September 22, 2023. 17:12 UTC — Shooting Sun today as sunspot AR3435 rotated toward the center point of the disk, viewed from Earth. I also tried my trusty Thousand Oaks Optical Type 2+ glass solar filter on the same setup. I’ve seen some excellent results from the glass filter in the past but there seemed to be a bit of detail lost from the image. Some of the loss may have been from the filter but, perhaps more likely, there may have been a slight shift in focus or instantaneous turbulence in Earth’s atmosphere. I must say, however, while I like the brilliant color of the glass, I love the detail and tonality of the white light film — Astrozap Baader film white light solar filter.

I hope to add a telescope or system to my arsenal, allowing hydrogen-alpha (Ha) viewing and imaging of Sun’s chromosphere and prominences but I have longstanding appreciation for sunspots and hope to also dramatically improve imaging of those features.

These images are single-exposures, not stacked stills or video frames, so I shoot multiple singles aiming for momentary clarity in the atmosphere. I then manually review the frames and select the best single frame(s) for final processing. This day I used a DSLR camera with telephoto lens for the sake of convenience. The same two filters fit my 90mm refractor with a focal length of 1,000mm but using the scope would have meant significant setup; too lazy to do that, I guess.

Technical Information: Tripod-mounted Canon EOS 7D Mk. 2 camera, Canon 400mm f/5.6 L lens with Canon 2X telextender for 800mm and f/11. Mono Image: ISO 500, f/11, 1/1000 sec. Color Image: ISO 500, f/11, 1/800 sec.