Sunspots

I have a telescope with a solar filter, but since I bought it at solar minimum, there were no sunspots to see. Now that the sun is more active, I decided to try my hand at photographing them. It's harder than it looks. 

    First I had to find the sun. With the solar filter in place, the entire sky is black, with no hint of the sun until you're right on it. My finder scope is useless because it has no filter. Once I had the sun in view, I had to focus. If I'm not careful, touching the focus knob knocks the sun out of view and I have to find it again. 

    According to spaceweather.com, there are currently three groups of sunspots visible. I could see only one spot, so I swapped in a 2X Barlow, which meant I had to find the sun and focus again. Now I could see that the first spot was actually a group of two, and I could make out a second group. 

    I swapped the ocular for my CMOS camera, a SVBONY SV105. The bright ambient light washed out my laptop screen—I couldn't see anything. I put my jacket over my head and the laptop screen. Now I could see the screen, but not the telescope. The jacket over my head was not only uncomfortably warm, it caught the wind. The wind was so strong that at one point it tipped over my tripod, counterweight, telescope, camera, and all. 

    Of course, the earth continued to rotate, so I had to keep moving my telescope. The process for each photo: find the sun, focus, swap in my Barlow, focus, swap in my camera, focus, and, if I hadn't lost the sun again, shoot, otherwise, start over. I got six shots before I gave up for the day. This was the best:

I count four sunspots. Microscopy is sounding like a better hobby all the time.