White Light Solar Images- Astrophotography by John Minnerath, Part 1

Here are a few images of the Solar Photosphere, the outer layer of the Sun. These are referred to as taken in WL (white light), which is the full visible spectrum. What we would see of the Sun with no special filtering but to remove harmful UV rays and to reduce brightness to a tolerable level for our eyes. Some in B&W, which I think shows better detail. And some colorized because a lot of people like them. For most of my WL images I use a 6" f8 achromatic refractor with a Baader WL filter plus usually a couple other colored filters that help cut through atmospheric turbulence. Various barlows are used to increase focal length for as much magnification as I can manage with the seeing conditions at the time. The camera is a pure monochromatic high speed video camera which captures frames at about 60 per second. Each capture is usually 1 minute for about 3600 frames which are then processed into a single image. The individual image scale is fairly small and most of these are mosaics of a number of frames combined into one larger one. Close ups with good conditions show a granular surface. These granules are ~1000 km across and have a life of about 10 to 20 minutes. Good WL photography is hard to do, but show great beauty in visible light of the active Solar surface.     Below is an image of the shadow of Venus transiting the Sun.  This is one of the rarest phenomena dealing with the Sun we get to see, occurring in pairs every 243 years. The next occurrence will be in 2117, followed by the second in 2125. I was lucky to be in a place where it would be visible. All day we were blanketed with clouds and I fretfully watched the sky as the time of transit approached and then passed. Suddenly the sky cleared and I got a few minutes to see it and capture the event. It was really an amazing thing to see.    -John Minnerath