My first image

[paulskid]

As a newcomer to astronomy I have been observing for about 18 months and have discovered the joy of sitting in a darkened garden on a cold February night looking up at the light polluted skies of Solihull.

This is my first attempt at prime focus photography with my SLR camera, and due to the combination of moonless nights and clouds it turned out to be one of the sun.http://stargazerslounge.com/images/smilies/confused.gif

It was taken with the 127Mak through Baader solar film with the 1.25 inch T adaptor pushed as far as it would go into the star diagonal. With this arrangement the focus needed only a little adjustment from that for the 25mm eyepiece.

The image has been post processed in Photoshop to bring out the spots and the limb darkening. It shows sunspot 1099 disappearing at the top right and two other groups developing but not yet numbered. Check out the official version for August 16 on SpaceWeather.com -- News and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids

Cant wait for the moon to reappear.

[RayGil]

Nice Image Paul, well done! it's not easy to the sun in focus, nice detail.

[paulskid]

Thanks for the kind comment. Live view using a laptop helps hugely. I am not sure I could do it using the camera lcd screen. Paul

[Technobill]

There is quite a bit of surface detail there for a solar film image you should be pretty happy with that.

[teh_orph]

I just bought the same solar film stuff and haven't seen a thing! I was thinking that I'd gotten the wrong stuff until seeing this pic. Good work