The Sun
 

This image shows the sun at 5:24PM EDT on May 19 (the ONLY clear day of the entire month at my location).

Taken with my Meade ETX-70AT telescope, a Scopetronix STWA14 telescope eyepiece/digital camera adapter (intended to take pictures of the lunar eclipse!), Scopetronix solar filter, and Nikon Coolpix 999 camera.

Hmmm. There's a fair amount of artifacting (concentric sircle patterns) in this image as I see it here. I do NOT see the same pattern on the original photo... it looks much better. Any thoughts on why it's different?

The picture looks a little blurry to me, but I don't see the artifacting you're referring to. Are you using a browser that automatically resizes large pictures?

I'm using Mozilla 1.3... I don't think it does. You're right, it's a hair blurry... it's not easy to get the exact focus right between the telescope, and the camera. I need some practice! :cool:

It loos like one cake
 

I desire to eat it. I think it must be sweet.

Mmmmmmmm fooood!

Well maybe this is better. I used some processing software to combine elements of three separate exposures, then I sharpened and compressed the brightness range to make the sinspots darker--but it also added some grayness around the edges. (I'm not sure this exposure-combining technique is even worthwhile for solar pics. Usually it's used for things like star clusters where there is really just black and white and not much else.)

And when viewed from the side:

http://cellar.org/2003/flan.jpg

mmmmmm Flan .....

ahh ahh yes to yes
to ahh ahh to yes
why the sun?
why the sun?

Hey! You forgot to throw in some blackberries to stand in for the sunspots! :beer:

You devil, you!;)