all the sun spots currently visible today, but I'm extremely happy with the ones I could see. Who says astronomy has to wait for night time? Especially when you have the closest star visible during the day. Below is an image with two of the sunspots labeled and a few different images I took of the sun's projection.
























Comments

Anji said…
So that's how it's done!

Interesting pictures
Michael Rector said…
It's the way of doing it without the proper filters. Not the safest way, but as long as you don't look into the eyepiece or hold the paper too close you should be alright.