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Every year the
Astronomy class
at Warren Wilson College photographs the sun looking through a
telescope to examine sunspots, and we usually see several. This
week, however, we could only find one sunspot. The lonely sunspot
is located at about "8:00 o'clock" in the photo about halfway from the
center of the image to the limb or edge of the sun's disk. The photo at right, taken exactly two years ago today (Sept. 22, 2004)  by
Simon Johnson shows a much larger sunspot in approximately the
sameplace in the image. Finally, below is an enlargement of that
major sunspot from two years ago.All these phoros were taken with a digital camera attached to the eyepiece of an 8-inch telescope. The telescope was fitted with a special filter that blocks out most of the blinding sunlight, otherwise the detector in the camera would be ruined. |
One
of the major reasons for photographing sunspots is to give astronomy
students an opportunity to measure the rotation rate of the Sun.
The animated photo at left shows the parts of two images of the Sun:
Monday, September 18, 2006 and Wednesday September 20 (the image from
the top of the page). The Monday image shows the sunspot closer
to
the Sun's limb. The apparent motion of the sunspot location
between the two days is due to the rotation of the Sun. Colin
Duke assisted with the photography of the September 18 image.