Taking pics of sun spots

[OzStarGazer]

Yesterday morning I went to the beach at dawn and took pics of the sun rising from the ocean with my Nikon D5100 (hand-held, no tripod).
When I went home I was surprised to see that if I zoom in I can see the AR2209 sun spot... It is not high resolution of course as it was a photo of sunrise and I had to zoom in a lot but it is clearly there. I thought one needs a sun filter for that??
Even flares are visible, although blurred....

[Merlin66]

Sounds like a good catch!
I'd be amazed and very surprised if you managed to record the Ha detail in the proms......
Sounds more like lens flare - can you post an image?

[OzStarGazer]

Here it is... Zoomed in and cropped... :)

[N1]

Always nice to see detail on the surface of our star using (relatively) low tech gear. Huge sunspots such as AR 2192 last month can be seen through basic eclipse shades.

I agree with Ken that the flare you saw was likely of terrestrial origin such as atmospheric disturbance, lens flare or something.

A flare visible in white light (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859) would be bad news indeed. :scared3:

Edit: Just saw your pic. Yep, atmospherics at play. Nice photo though for reasons given above. Well done on the sunspot. :thumbsup:

[Merlin66]

Yeah,
Atmospheric effects.....
Nevertheless an interesting catch....

[OzStarGazer]

Thanks. :) I might go to the beach again with my smallest scope one of these days...
Unfortunately the sun is too high in front of my balcony now, so I will try to take some pics at the beach with my solar filter and my baby scope.
I would like to have one or more pics of the spot. :)

[csb]

Also, in the first pic there is only 1 sunspot apparent.
In the 2nd there are 2. So perhaps not sunspots. Clouds?

[OzStarGazer]

There are indeed two. I took a pic with a sun filter from my balcony the other day. Not as good as last month, as the sun was behind branches (last month it wasn't), but I could still catch the sunspot, somehow fuzzy, and there are two exactly like in the second dawn picture. I think the second spot just didn't turn out in the first sunrise pic.

[csb]

Well, nice accidental then :thumbsup:

[OzStarGazer]

Thank you! It was pure serendipity. :)