This is a photograph of the tail end of my 18th century telescope reproduction, that I am using for observing and drawing sunspots. I have been working on this project since the beginning of March, drawing sunspots every clear day. Some days there are scattered clouds, and so I have to wait for open spots between clouds before making my observations. Yesterday was such a day. Here is a photograph of the sun's image projected by the telescope on to a piece of white paper, and you can see darker gray areas which are clouds blowing across the face of the sun. Please click on the image to enlarge it, and then you can see the two sunspots on the face of the sun.
2 comments:
What will you do with the drawings when you are done after so many months?
Joan
Every 15 days, I scan the drawings I have made, and email them to the professor who is doing the project. My friend John, in New Mexico, is doing the same thing. The professor counts the number of groups of sunspots, as well as the individual spots, and calculates the "sunspot number" for each of us and enters the values into a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet also includes the official sunspot number, done with larger telescopes, and we see how the two types of telescopes differ. That is the purpose of the whole project.
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