I was talking to a colleague (Luc) recently and mentioned I had an interest in astronomy which converged to a limited extent to my former interest in photography. In this context, I thought I would share an early attempt at capturing solar flares. There were taken using a small hand-held camera.
These photos don't compare well with the serious pictures from a big telescope, or (of course) from a solar observation satellite like SOHO, but I was pretty happy with them as personal successes. Better yet, I wasn't even blinded in the effort. This was, incidentally, a quiet day on the sun but I took the pictures then because the local viewing conditions were acceptable.
Click on any image to see a bigger version.
This makes my pictures seem pretty dismal, but here's the latest picture and a link from the
EIT (Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Telescope) on the SOHO satellite for reference. SOHO was built by the ESA and is being operated by NASA.
If you want to try this yourself, you can get the latest solar weather report here, but the sun has been very quiet for quite a long time now -- we're in a solar minimum now. The peak in activity is supposed to be in 2011 or 2012 and it is supposed to be strong. There have also been observations of an unprecedented reduction in activity in the Sun's Great Conveyor Belt, which has effects for the next 20 years and is expected to lead to reduced solar activity in solar Cycle 25 in 2022 (and thus increased cosmic ray incursion on earth and in earth orbit -- i.e. better-irradiated astronauts).
Radiative Processes and Small-scale MHD in the Convection Zone and Photosphere
