Or “One of those days when the photo you took is far better than you expected”

After advising u/[email protected] not to point cameras at the sun, today I ignored my own advice. My excuse: the sun was barely showing through the cloud, was simply not bright at all, and I wondered if the disk might have an interesting look, set against out of focus branches.

When I got it home to look at I wondered about the spots on the sun, first thinking “my camera’s dirty” before realising after a few moments: a remarkably good shot of sun spots for a hand held camera. The broader shading is strands of cloud.

I even had to check the configuration of spots was right:

From https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/solar-activity/sunspot-regions.html

Pure luck the cloud was just the right level of thickness, but amusing! Canon R5 MkII + RF200-800mm lens did help a lot of course :)