The Sun January 1, 2012

The Sun on January 1, 2012, as seen through the 50 mm f/4 Stellarvue finderscope mounted on the 150 mm reflector telescope that I use for doing visual sunspot counts. The image was acquired using a humble Meade Lunar Planetary Imager (LPI) with an inexpensive black polymer filter across the main lens of the finderscope.

On this day, the seeing was quite poor with high cirrus clouds passing across the face of the Sun.  In any event, the day’s relative sunspot number by visual count (through the 150 mm scope) was 43.  This image shows several small sunspot groups.  The larger telescope that I used to visually count  sunspots was able to show many individual sunspots within each group.

Image & Equipment Details:
1 January 2012
18:34:02 UT
Stellarvue 50 mm f/4 Finderscope
Rainbow Symphony Black Polymer Solar Filter
Meade LPI 60 frames
Seeing poor (through high cirrus clouds)
K3CCD_0001_20120101_123402_ST60_web1.jpg
Image captured using K3CCDTools.