Two Views of the Sun, via an iPad with an Eclipse Filter
Here are a
couple of pictures of the Sun, take with an iPad, through an “eclipse filter”.
The first
was taken with the standard iPad camera app, with the lens covered by an
eclipse filter, that I got during the last eclipse, from a university
observatory. The filter blocks almost
all of the sun’s light. I am not sure of
the fraction of light allowed through, but suffice to say that nothing dimmer
than the sun seems to make it through the filter.
The blend
of colours is nice, especially the yellow around the limb. This could be a manifestation of limb
darkening, with the brighter interior pure white (CCDs saturated) and the darker limb showing the
sun’s yellow frequency peak (CCDs not saturated). Or maybe
it is some other iPad optical response.
The next
picture was taken with the iPad camera “stopped down” via an inexpensive app,
available from the Apple app store. The
image was fairly small, so this enlargement is a bit pixelated. So, the apparent detail around the edge of
the sun is an artifact of image processing, rather than of the sun itself.
Someday, it
would be nice to try this iPad photography during an actual eclipse.
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Book one of the Witches' Stones series (Rescue from the Planet of the Amartos)
And here’s a (fictional) planet with a sun much
hotter than our own, though still inhabitable:
“To help pass the tense minutes, Coryn studied the world outside the
lone small window. Greenery was planted
outside the window, needed as a screen to protect the dwelling from the blazing
white Kordean sun. The leaves were
thick and rubbery – unlike human beings, the plants that grew on Kordea could
not escape the brilliant sun, so they had evolved a tough outer layer. He reflected that this world was a fantastic
mixture of the mystical, as represented by the seven moons, and the inescapably
physical, as represented by the blistering Kordean sun.”
Plus, there's a nice neutron star on the cover,
as well as a rather fetching heroine. So, you should check it out :).
Amazon Canada: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B008PNIRP4
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