Exercise #3: Looking at the Sun

The Sun is very bright, and looking at it with either the naked eye or any optical device is dangerous--special precautions are necessary to enable you to actually look at the Sun. To make the viewing safe, we must eliminate 99.999% of the light from the Sun to reduce it to safe levels. In this exercise you will be using a very special telescope designed for viewing the Sun. This telescope is equipped with a hydrogen light filter. It only allows a tiny amount of light through, isolating a single emission line from hydrogen (``H-alpha''). In your lecture session you will learn about the emission spectrum of hydrogen, and in the spectroscopy lab you get to see this red line of hydrogen using a spectroscope. Several of the pictures in Exercise #1 were actually obtained using a similar filter system. This filter system gives us a unique view of the Sun that allows us to better see certain types of solar phenomena, especially the ``prominences'' you encountered in Exercise #1.

• In the ``Solar Observation Worksheet'' below, draw what you see on and near the Sun as seen through the special solar telescope. (8 points)

Note: Kitt Peak Vacuum Telescope images are courtesy of KPNO/NOAO. SOHO Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope images courtesy of the SOHO/EIT consortium. SOHO Michelson Doppler Imager images courtesy of the SOHO/MDI consortium. SOHO is a project of international cooperation between the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA.