This photograph shows the sun with a significant number of sunspot groups and plages (meandering white lines). Sunspots are cooler locations where magnetic field lines penetrate the sun’s surface. It was a cloudy day when I took this photograph through my telescope, so I needed to take images in a gap that was passing by. I took a video of 1000 frames and was only able to use the first 500 due to clouds. I let the software choose 25% of those that were the sharpest to align and stack (average together). This is a technique called Lucky Imaging that was developed to photograph planets being distorted by atmospheric turbulence.
Photographer: Rick Scott
Date: June 22, 2022 at 9:29 AM MST
Telescope: home-made 10" f/4.6 Lurie-Houghton
Mount: Losmandy HGM Titan with Gemini 2
Camera: ZWO ASI2600MC Pro controlled with ZWO ASICap
Filter 1: Kendrick Baader Astro Solar Film ND5
Filter 2: Optolong L-Pro
Exposure: 125 of 500 frames at 1 msec, f/4.6, Gain = 100, Temp = +30C
Processed AutoStakkert 3, Registax 6, and Adobe Photoshop CS.
Updated: June 24, 2022