amateur astronomer captures breathtaking image of the sun..

An amateur astronomer has captured a breathtaking image of the sun, tracking its progress between the summer and winter solstices using a pinhole camera made from and old tin tea caddy. Professor Greg Parker set the camera up in his garden and exposed the film from longest day to shortest day to get the maximum spread of the sun's path.

Over six months the 57-year-old captured the black and white image using an observatory he built at the end of his garden, in the New Forest.The professor of electronics at Southampton University set the camera up on June 21 to December 21 at his home in Brockenhurst, Hants.The pinhole image 'burns' itself into the paper over the six months of exposure time meaning you don't need to develop the photographic paper.After removing the photographic paper from the pinhole camera it's essential to quickly get it into a digital scanner to 'lift' the image off the paper.