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Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Transit of Venus 2012


By now, most everyone's heard about the 2012 transit of Venus.  Like most astronomical events, I got clouded out for a large piece. Then of course, the sun set before it was even a third over.  But still, it was fun to watch with my little one.  I have an old telescope called an Edmund Astroscan, and I set it up so that the eyepiece pointed sideways, then focussed the image on a piece of white paper I taped to a bit of cardboard.  The technique is called eyepiece projection, and it's an easy way to let a group of people see the Sun safely.  Venus is the round dot at the upper left side.  Other blotches are sunspots.

F Number8.0
Lens IDLUMIX G VARIO 14-45mm F3.5-5.6
Focal Length45.0 mm (35 mm equivalent: 90.0 mm)
Exposure Time1/640
Exposure ProgramManual
ISO125
Exposure Compensation0
FlashOff, Did not fire


This was the very beginning; I saw a break in the clouds and grabbed the telescope and got a shot off as quickly as I could.

F Number8.0
Lens IDLUMIX G VARIO 14-45mm F3.5-5.6
Focal Length39.0 mm (35 mm equivalent: 78.0 mm)
Exposure Time1/2000
Exposure ProgramManual
ISO100
Exposure Compensation0
FlashOff, Did not fire


The setup looks like this.  The telescope is the tube sticking out of the red bag.  I used the lens case to hold up the cardboard and the eyepiece is pointing at that.  This way, it's virtually impossible for someone to accidentally peek into the eyepiece and get hurt.

I'm off at a ham radio contest - post is on auto-pilot.

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