EEK! The weather for New Zealand is not looking good at all for tomorrow... snow / sleet / cloud all over the place. Here it's gonna be a high of 5 degrees with "Rain, turning to snow. Bitterly cold southerlies.". Yet Thursday is sunny and fine. Doh! Today there was some clear sky towards mountains near here, but I'll have to hope for the same tomorrow.
Recently I figured out how to get the scope to track the sun, so that's a big help. Also I learned a bit more about how the microfocuser works (I can see it physically retracts or extends the tube).
Wasn't able to figure out why the bottom of the image gets darker though. It doesn't look like that at all in Live View, only when I actually see the photo it took on the screen. Reducing the size of the filter hole didn't seem to help. Hmm.
Quite happy with the focus on this particular shot (YAY!!!!) but it also demonstrates how the bottom is darker. Since that's where Venus will be, I'm hoping to figure that out. As a last resort though, I can try and adjust to compensate for it in Adobe Lightroom.
1/4000th Shutter Speed / ISO 640 / 5D Mark II
http://img.acianetmedia.com/i/XWZby.jpg
100% Crops:
http://img.acianetmedia.com/i/pPAtU.jpg
http://img.acianetmedia.com/i/YzVNQ.jpg