Something a bit different from brides – A planet and a Star!

So being a bit of amateur Astronomer there was no way I was going to miss the June 5th Venus transit of the Sun. The last time anyone alive now would ever see it. The weather forecast for the Pacific Northwest looked pretty grim, so i didn’t mess about. Booked myself onto the first flight to Phoenix Arizona. I then gatecrashed the Public viewing event that the local Astronomy society were running for the event. Had a great time. and despite United Airlines losing half my telescope I still managed to get some decent images using my Nikon 3Ds and some other scopes that were in use on the day.

Some piccies I took on the day 🙂

First up this is my D3s plugged into Lunt 75s (I think?) Hydrogen-Alpha telescope. These scopes have the finest optics on the planet, which are required to fine tune the frequencies allowed through the filter so you can see the solar surface detail and the prominances (flares) on the edge.

This is a bit of a crappy image as they go. The scope wasn’t properly focussed and I overexposed the image a tad, but not bad for a quick ‘shot in the dark’ attempt.

Next up was a more simpler attempt with the camera plugged into an 8″ SCT at prime focus with a simple white light solar filter bolted on the end. These don’t show surface detail apart from sun spots…ohh and planets getting in the way.

This was taken at the ‘2nd-Contact’ point when Venus on ingress had just fully cleared the edge of the sun.

And then just a few other images from the event….