The Sun on April 30, 2025
April 30, 2025
Tags: Solar Astronomy, Astronomy, Astrophotography, Photography
WARNING: When observing the Sun, be sure to do so safely! Use only equipment that is designed specifically for that purpose and is produced by reputable manufacturers. Follow their directions closely. Do not improvise your own filter material for solar observing. If you are careless, you risk instant and permanent vision loss or injury.
Earlier today, I noticed that images from the Solar Dynamics Observatory were showing that a massive sunspot region was coming into view around the Sun’s limb. In my neck of the woods, the astronomy weather prediction called for poor seeing today—even though we’re due to have a warm day today, there’s still a coolness in the breeze, a combo that typically creates a lot of atmospheric turbulence and a bad view at the eyepiece. Nonetheless, I was keen to see that sunspot region in my Herschel wedge-equipped 90mm achromatic refractor.
Later, I broke out my Canon EOS R8, attached it to my scope, and snapped this image:
Across its disk, the Sun was fairly quiet except for that rather large sunspot region. And make no mistake: it is big. Below is the same photo but cropped. To the right of that sunspot region, I added the famous Blue Marble image of the Earth and sized it in proportion to how big the Earth is relative to the Sun.
You can fit 109 Earths end to end across the diameter of the Sun’s disk. If that doesn’t make you feel small, I don’t know what would.