Sun and the public

There's an enormous art fair in my town right now, which brings a huge amount of pedestrians past my front yard. So, I had a yard sale, which was very successful. But while I was out there I knew the sun was putting on a good show lately, so I set up my 6 inch dob w/solar filter, put a little sign up, and showed folks the huge sunspots.

It was a lot of fun, helped pass the time for me, and was a great way to do a little P.R. for astronomy.

One thing that suprised me was how many people were really fundamentally confused by what they saw - that the round disk was face of the sun, with surface markings. Oddly, I found that placing the solar disk so that one edge was just out of the field of view helped. Having the disk cut off, so that the "frame" was apparent, seemed to give people some context for interpreting what they saw. I'm not sure I understand this fully, but something interesting psychologically is going on.

And dang, those sure are some dramatic spots!

one experience I had when showing the sun at a public event to some people was that some people said they could not see it. I checked the eyepiece and the sun was there with a few nice sun spots. Then I asked do you see he big orange thing in there? an they said yes, and I said, well thats the sun and the little black dots are sun spots. I got the following responses: 1. Cool , 2. ok, 3. That was it, I thought it would look different. Then a member of my club said to only show half the disk to avoid any trouble and move the scope to show the full disk for the those that are really interested.