It’s easy to forget that our sun is also a star and observations with the right instruments are very exciting. All stations in our school lab are equipped from the start with special filters that attenuate all sunlight in all wavelengths from blue to red to such an extent that spots become visible on the surface of the sun. In other words, the sun is darkened. Recently, we have had a special solar telescope whose filter only lets through the light produced by hydrogen, thus making the so-called protuberances visible. These gigantic “flares” on the surface of the sun, which can reach the size of several earth diameters, can now be wonderfully observed with the eye, but also with cameras.
Photo: Günter Dombrowski. Text: Thomas Eversberg
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