Sunspot 1057 with an iPhone 3Gs!

So one of the great things about my new solar telescope is that it is a projection system so astrophotography fairly easy. Today I wanted to take a look at Spot 1057 which has doubled in size since I saw it yesterday. I was able to take an image with my iPhone using the Sunspotter Telescope as it projected the image on a piece of paper. The reason the image has grain is because of the nature of the paper. The Image was edited using GIMP 2.6.6. (Levels, Unsharp Mask, Transform).


There is the raw image:


Here is an image of the sunspotter telescope:


Other raw images:

Cool Solar Telescope

Solar Observing

How to safely view the Sun with your telescope!

Solar Max Series Day 2 of 4

I'm sorry to report that I cannot post the second video directly from YouTube because embedding has been disabled. Not all is lost, please visit the YouTube video by following this link: Solar Max 2 of 4 (9 minutes long)

When watching this video I wonder what life would be like if the "Early Church" accepted Galileo's findings rather than ignoring them... would there have been the division we have today or would there be harmony between faith and scientific thought?

Make sure you come back here to post your comments!

Solar Max Series Day 1 or 4

If you have been following my blog lately you will know that I do a lot of videos. For a while I have felt bad that they are just videos and I haven't had time to type my own materials. But occasionally there is a video that comes along that is so good that it really makes you take notice. The next four days I'll be posting such videos. If you are an astronomer that follows the Sun you'll know that 2010 has been a very active year so far. Looks like we are heading to Solar Maximum.

The Sun is a wonderful object to study safely (more on that later until then AVOID looking at the sun with your telescope/binoculars/camera, etc!) I found this video on YouTube and I decided to do a four day series on my blog about it. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did. The more I hear about global warming the more I wonder that role the Sun plays in all of it. The Sun is the closest star we have and it is also very well studied compared to other stars, but in my mind there are still many things that we don't know about the Sun.

I hope you enjoy this 10 minute video about the sun and I hope it inspires you to think about the Sun a little more.

Solar Activity