I captured the Venus Transit on June 6th 2012 in Ha narrowband telescope after the maximum transit but before 3rd contact, when a high flying bird (believed to be an eagle) was also captured flying across the Sun's disc. The dual transit was interesting.
Instead of the very popular false-colour painting (due to use of B/W cameras by many people), I choose a different path by using the colour version camera to show the more-close to-reality red colour of Ha as perceived by the human eye. The red tone colour is what you would usually see through the eyepiece when you look at a Ha telescope.
This image was taken by Lunt 152T/Ha and PointGrey 3.2M CMOS colour camera.
Taken at the Torrey Pines Glider port in La Jolla, California.
Shots range from 3 in the afternoon until sunset at 8.
Shot with a Canon Rebel XSi and a Tamron 18-270mm Di-II VC at 130mm, 1/15s, f/5.6, ISO 100 (for the background), with a 3-stop ND filter, 6-stop ND-filter, and a 1.5 stop circular polarizer stacked together.
Here is a sunset sequence of Venus transit images. I was attempting to get a juxtaposition of the Wisconsin Capitol building and the sun. That didn't quite work out but I ended up watching the sun set in front of a church, which was perhaps fitting since during the transit I found myself pondering the scale of the Earth in relation to the Sun and stars. I kept thinking: Ok, Venus is almost the exact same size as Earth so it would take me an entire day to fly across that tiny dot superimposed upon the sun and that is what a medium sized star is. Even when you're literally staring directly at it, it's still difficult to comprehend. However, I admit that somehow, seeing in person made it seem more real.
Launched on Feb. 11, 2010, the Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, is the most advanced spacecraft ever designed to study the sun. During its five-year mission, it will examine the sun's atmosphere, magnetic field and also provide a better understanding of the role the sun plays in Earth's atmospheric chemistry and climate. SDO provides images with resolution 8 times better than high-definition television and returns more than a terabyte of data each day.
On June 5 2012, SDO collected images of the rarest predictable solar event--the transit of Venus across the face of the sun. This event happens in pairs eight years apart that are separated from each other by 105 or 121 years. The last transit was in 2004 and the next will not happen until 2117.
The videos and images displayed here are constructed from several wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light and a portion of the visible spectrum. The red colored sun is the 304 angstrom ultraviolet, the golden colored sun is 171 angstrom, the magenta sun is 1700 angstrom, and the orange sun is filtered visible light. 304 and 171 show the atmosphere of the sun, which does not appear in the visible part of the spectrum.
Canon EOS 30D, ISO 320, 1/80s, f/13, through a filter cut out of a pair of eclipse glasses, attached with masking tape.
Why did they schedule this on a workday?
Just as the event got underway, I was pressed to go into the lab to do some tricky soldering for a trade show deadline, and all I could think about was getting outside to see the spectacle. After about an hour, I looked outside to see that the guy that asked me to do the soldering was outside enjoying the show! I was kinda pissed off, then joined in. Soon we had several people in the parking lot, including my boss, all of whom were passing around the eclipse glasses and various dark filters. My telephoto was the best thing we had, as there was at least a little magnification. I had my small telescope in the car, but not enough time to set it up.
The link to the full size image is: https://picasaweb.google.com/1002296994 ... 6871764642
After shooting the Venus transit all afternoon, I decided to drive to the top of the canyon for the final moment at sunset, and try to find something on the horizon to get "in" the sun. Low and behold I found a lone palm tree, perfect for capturing the experience from Los Angeles, CA.
I planned only to watch this as I didn't have a camera to photograph it (so I was thinking) due to a communication problem with my big digital outfit. Then I had a brainwave.
I was looking at the eclipse glasses I have (from the 1999 Western Australian annular eclipse - I tested them beforehand to make sure there were no holes by projecting the sun through on to a sheet of white paper) and had the sudden inspiration that they might be big enough to cover the camera lens of my baby camera. So with some fiddling and argy bargy, I have done it!
Below is my highly technical setup - note the rubber bands from the bunches of asparagus we had for breakfast on Sunday. When the lens is zoomed out - it's not in this shot because the battery was on the charger - the glasses sit flush against the lens.
Sunset of Venus in transit over the extinct volcanoes of the Rio Grande Rift, in Albuquerque, USA. Canon T1i, Tamron 18-270, unfiltered, handheld.
Guillermo Abramson
Taken with Canon 40D and Canon 200mm 2.8 telephoto with 2x extender. One shot out of over a hundred during observing event for neighbors at our home near Sylva, NC.
And a video I put together from 4,000 photos of the Transit of Venus from the beginning of Ingress through Sunset over the Rocky Mountains. An airplane also is captured in HD video transiting the solar disc along with our sister planet.
Expanded view of video capturing an airplane crossing the face of the Sun during the 2012 Transit of Venus. http://www.pcullyphoto.com
Re: Gallery: Venus Transit 2012
Posted: Wed Jun 13, 2012 6:34 am
by roycanas13
Hi, I'd like to share this picture I took of Venus Transit using projection with a "solar funnel". This picture was taken at San José de los Cabos, Baja California, México. Hope you like it!
