Sun Peaking Through Clouds

We have another rainy day here so I'm staying indoors today but I'm feeling better than I have in a couple of weeks.  It seems to be exceedingly rare when my health is in sync with the weather and today, although my health is cooperating, the weather is not.  

I have a lot to do outside but between poor health lately, rain and snow, I haven't gotten outside to get anything accomplished.  As I get older, I have absolutely no desire to be outdoors if I'm going to be wet or uncomfortable.  Getting quite sick for a month or two last spring due to a tick bite does not make me want to run outside either!  I'd much rather sit comfortably and safely indoors now.

I have a new grill for our outdoor kitchen sitting out there in pieces in a big box waiting to be assembled and installed.  Our old grill was completely rotted out so I have already removed that from the kitchen cabinets and mostly disassembled it so there is now a gaping hole where the grill belongs.  I have four new Adirondack chairs sitting out there in boxes waiting to be assembled.  I have raking to do.  I have a lawnmower to get ready for the season.  I have a snowblower to fix that broke this winter.  I have planting to do.  I have landscaping to do.  I have rotted out soffits to replace.  I have gutters to install.  And, I have a new outdoor shower to build.  The list seems to grow longer and longer.  Oh yeah...  and I have new window screen to make and install on our windows.  

I really need to be careful with all this work too since my health can only handle so much abuse to my body.  We have a big cross-country trip coming up with our two oldest grandchildren and I want to be in the best shape I can for that trip so I need to pace myself this spring.

So, this morning, I'm indoors messing around with my cameras.  I was testing stacked ND (neutral density) filters on one of my cameras and noticed the sun trying to radiate through the cloud cover.  ND filters are the same as sunglasses...  they cut the amount of light reaching the camera just like sunglasses cut the amount of light reaching our eyes.  I had about 15 stops of ND filter on the camera so opened our living room window and I pointed it toward the sun (15 stops of ND filter is about the minimum for safely imaging the sun)...  I adjusted my settings, manually focused and captured a couple of shots of the sun.  

You can just make out a bunch of sunspots on the surface of the sun in this photo which is really interesting to be able to see as the clouds pass in front of the sun.  Normally, with clouds obscuring the sun just a little, you would not see any details such as sunspots.  Considering how lousy the sky conditions are for astronomy, it is amazing that I captured decent clarity of the surface of the sun.  I've seen far worse imaging results on seemingly clear days!  On a lot of seemingly clear days, I will get nothing but mushy signs of details but, on this cloudy day and with a simple camera in my hand, I managed to capture some nice detail!

I mentioned sunspots being visible on the surface of the sun...  well...  it really isn't a "surface" of the sun.  It is all hot, bubbling plasma gases that we see from Earth but it does appear to have a sharply defined "surface" to our eyes so we refer to it as a surface just as though it were a solid like a planet. 

Worth noting here is I shot this without the use of a telescope nor any elaborate scientific filters like I normally do for solar imaging.  I simply put a 300mm lens on my Panasonic G9 camera body (the smaller sensor in this camera makes the 300mm lens equivalent to using a 600mm lens on a full frame of film so the view is much tighter), stacked two ND filters on the lens, and handheld the camera as I pointed it at the sun.  Simple, simple, simple.  

Here is a photo of the simple camera setup I used for the above image...

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It is now lunchtime and I decided to step outside to shoot another photo of the sun since the clouds are only thin and wispy now and the sun is a little brighter.

This time, I used the same camera but changed to a far better lens.  For the previous photo, I used an older Olympus lens that is known to be less-than-stellar (I'm being kind...  it is a lousy lens) but I used my Canon L 400mm f5.6 lens for this shot.  I'm no fan of Canon either but their "L" lenses are sharp.  It was a bit harder shooting with this Canon lens though because it is so much larger and heavier.  It's sort of like trying to hand hold a small telescope.  I had to lay down on the deck with my head propped up on a pillow.  The camera was rested on my eyebrow and my left hand was steadying the long lens while my right hand pressed the shutter release button.  This lens focuses better than the crappy Olympus lens so I used autofocus for this photo.  

In this photo, not only are the sunspots plainly visible but I can also see faculae, a couple of light bridges and even granulation.  For a quick and easy shot of the sun in poor sky conditions with thin clouds, this is a great image of the sun!

Here is a photo of the camera and lens I used to shoot this second solar image...