Transit of Venus across the Sun

[smac]

This shot was taken with my Nikon D7000 w/ Tamron 200-500mm telephoto lens at the long end.

Venus is about 26 million miles from earth in this shot, as near as it will ever get. It is about 67,000,000 miles from the Sun.

The other smaller dots are sunspots. Magnetic storms on the surface. Although they look dark, each one is 20 times brighter than the full moon. They only look dark because they are relatively cooler than the surrounding surface.

Cheers,
Steve

EXIF Summary: 1/500s f/6.3 ISO100 500mm (35mm eq:750mm)

[corkpix]

Excellent shot! Did you use an ND filter or a special solar filter?

[Raghu]

Excellent capture, and thanks for posting - yours seems to be the only post of this transit. I don't have a telephoto or a solar filter, so I tried with a welder's glass - the result was an awful blurry green sun with Venus appearing as a fuzzy dot, I decided not to post it. The only satisfaction was having witnessed the transit.
Raghu

[smac]

Originally Posted by corkpix

Excellent shot! Did you use an ND filter or a special solar filter?

Yes, I constructed a Solar filter using a small cardboard box just a little bigger than my lens hood. I cut two holes on opporsite sides of the box the size of my lens hood. I covered one end with .5m Baadar ND solar film. I also made a similar filter for my 8 inch telescope and the result were good but it was not as easy shooting pictures with the telescope as the camera. The camera would auto-focus and it was much easier viewing the subject on the camera. I had to manually focus the telescope and in the bright sun that was a challenge.
Here is one of the shots through the telescope.


I shot the event in RAW and did a little PP in iPhoto where I enhanced the color by sliding the tint to the yellow side and then increased the saturation. Otherwise the sun would have been white because of the Neutral Density of the solar filter.

Thanks for the compliment,

Steve

[smac]

Originally Posted by Raghu

Excellent capture, and thanks for posting - yours seems to be the only post of this transit. I don't have a telephoto or a solar filter, so I tried with a welder's glass - the result was an awful blurry green sun with Venus appearing as a fuzzy dot, I decided not to post it. The only satisfaction was having witnessed the transit.
Raghu

Thank you very much. I appreciate you commenting.

Steve

[pj1974]

Thanks Steve

Great to see your shot of this special Venus across the face of the sun episode, seeing as I will probably not be around to catch the next one (in 105 years time!)

Thanks for sharing your technique, very interesting indeed... and glad you did it the safe way! Always appreciate your posts.

Paul

[smac]

Thanks Paul. I appreciate your comments very much.

Cheers, Steve

[banksy]

Great capture Steve and glad you were able to get the results after all your construction work!

[selvin]

SMAC,

Absolutely gorgeous. Congrats.
The transit happened the same day I was leaving on a flight from HNL to NYC so I had only a few minutes to take a shot. The following shows my effort:
http://www.pbase.com/selvin/image/143830894

Given it was handheld and taken using one of the inexpensive filters you get from museums, it was a good effort.
1/160 sec, ISO800, 330mm SIGMA, F5.6, Sony A700
Again, beautiful work!

Selvin

[smac]

Originally Posted by selvin

SMAC,

Absolutely gorgeous. Congrats.
The transit happened the same day I was leaving on a flight from HNL to NYC so I had only a few minutes to take a shot. The following shows my effort:
http://www.pbase.com/selvin/image/143830894

Given it was handheld and taken using one of the inexpensive filters you get from museums, it was a good effort.
1/160 sec, ISO800, 330mm SIGMA, F5.6, Sony A700
Again, beautiful work!

Selvin

Selvin, that result IS quite nice given the challenging circumstance. Very well done. I have always believed in the adage that necessity is mother of invention. You executed that quite nicely with your shot.

Mahalo,

Steve