wpo - sunspots
....solar
system page ....Transit
of Mercury 2003 Transit
of Venus 2004wpo - sunspots
images and text copyright Maurice Gavin - 2003/2004These sunspot images taken with the same set-up used to record the Transit of Mercury on 2003 May 7 eg Meade XL200 f/10 SCT used with small f/120 off-axis stop and solar filter [exposed + developed Agfa sheet-film] plus Starlight Xpress MX9 CCD.
Two 22 micron CCD pixels = 3"arc resolution of 25mm aperture as confirmed by these images. Sun's 1800"arc diameter at CCD focal plane = ~27mm [3000/110 LX200 fl] eg ~1240 pixels @ 1.45"arc/pixel.
The colourized shot shows the naked-eye sunspots of 2004 July 26 - the scope was not focused for this shot but left as previously focused for starlight at f/6.3 but here stopped down to f/100 where the depth of focus proved adequate !
