"Historic Transit of Venus"

On
this day I witnessed Venus as it completed its transit across the
face of the sun. In the days leading up to this I had all but written this
event off because of several factors including:
•
Lack of a clear eastern horizon at my home
•
Constant threats of low clouds or haze on the horizon
•
Timing. It it was a very short event from sunrise to the end from my location
•
Filtering. It is hard to get solar filters to work good for the sun
that low on the horizon. I learned from the June 10, 2002 partial
solar eclipse that with the sun so low on the horizon that there is a time
when the sun is too dim for solar filtering and yet too bright for unfiltered
observing.
Well I managed to solve most of these problems. To solve the problem of my eastern horizon I traveled to our local cemetary (one that had been hit by an F2 tornado on May 24 with hundreds of headstones being knocked over...but fixed now)and photographed from there. There were some clouds but the sun shone through making the images more picturesque in my opinion than if they were not present. I arrived with plenty of time to spare and didn't miss anything. Venus was still completely on the face of the sun when I first picked it up. As far as filtering is concerned I shot the first 10 minutes or so through a TeleVue Pronto Telescope unfiltered allowing some foreground trees to be included and then finished up with a Baader Solar Filter which really dimmed the sun causing me to use upwards around 1/8 second and 1/15 second exposures. It was a neat sight.
Instrument: TeleVue Pronto (32mm Plossl Eyepiece
+ 2X Barlow) BAADER SOLAR FILTER
Camera: Nikon CoolPix 995
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Web Site Owner Dan Bush
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D. Bush
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