# A Christmas Season Surprise--Sunspots: Easy as 1,2,3



## josephandrews222 (Dec 27, 2022)

...the two jpeg images that follow (as well as this one posted yesterday on cr) were acquired on the spur-of-the-moment, a few feet in front of our home's front door--shooting (near 1pm, hand-held, *no filter*, P mode and a bit of exposure compensation) south over the roofline after finishing a bit of snow-shoveling.

I grabbed the camera because the sun, peeking in an out of a quite gray snow sky, looked oddly like the moon (to my eyes)...and just fiddled with the exposure compensation to fight overexposure...hoping to get a unique view of our star.

Here are some results (straight out of camera more-or-less):





I presume that sunspots are in evidence--a total surprise to me--the kind of surprise that keeps me interested in photography, and in particular, imaging birds, where on more than one occasion I've peeked at surprise creatures in images where said creatures were not the intended subject.

The sky was a bit odd yesterday at the time of shooting. Presumably there's a word for this sky. I will look for it in the future.


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## Click (Dec 27, 2022)

You managed to capture some good details in those pictures.


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## SteveC (Jan 3, 2023)

josephandrews222 said:


> ...the two jpeg images that follow (as well as this one posted yesterday on cr) were acquired on the spur-of-the-moment, a few feet in front of our home's front door--shooting (near 1pm, hand-held, *no filter*, P mode and a bit of exposure compensation) south over the roofline after finishing a bit of snow-shoveling.
> 
> I grabbed the camera because the sun, peeking in an out of a quite gray snow sky, looked oddly like the moon (to my eyes)...and just fiddled with the exposure compensation to fight overexposure...hoping to get a unique view of our star.
> 
> ...


I see three of them in the upper right...actually one of those three is an obvious closely-spaced pair of them. (And looking again, there are more in the upper left quadrant.) You posted these on a different thread and there I commented that sunspots were barely visible on a photo I had taken through "eclipse glasses." They're much more visible here. I might try the eclipse glasses again, on a newer camera, to see if I get better results.

These shots of course, required no filter at all, so megabonus points!


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## josephandrews222 (Jan 6, 2023)

SteveC said:


> I see three of them in the upper right...actually one of those three is an obvious closely-spaced pair of them. (And looking again, there are more in the upper left quadrant.) You posted these on a different thread and there I commented that sunspots were barely visible on a photo I had taken through "eclipse glasses." They're much more visible here. I might try the eclipse glasses again, on a newer camera, to see if I get better results.
> 
> These shots of course, required no filter at all, so megabonus points!


The sun was so dull at that particular hour. I can't recall ever seeing it present itself in that way (in the early afternoon sky).

I don't know meteorological terminology (and I've looked around some on the 'net to no avail), but there must be words to describe such a sun, one that for the most part was hiding behind at least a couple of layers of thick clouds (one layer at high altitude and one much, much lower), and when the low altitude layer moved around a bit, the sun, looking much like our moon (silvery) revealed itself for a few seconds.

It was so 'dim' that I had to remind myself that I was looking at our sun (eyesight and camera sensors etc)...and to avert my gaze some (even while photographing)...part of the reason, I suppose, that I was unaware of the sunspots while shooting.

We live in a part of the USA that had a couple of minutes of 'totality' in the solar eclipse from a few years ago. I was able to get some images that my family treasures--but there was a lot of preparation for that 'event'. The images here, to me, are just as neat.


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