During the last week of August, 2015, many parts of Alberta were under a thick blanket of smoke from the forest fires in the U.S. Pacific Northwest.
Although miserable for night sky photography, the thick blanket of smoke offered a built-in ‘filter’ for photographing the sun, and I managed to capture this photo which shows sun spot cluster 2403 on the bottom right – just between the cloud layers.
Of course these solar storms gave us some incredible opportunities for the Northern Lights, but with the smoky air, it made for some difficult times to try to get some photos of them. Maybe next time!