Venus Tranist 2012

Click on each image for a larger view

The US Midwest received some really nice weather for the Venus transit.  I am one tired fellow, probably from too much Sun, but it is a great feeling to have seen this once in a lifetime event.

I set up my Orion Maksutov-Newtonian telescope last night so that I could polar align the mount.  Aligning the telescope mount to the north celestial pole allows the the mount to track the stars and the sun.  I placed my Canon Xti in place of the eyepiece and hooked up a USB cord to the camera and my laptop.  I put my laptop inside of a box to block the glare from the sun then took hundreds of images.  The first two image above are from the 1000mm focal length telescope.

About 7:30 p.m. the trees in my yard started blocking the sun, so I took the camera off the telescope, grabbed my 300mm lens and tripod and headed to a better location.  I drove West of Cleveland, MO into Kansas and found some farmland with a good horizon.  After setting up my tripod and camera, I realized that the farmer across the street was on his combine cutting and trashing wheat creating a huge amount of dust.  It was too late for me to move, so I just stuck it out taking the third image above.