Topical, what with the smoke over much of SE Australia. Couple of images below, taken afocally with hand-held Kodak CX7330 digital camera through 12x50 binoculars, from my backyard in Bright, Vic. Crude and very difficult shooting method - very wobbly & hard to get focus. Anyway, the first is the classic "Bushfire Moon", the eerie red orb seen through the smoke, 3 Dec 2006. This pic (pretty ordinary) is true colour, and has had no post-processing. The second, taken yesterday, is the Sun imaged with no filters at all (never ever use this shooting method in normal atmospheric conditions or you'll burn up your gear!). Made a slight exposure compensation adjustment (-1.0) so the sky is a bit darker than it actually was, but the pink of the Sun is fairly true - note large sunspot near top.
My very first post, so I've got no idea how the thumbnails work, or whether the images I've selected have actually been attached - bombard me with advice if I've mucked it up!!!!
Still managed to muck up the posting though - sun image attached as file. It looks like lots of forum browsers have missed it, so have attached it here (I hope!). Fluoro pink sun? You'd better believe it!