Hello all: We watched the Christmas partial eclipse using a telescope to project an image of the sun onto a white piece of stiff paper. I fitted the large end my 4" refractor with an 18" square piece of cardboard with a 4" hole cut into it so that the cardboard would shade the viewing screen at the other end from unwanted sunlight.
Even more amazing than the eclipse were the large number of sunspots. I've never seen so many. We counted 24 of them! This is because the sun is at the peak of its 11 year solar cycle. I checked, and found out that the sun will be at perihelion on January 4. I wonder if the closeness of the earth to the sun at this time of year will make the sun's disk appear larger and therefore permit closer inspection of the sunspots, or if the increase in size of the sun is too small to be significant. Does anybody know the difference in the apparent diameter of the sun, in degrees, between perihelion and aphelion? Is this significant? Thanks John Carmichael Tucson Arizona p.s. Some of the sunspots are so large that they can be viewed without a telescope with the eye, using a welders smoked glass.
