Since the great Total Eclipse of 2024, and wanting to take advantage of some of my newly acquired solar imaging equipment, I have been imaging the sun each day if possible. I attempt to go out at the same time each day to take a few images to process in lightroom. Most days I am not able to do it at the time I would like too. You know life keeps you busy with other commitments. On the days that I am able to get an image, I use lightroom to edit, color and adjust the position of the sun image to the same orientation as shown on the spaceweatherlive.com website. Of course, I have also had to deal with the fact that it could be cloudy. In August I took 28 images. The sequence was Aug 1,3-9, 11-30. Really not bad only three days missing the 3, 10 and 31. Also I was very fortunate to have lots of sunspots to view as they rotate across the sun’s surface.
I have created a gif file using the program PIPP. Russ told me about this program when I was wanting to make a gif of the Annular eclipse last year. I am going to post it here to see what your thoughts are and what I could do to improve the process. As with my annular eclipse gif, I eventually want to make a movie using photoshop so I can add music and text and other improvements.
The sun’s rotation is rather unique because it is not a solid like our planet.
[“The Sun rotates on its axis once in about 27 days. This rotation was first detected by observing the motion of sunspots. The Sun’s rotation axis is tilted by about 7.25 degrees from the axis of the Earth’s orbit so we see more of the Sun’s north pole in September of each year and more of its south pole in March.
Since the Sun is a ball of gas/plasma, it does not have to rotate rigidly like the solid planets and moons do. In fact, the Sun’s equatorial regions rotate faster (taking only about 24 days) than the polar regions (which rotate once in more than 30 days). The source of this “differential rotation” is an area of current research in solar astronomy.”] *(This information was taken from a NASA article dated Jan 23, 2013)
Thanks
Stan
Equipment used:
Canon 70D – Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM lens
Sky-Watcher - SolarQuest Alt-Azimuth Solar Mount & tripod.
K&F concept 77mm ND 1000000 ND camera lens Filter
Lightroom Classic – PIPP
Thanks…
Stan