Venus Transit Photo

Here's a photo of this morning's transit of Venus as viewed from my location outside Washington DC. I was feeling pretty crummy (flu) so I just set up the scope in the living room!

We had light overcast here, but it broke up for a bit and I managed to get a couple of shots.

Equipment:
- 80mm short tube apochromatic refractor
- Objective solar filter
- 40mm long eye-relief eyepiece
- Canon S400 "Elph" digital camera

Cheers,
Bob

No pic, just the dreaded red x

*** Edit ***

Now I see it, very nice /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/bowdown.gif

Hi X-Ray:
Glad you liked it. What was the weather in London? We only got the last bit of the transit here on the US East Coast.

Cheers,
Bob

Very cool, Bob, thank you.

Weather was great in London today, hottest day of the year.

Didn't get any good pics though, only have one telescope tripod and my dad had taken it with the bigger scope. I was left trying to balance a 3.5" refractor (home-made by my dad) on boxes and cushions, I gave up pretty quick and used the binoculars are piece of card method instead.

btw, Bob, how do you use your camera with the telecope, do you just but the camera up to the eyepiece?

I shot that through the eyepiece (hence the need for long eye-relief!). I've got an adapter that attaches the camera to the eyepiece,which is handy, but essentially it's just pointed through it.

If your camera has an LCD pre-view it's relatively easy to hand hold the camera and shoot through-the-eyepiece daylight photos. For nighttime you'll probably need to buy or bodge a mount. For anything but the moon, you'll probably need some kind of tracking drive on the scope.



Cheers,
Bob

Very nice picture! Unfortunately it's been cloudy and rainy all day, so no viewing of Venus for me.

[ QUOTE ]
BobVA said:
I shot that through the eyepiece (hence the need for long eye-relief!). I've got an adapter that attaches the camera to the eyepiece,which is handy, but essentially it's just pointed through it.

If your camera has an LCD pre-view it's relatively easy to hand hold the camera and shoot through-the-eyepiece daylight photos. For nighttime you'll probably need to buy or bodge a mount. For anything but the moon, you'll probably need some kind of tracking drive on the scope.



Cheers,
Bob

[/ QUOTE ]

Considering my dad has built parts for the biggest telescopes in the world, its pretty embarassing how primitive our astronomy equipment is and how infrequently it gets used.

Great shot, Bob. I was able to catch a brief glimpse right at sunrise in Wisconsin. No camera but a 120mm refractor with solar filter and 25mm eyepiece gave a nice view.

Class!

Very nice photograph!!!
What else is there to say... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

[ QUOTE ]
BobVA said:
Here's a photo of this morning's transit of Venus as viewed from my location outside Washington DC. I was feeling pretty crummy (flu) so I just set up the scope in the living room!

We had light overcast here, but it broke up for a bit and I managed to get a couple of shots.

Equipment:
- 80mm short tube apochromatic refractor
- 40mm long eye-relief eyepiece
- Canon S400 "Elph" digital camera

Cheers,
Bob


[/ QUOTE ]


Here in Westchester there were only occasional breaks in the clouds... until it was just ending, of course.

By chance, I was using the Canon S410 twin of yours (new! nice!), with a Celestron C8 and I forget what sort of eyepiece. Trouble lining up the camera and the eyepiece led to the artsy reflections in the image. I went outdoors, though. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

One of the Ergonomists at work had a fist full of glasses for looking directly at the sun and I got to see it. He also had a pair of binoculars through which the Sun and Venus was stunningly crisp almost like the Bob's photo above.

It was awesome!

Nice photos

Al

[ QUOTE ]
Size15s said:
One of the Ergonomists at work had a fist full of glasses for looking directly at the sun and I got to see it. He also had a pair of binoculars through which the Sun and Venus was stunningly crisp almost like the Bob's photo above.

It was awesome!

Nice photos

Al

[/ QUOTE ]

Just to ad to what Al said, it was hard to pull the eyepiece and replace it the one with the camera. The view was just so crisp and almost three-dimensional. I really got the sense I was looking a an entire planet. Probably just an illusion, but I found it a lot more visually interesting than I thought I would. If I had it to do over (eight years! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon23.gif) I'd set up separate photographic and visual scopes.

Cheers,
Bob

Mind if I use your picture for Windows wallpaper?

All yours (and any other CPF members)! Glad to finally pay you back for all the info I've gotten from your site.

If anybody redistributes it, please mail me a Jets22 custom ARC

Cheers,
Bob

Thank you!!! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
Your picture is now my Windows desktop image, replacing the Enterprise (from the original Star Trek) orbiting some planet.

Photo is locked now? Rehost it, maybe?