Space Weather - The Sun

Yesterday`s view of the northern lights from Kvaløya made it to the front page of the famous astronomy-site "Space Weather" - click on the headline above for news about the auroras and the sun !

Today I tried to image the beautiful sun-spots that is currently facing "our" side of the Sun with my small pocket camera hand-held in front of a pair of normal binoculars WITH SOLAR PROTECTION - REMEMBER NOT TO LOOK or point any instrument at the sun without proper protection!

Even using such simple equipment several of the sun-spots could be seen (sunspot nr 1176 is very prominent). A slightly better image :-) by the Solar Dynamic Observatory SDO/HMI can be seen here : http://www.spaceweather.com/images2011/29mar11/hmi4096_blank.jpg?PHPSESSID=uvv27flgf3pq73hn5936sk7536

The Sun on 30 March 2011 - click for larger picture.