Black Sun? Photos of Sun with digital camera question.

Someone posted a video and some stills they took using a Umax Astrapix
610 and it looks like the Sun is blocked out by a mask making it appear black.
They are in alt.binaries.svcd if anyone is interested. I never dared point my
camera at the Sun, so I have never seen this before. Can someone explain why it
did that? I'm really curious.

If anyone cares to check them out, they were posted to:

alt.binaries.ftd
alt.binaries.movies
alt.binaries.movies.divx
alt.binaries.svcd

You should be able to find them in any one of these groups under the
subject "Totally Weird, Pictures of the Sun through my Digital Camera (Umax
Astrapix 610)"


Thanks.

 

I don't know about these particluar pix, but astronomers use a device called a
coronograph. You can probably find out more by googling.

 

The warning in most camera manuals regarding pointing your camera at the sun
is more for personal safety than protect the sensor in your camera. I
suppose if you focused you Digi cam for a long period of time at the sun you
might damage the sensor. However, viewing the sun through a telephoto lens
with your naked eye would cause almost immediate damage.

 

Yeah, I knew about a device like that, and when I saw the stills, I
thought that is what they used, but when you look at the video, the camera moves
all over the place and what I thought was a shadow mask stays exactly over the
Sun throughout the video. It stays in perfect alignment with the Sun. I did do a
search on this, but didn't find anything. I'll have to tweak the search criteria
until I come up with something.

Thanks for your input.

 

A VERY expensive product that uses an occultating disk (black metal
cone) to block the sun's image, allowing you to view the "corona" or
atmosphere surrounding the sun. Baader Planetarium in Germany sells
them. There is a device called a PST (small telescope) you can buy
from Meade.com ($400) that will allow you to see the flames as well
and it doesn't block the sun's disc so you see detail on it too. The
PST works by using etalons (expensive selective
prisms) and a red filter to pass primarly the light the the
prominences(flames)emit, hydrogen alpha.
-Rich

 

Thanks. It is begriming to look like this person simply edited the video
and stills so that only Sun itself is blackened out. Seems like a lot of work
for an otherwise useless video.

Thanks to everyone who responded.

Rob

 

Ashot of the sun taken with a camcorder could not be salvaged. A more likely
guess is that they took the video during an eclipse.