I'm planning a local mini-expedition to observe the 2012 Transit of Venus on Wednesday morning. As part of the kit-prep I rattled off a few frames this afternoon using the stripped-down gear that I'll be taking, here's a sample of the test-results showing a fair spread of sunspots and active regions (mouseover the pic for the labelled version):
Sunspots and Active Regions 04/06/2012.
Nikon D50 with 2x Powermate on the C80ED-R.
Baader Planetarium AstroSolar™ Safety Film (neutral density 5.0).
Hand-held shot, 1/100s exposure @ ISO200.
Of course the weather forecast for Wednesday morning is crap so all this prep could be a waste of time, but as as the next transit will be in 2117 this'll be my last chance to see such an event for real.
THE SMALL(ish) PRINT... (updated 23/07/2016)
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I read about this on the BBC and thought about you 🙂 Hope the weather clears by sunrise *crosses fingers*
Cheers, Kev. It looks like rain followed by more rain but I'll give it a shot anyway. The summer wouldn't be proper without a wet night-hike anyway.
Must go, need to be away within the hour.
Well, it didn't rain but it was cloudy right up to the end of the transit. Did manage to catch it through some thin cloud on a few frames but they'll take a lot of processing. If they're passable I'll post them later.
@BG! - A valiant effort tho', Stef. What we need are some 15,000 foot volcanoes like them Merikans 🙂
There's loads of stunning imagery on the web for those of us that missed it or don't have the means. I love this kind of thing. Truly.
Cheers, Kev.
Yes, there's plenty of much better stuff out there, such as this and this.
Those Yanks only have a few 15,000 foot volcanoes and they're second-hand Russian cast-offs
Not sure that I'd have wanted to haul my kit up any of them.