While coming back on the sea ferry across Moreton Bay, I looked up into the sky and saw this pretty Sun halo around the Sun and just as I took the picture a couple of welcome swallows flew by in the sea breeze :-) 
 
A solar halo is a very interesting optical phenomenon that’s caused by the Suns light interacting with ice crystals in very high cirrus type clouds. You can also see the same phenomenon when you have a full Moon in the night-time sky. Another interesting fact is this ring around the Sun or Moon is exactly 22 degrees!
 
You can find out more about the science of solar and lunar halos at:
https://www.atoptics.co.uk/halosim.htm
 
My image was taken on Sunday the 28th March 2021 with a Canon G7X camera Mark 11 camera; the exposure time was 1/400th second with ISO200 using manual focus.

This is the first cloud free day we’ve had here in Queensland since the New Year started, and the solar surface is completely spotless…here’s hoping some solar action starts up again soon,
​as I’m waiting for some excitement to happen :-)
 
Image taken with a Canon 70D camera and a 18-400mm lens set at 400mm with a 2x teleconverter making a focal length of 1280mm. A glass solar filter was attached to the lens for safe imaging of Sun. Twelve images were stacked in RegiStax6 with exposure times of 1/500th second and ISO100.

I looked up into the sky and saw this pretty partial Sun halo, all day long there were beautiful high wispy cirrus clouds over the sky and at some stage I was sure a halo would appear…and it did :-)
 
Image taken on the 28th December 2020 with a Canon G7X Mark11 on manual focus and F11 aperture using ISO125.

Keep looking up…you never know what you’ll find!

I was able to take some more images of this wonderful huge Sunspot late yesterday afternoon and this time I used my little planetary ZWO camera, which showed so much more detail around the active area than the DSLR images that I took on the 26th November 2020.
 
We are having a heat wave here at the moment so it’s very very hot outside taking pictures of the Sun…but it’s worth it :-)
 
Images were taken on the 28th November, with a 127mm refractor telescope fitted with a glass solar filter and using a ZWO 120 MC-S camera. The camera was at prime focus for the first image, and then I attached a 3x Barlow lens for the higher magnification images. AVI movie files were captured with 2500 frames and stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS CS4.

~ Sunspots AR2786, AR2785 & AR2783 ~
On the 26th November 2020 
​
​It’s very exciting to see the Sun becoming so active again and this new active region AR2786 is really putting on a spectacular display, smaller sunspots are now developing close by and it’s going to be very interesting to see what happens in the couple of days :-)
 
Images were taken on the 26th November 2020 with a 127mm refractor telescope fitted with glass solar filters for safe viewing and imaging of the Sun (Please see my setup image attached) using a Canon 700D camera.
 
The full disc image was taken at prime focus with ISO200 & 1/640th second exposures. The close up image had a 2x Barlow lens attached, exposures were 1/60th second and ISO 400, twenty images were stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS CS4.

(Please be careful looking at the Sun)

This is the first chance I’ve had to image this huge sunspot AR2781 because of cloud cover and its now facing toward the Earth on the solar surface.
 
This is the biggest sunspot of the new Solar Cycle 25 and it looks like the Sun is now awakening from its slumber!
 
There have been some really stunning images posted on Spaceweagther.com one in particular is from Alan Friedman, which featured on the front page at:
https://www.spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=09&month=11&year=2020
 
The image was taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens with a 2x converter making a focal length of 1280mm, which was mounted on a non-tracking camera tripod. 15 images were stacked in RegiStax 6 and processed in PS CS4, the e27812727xposure time was 1000th second and ISO320.

We managed to grab a couple of days to visit the Queensland North Coast at Noosa last weekend and were rewarded with this magical sunset over Lake Doonella at Tewantin. While I was taking my pictures there was a very lucky fisherman reeling in quite a few flathead fish for his dinner :-)
 
If you look closely at the image you’ll see some really unusual clouds that look like fine hair floating in the sky. These clouds are called Cirrus clouds and it looks like there is a very strong wind shear up there making them spread out like fine filaments.
 
I’ve never seen Cirrus cloud in this pattern before; it looks like these particular clouds are called Cirrus fibratus clouds…how exciting!  Genus: Cirrus (curl of hair)
 
I found this information on Wikipedia at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirrus_cloud
 
The images were taken with a Canon 70D camera with a Tamron 18-400mm lens attached set at different focal lengths with an ISO 100.

The sunspot is now looking very small in the 127mm refractor telescope as it rotates towards the western limb of the Sun on the 11th June 2020. During this afternoon observing session I was racing against time as cloud was coming all across the western sky.
 
After taking some images with the refractor I quickly removed it off the Pro HEQ5 mount and replaced it with the Lunt 60mm solar telescope to try and capture some images in Ha. (I always use this tracking mount when using both these telescopes)
 
It was really lucky to get a break in the cloud to capture just two AVI movie movies of the area with the Ha telescope before the whole sky clouded over and that was that…no more observing!
 
The white light image was taken with a 127mm refractor telescope that was fitted with a glass solar filter and using a Canon 700D camera.

​Just one image was captured with an exposure time of 1/320h second and ISO400.  The Ha image was taken with the Lunt solar telescope and a ZWO ASI120MC-S camera attached capturing an AVI movie file and stacking in RegiStax6 and processed in PS CS4.

It was quite late in the afternoon by the time I could finally take an image of this new sunspot on the surface of the Sun. I was having a lot of trouble trying to get some close detail on the sunspot and really could not understand why?
 
After packing up, I looked up towards Mt Tamborine and saw the reason why, a huge forest burn off was taking place and a large plume of smoke was spreading across the western sky. Because of where my telescope was setup between the two houses I was unable to see this smoke, Oh well, at least I was lucky enough to got some images of the sunspot even though they were a bit smoke affected :-)
 
My images were taken on the 5th June 2020, with a 10inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope that was fitted with a glass solar filter and using a ZWO ASI120MC-S camera with a focal reducer attached. The full disc image was taken with a Canon 700D camera, exposure time was 1/500th second and ISO200, 12 images were stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS CS4. The sunspot looked quite small on the full disc of the Sun.

This new sunspot is from the next Solar Cycle 25, please read more about this from
​Dr Tony Phillips who pens the excellent website Spaceweather.com
https://spaceweatherarchive.com/2019/12/25/reversed-polarity-sunspots-appear-on-the-sun/
 
Another site to keep a daily eye on the Sun is NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) at: https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov

When I looked out my window late this morning, I saw this most amazing colourful ring right around the Sun. I flew downstairs, grabbed my camera and ran outside to capture it before it disappeared. I tried to block out some of the bright Sun with a wild grass plant that I found in the garden and it worked perfectly J
 
There is a lot of science behind one of these 22-degree halos around the Sun and for it to be displayed for us to see there has to be the right shape and size ice crystals in the sky. I’m always on the look out for them when this high cirrostratus cloud in covering the sky, you also can see a lunar halo when the Moon is in a larger phase…. so as I always say keep looking up, you never know what you’ll find!
 
To find out more please go to a couple of informative websites below:
Les Cowley, Atmospheric Optics website at:
https://www.atoptics.co.uk/halo/circular.htm
​
There is an excellent explanation and diagrams on how a Sun Halo is produced on the
WW2010 University of Illinois website at:
http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/guides/mtr/opt/ice/halo/22.rxml

Image taken with a Canon G7x Mark11 on manual focus, with ISO125 and exposure time of 1/200th second.
(Be very careful not to look directly at the Sun, use your camera screen to safely compose the shot)