Feb 17, 2013

Detailed Photos of the Sun by a Backyard Astronomer


By day, Alan Friedman makes greeting cards for Great Arrow Graphics. At night, Friedman pursues his passion for astronomy from his observatory, located in the backyard of his home in Buffalo, New York. While it’s not an ideal site, given the street lights, telephone wires and jet stream winds. He makes the most of it, focusing on the brighter objects in the sky like our sun, moon and nearby planets.

In his own word, Alan states:

Using a small telescope and narrow band filters I can capture details in high-resolution and record movements in the solar atmosphere that change over hours and sometimes minutes. The raw material for my work is black and white and often blurry. As I prepare the pictures, color is applied and tonality is adjusted to better render the features.
To record my images, I use a filter that passes only a narrow slice of the deep red end of the visible spectrum. Called a Hydrogen Alpha filter, it is attached to the front end of a small (3.75″ aperture) telescope. Think of it as a 450mm f5 telephoto lens. The camera used is an industrial webcam. It can stream images at a speed of 15 to 120 frames a second.


You can find an online gallery of Alan’s work at avertedimagination.com. He also blogs frequently on his Tumblr page. If you’re interested in prints, be sure to check out his portfolio on photo-eye Gallery. He also recently did a talk at TedxBuffalo about his work. If you have 18 minutes and are interested in his process, be sure to check it out.

[via PetaPixel]


Alan Friedman: Website | Tumblr | Prints



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7. The Setup

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Alan Friedman: Website | Tumblr | Prints





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