A heads up.
This one is a whopper, plainly visible without a telescope (I used a piece of welding glass) and possibly the biggest one of the current sunspot cycle. It has already produced an X flare and several M flares and is becoming geo-effective so any further major flares may well send a CME in our direction, creating opportunities for auroral or auroral-E propagation on VHF.
Brian
I couldn’t find anything dark enough so I tried a pin-hole camera projector at work. I couldn’t get a bright enough image to really see anything though I’ve made such projectors before to view partial solar eclipses and they worked really well. I’ll try again tomorrow if the day is as bright as today was.
If you have two pairs of polaroid sunglasses or two camera polarising filters, you can hold them together and rotate one until they go dark and use that as a solar filter. If you have one filter or one pair of polaroid sunglasses you can rotate them in front of a reflection in water as the reflection is polarised. I used to use the black ends of slide films or slides that had been underexposed as filters but I doubt that many people would have those nowadays! Another trick is to blacken a piece of glass with a candle flame - I have done that but you have to get it just right! Finally, try projecting an image of the sun onto a white card from a pair of binoculars, focus until the edge of the image is sharp and the spot should be clear…or just enjoy the pictures in spaceweather.com!
Brian
Thanks for the heads up.
I have 4 different camera filters I use and I was able to see it plain as day! Pun intended.
Ken
the astronomer in me cringes rather; there are filters through which it is safe to view the Sun directly, but crossed polaroids and soot-blackened glass really aren’t that safe. Whatever you use, it needs to block the infra-red as well as the visible, because you don’t want to get your retinas unhealthily warm.
I can heartily recommend taking advantage of the SOHO and STEREO websites.
SOHO: The Very Latest SOHO Images
STEREO: http://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/
Taken this morning, not 10 minutes ago:
I use a Baader solar film (white light) filter on the front of a 250mm telephoto lens, 1/6400s, f/5.6, ISO 125. Quickly post processed to sharpen some of the atmospherics (the sun is low right now)
The polaroid sunglasses method isn’t recommended these days, the amount of light that gets through is still substantial and can do damage over a reasonable period of time. Even with the Baader filter, which reduces the light by 100,000x, I get headaches if I take photos for longer than 5 minutes. Either is better than staring at the sun with no eye protection 
Cheers,
Andrew
VK3ARR
(Yes, the sun is upside down here in VK)
A safe and easy method to view sunspots is to project the sun’s image from a pair of binoculars or small telescope onto a sheet of white paper.
Taken using this method. The image tends to shake about a bit, looks better than it appears in photographs…
You have also the risk of burning rear lenses on the bins…
I think best solution is baader film… but be careful with small holes or scratches!
I doubt that there is much risk of that, in my younger days I used to do a daily record of the sun for the BAA Solar section, projecting an image from a 70mm refractor and had no damage to the eyepieces. I occasionally used the same technique with a homebrew 200mm reflector with no damage.
It should be noted that the candle-blackened glass was used by professional astronomers in the pre-photographic era so I doubt that there is much potential for harm, but I recommend as the best rough-and-ready method using polaroid glasses or photographic filter on a reflection in water, the reflection has already lost 90% of the light and heat and is polarised so rotating the filter will bring the remaining light to a comfortable level. It is also a great way of looking at haloes, sundogs etc.
Note that there was an M1 flare yesterday at 1338 and an M9 flare this morning at 0159, this monster is very active!
Brian
Here’s an article from “Sky & Telescope” about the safety of various types of solar filters: http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/solar-filter-safety/
It must be time for someone to say “Do not look at sun through camera with remaining good eye!”
Galileo said…
Andrew,
Is it really the sun who is upside down in VK? I thought it was people 
Cheers,
Guru - EA2IF
So what about the people half way in between? Are they lying on their sides, backs or fronts? 
Jim
In an equally mad frame of mind. 
…well, I always figured folk in England were leaning over one way, folk in Australia were leaning over the other, and folk in America were upside down…
Actually the image of the sun in an astronomical telescope is inverted, So astronomers can lean both ways!
Brian
A brilliant so the VKs are actually the right way up and it us up here in the NH that are upside down.
Jim
Of course the image in an astronomical telescope is both inverted and perverted. The normal diagonal used with the eyepiece corrects the inversion but not the perversion. You need an erect image diagonal to correct both.
Can I suggest you DO NOT search Google for “perverted image” or “erect image correction” unless you have a broad mind. Especially if you are using a computer where you work!