Sunspots

What you're looking at here is my first attempt at photographing the surface of the sun. Now, it's incredibly dangerous to attempt to do this and care has to be taken not to look at the sun directly through a big lens and it can also damage the camera. To get this image I started off with the D90 (wasn't risking the D7000 until I knew what I was doing), fitted with the Sigma 70-200mm lens and 2x teleconverter, basically the same lens setup I use for the moon.

To start with I fitted the lens with my Heliopan 10 stop filter and slotted the Hitech 10 stopper in front of that as well. 20 stops of filtration is massive and I couldn't even see the sun on the live view (dont look through the viewfinder!). I located it without the Hitech 10 stopper, then put it back and tried a test exposure at f64 and 1/160th and got a black screen. Opening up the aperture did little so I took the risk and went with just one 10 stopper and closed back up to f64 again. This time I could see the sun on the live view and after a little fiddling with apertures and exposure times this is what I got.

The 2 marks to the bottom of centre, are sunspot 1416 which is likely to produce a flare in the next 24 hours which may cause aurora around Earth. Check out www.spaceweather.com for more info.

Knowing how to do this will be handy as there is a transit of Venus in front of the sun at sunrise in June and I should be able to capture it.