OK, you are liable to think I am loosing it! I was having a plain donut with my coffee the other day and I happened to look carefully at the donut. You know what I though of? Right. A sunspot on the Sun. What? When I first began observing the Sun with a telescope and a special solar filter, about twenty five years ago, I was able to see little black circular spots, surrounded by a larger gray circle. then one day I saw some famous drawings of sunspots by the astronomer Samuel Pierpont Langley, done in 1870 through a 13-inch refracting telescope at Allegheny Observatory in Pittsburgh, PA. As you can see from the two images, there is an amazing similarity between the appearance of this sunspot, and the donut. You are amazed, right? I am.
This morning it occurred to me that probably very few people are familiar with sunspots. So I decided to add this image to the collection. It is a photograph I took about a week ago with my camera through a telescope and a special filter. This was on a day when there were a whole bunch of sunspots on the surface of the sun. And you can see the black center of the spot, the "umbra" and the gray surround, called the "penumbra." Pretty cool stuff, right?
2 comments:
Ken, this must be the only pairing of donuts and sunspots on the web. But the donut looks delicious.-- Stan
I have looked at a few donuts in my day but I've never thought of sun spots - you are truly "one of a kind" ! bsk
Post a Comment