Venus Transits the Sun

[Doug L]

I had taken the day off work in case I had to travel to get clear skies, but as luck would have it, I was able to watch the transit from my balcony till the sun disappeared behind clouds about 10 minutes before sunset. My photo does not do justice to what the event looked like visually - so much more detail was visible looking through the scopes. Three layers were used in this image. One was taken with a Canon XT attached to a 1000mm (focal length) F9.8 filtered (Baader solarfilm - white light) refractor, and two layers - one optimized for surface detail & one for prominences (flame-like appendages) - from a single shot taken with a Nikon Coolpix 4300 camera shooting afocally through the eyepiece on a PST (Hydrogen-Alpha filtered scope). Note: These hydrogen-alpha solar filters are different from photographic HA filters. Don't use those to look at the sun! One more comment about the transit. I've heard many newcasters refer to how small Venus looked when compared to the size of the sun. Venus, though, is about halfway between the earth and sun. It would be a lot smaller if it were actually next to the sun.

[Marko]

Very cool DougL - it's very visually interesting!

[AntZ]

Fantastic. The red outer ring is cool. Did you manage to get a other shots as it traversed the sun.

[Doug L]

... Did you manage to get a other shots ...

Yup. Here's a few others. The first one's with the 4 inch refractor and Baader filter (original purplish white colour has been changed to a yellow tone). The second shot is two layers from a single image with the Hydrogen Alpha filtered scope.

[AntZ]

These are cool images too. I didn't even bother to try. As I didn't have the equipment, and figured I just watch it on the internet.

[Runmonty]

These are really cool. Please excuse my ignorance, but what are the other spots closer to the centre?

[Matt K.]

Interesting, for sure. Amazing what one has to do to take images of the sun. Well done, and now you have given us some ideas about those filters .. much appreciated ...

[Doug L]

... Amazing what one has to do to take images of the sun...

Actually, if one purchases a relatively inexpensive solar filter to cover a 300mm - 500mm lens, anyone can take snapshots of large sunspots. But yes, it can get more complicated, and expensive, if you have to purchase a telescope or more specialized filter systems. Most of the highest resolution shots of the sun, moon and planets these days are shot using webcams instead of regular cameras on the scopes. Processing packages then take the sharpest video frames in the shooting sequence and stack them together into a single image.