Recent report showed how amateur astronomer Alan Friedman has managed to develop powerful images of the Sun from his own backyard in Buffalo, NY. It was made possible with the help of a webcam and a small telescope.

In order to record the images, a Hydrogen Alpha filter was attached to the front end of the small telescope. As far as camera is concerned, it was told to be an industrial webcam, which can stream images at a speed of 15 to 120 frames a second.

''Images by an amateur or a citizen astronomer are compelling because they get you off a couch to do something, whereas Hubble Space Telescope images, because they are so spectacular, they push you into a couch in awe", he said, during a Ted talk in his home town.

It was somewhere in the mid 1990s that he started capturing images of the sun, the moon and the stars, but major change occurred in 2003 when he started solar imaging. The images captured by him have already caught attention around the world.

Among all, his best picture is of the sun, tinted orange for Halloween, titled as Not the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, which has got viral.