Solar Photography: Catch the Sun

The solar cycle has ramped up, and it's a great time to photograph this captivating target.
The post Solar Photography: Catch the Sun appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Resources and Education

Solar Photography: Catch the Sun

By:

Sean Walker

February 20, 2026

Get Articles like this sent to your inbox

By submitting this form, you are consenting to receive marketing emails from: Sky & Telescope. You can revoke your consent to receive emails at any time by using the SafeUnsubscribe® link, found at the bottom of every email. Emails are serviced by Constant Contact

The solar cycle has ramped up, and it’s a great time to photograph this captivating target.

[Catching the Sun | Sky & Telescope]

*HEATING UP Solar Cycle 25 is roaring to life, making this a great time to experience the excitement of solar imaging. This mosaic of the Sun was captured by the author on July 15, 2022, with an Astro-Physics 92mm Stowaway refractor equipped with a Daystar Quark Chromosphere solar filter. Sixteen, 15-second videos were recorded using the Player One Mars-M video camera reviewed in the February issue. The results were stacked in Autostakkert!3, then assembled in Adobe Photoshop.
Sean Walker*

As the nearest star, the Sun is the most dynamic object you can observe in the sky. A nearly perfect sphere of incandescent plasma, it’s loaded with fascinating details that change by the minute. And at long last, solar activity is on the rise. Solar Cycle 25 is already on track to produce lots of active regions, sunspots, and flares. Here’s how you can get in on the imaging action.

Areas of Interest

The Sun is close enough to reveal its churning atmosphere in a properly equipped telescope of any size. By happy coincidence, it appears around a half degree in diameter — the same apparent size as the Moon. This is one reason we get total solar eclipses, which allow for brief, unfiltered views of the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona (S&T: Mar. 2020, p. 30). The rest of the time, pointing any optic at the Sun requires the use of a safe solar filter in order to reduce its intense brightness to a safe level.

With the appropriate solar filter, the Sun is observable in many wavelengths, though Earth’s atmosphere blocks some of the more interesting ones (particularly at ultraviolent wavelengths).

Besides the corona, two additional layers of the solar atmosphere are of interest to amateurs: the photosphere and the chromosphere. The photosphere is made up of bright granules of plasma that rise and sink over the course of about 10 minutes and is the deepest layer of the Sun that we can directly observe. Additionally, dark sunspots appear in the photosphere, where magnetic fields break through the sur- face. The photosphere is visible through simple “white-light” solar filters and until fairly recently was the primary region that amateurs could view.

The other visible layer of the solar atmosphere is the chromosphere, residing about 3,000 to 5,000 kilometers above the photosphere. Meaning sphere of color, the chromosphere is arguably the most dynamic layer. It comprises primarily reddish, low-density plasma visible along the solar limb during total eclipses. The chromosphere is where much of the excitement happens on the Sun: Gigantic prominences shim- mer along the limb, dark filaments snake across the disk, and coronal loops, plage, and occasional bright flares come and go on timescales that can last from minutes to weeks.

Although the chromosphere is briefly visible during a total eclipse, it’s best seen through a specialized filter that only passes a narrow region of the spectrum where this activity is visible. The most popular are hydrogen-alpha (Hα) filters, which pass less than one angstrom of light at 656.28 nanometers and reject everything else. These filters are much more complex (and therefore more expensive) than white-light filters and are not the same as deep-sky filters used to image the night sky. The hydrogen-alpha wavelength reveals an amazing show unlike any other in the sky.

[Sunspot group AR 3038 | Sky & Telescope]

ATMOSPHERIC LAYERS Top: Sunspot group AR 3038 appears surrounded by small areas of bright plage when recorded in white light. Bottom: *The same group shows spicules and small filaments in the chromosphere when imaged through a Daystar Quark Chromosphere filter.
Sean Walker*

The chromosphere is also visible in a bluer region of the spectrum centered at 393.4 nm where calcium is ionized in the solar atmosphere, known as the calcium-K line (Ca-K). Such filters display a violet image of the Sun similar to, but higher contrast than, the white-light view showing sunspots, granulation, supergranulation, faculae, and extended plage regions where strong magnetic fields are present. Prominences are also visible through a Ca-K filter, though they appear much fainter than in Hα. Because the Ca-K line is at the violet end of the visible spectrum, older observers often have a hard time seeing through these filters, and in general they’re better suited to imaging rather than visual use. Manufacturers including Baader Planetarium (baaderplanetarium.com), Daystar Filters (daystarfilters.com), Lunt Solar Systems (luntsolarsystems.com), Meade (meade.com), and Solarscope (solarscope.co.uk) all offer filter systems you can connect to your own telescope, as well as several dedicated solar telescopes with built-in Hα or Ca-K filters. Regardless of the wavelengths you choose, the process of creating images through them is identical.

[Calcium-K filter highlights magnetic fields and supergranulation in the chromosphere | Sky & Telescope]

*VIOLET PROMINENCE A calcium-K filter highlights magnetic fields and supergranulation in the chromosphere. Prominences can also be captured through this filter, as this colorized result shows.
Sean Walker*

Solar Considerations

There are several things you need for solar imaging besides your telescope, filter, and camera. Because you’ll be out under the blazing Sun, don’t forget to apply sunscreen to avoid sunburn while at the telescope. In addition, any computer you bring out to operate your camera and equipment will need some means of shading it so that you can see its screen in order to focus and monitor your progress. A folding table with a large cardboard box works well and is preferable to the clip-on screens I’ve seen online. A box will keep your entire computer out of the Sun and reduce the chances of it over-heating. Adding a towel also helps so that you can block the sky from reflecting off the computer screen.

[Snaking Plasma, Huge Filaments | Sky & Telescope]

*SNAKING PLASMA Huge filaments, which are simply prominences seen against the solar sphere, can dance for hours, days, and even weeks before suddenly lifting off into space.
Sean Walker*

The next piece of equipment to consider is your camera. You can shoot the filtered Sun with any camera, but the quality of your images may vary depending on your choice. For instance, the view through any solar filter, be it white- light, Hα, or Ca-K, is essentially monochrome, so shooting with a color camera such as a DSLR or Mirrorless camera, while doable, isn’t quite as easy as when using a monochrome camera designed to fit in a telescope focuser. But if that’s what you have to work with, be sure to record many frames to stack and sharpen later.

[...]

Original source