Photo of the Week for December 18, 2015

Of all the stars visible from planet Earth, the Sun is the only one that we can see in great detail. And what detail! But there’s a catch. Specialized filters are necessary to view the blindingly bright solar disc and appreciate features like this solar prominence, which was captured by Sherbrooke, Quebec, imager Daniel Brousseau on September 17, 2015.

For this image, Brousseau used a ZWO ASI120MM-S monochrome video camera to record the output from a Daystar Instruments QUARK Hydrogen Alpha filter “eyepiece” (chromosphere model) attached to a Celestron Omni 120mm achromatic refractor telescope.