Venus Transit from Adelaide - composite and gif added

[swannies1983 (Dan)]

Wow, what a day! I didn't think I was going to be able to make it because my 1 week old daughter was a night owl last night. Ended up only having about 3.5 hrs of sleep.

Set the alarm for 7am. Woke up , but soon turned to as it was completely overcast. A look at the satellite picture showed it was going to be cloudy for several hours.

So I started watching the event online, with an eye on the weather. It wasn't until about 11.30 before some blue sky appeared. I rushed outside to set up and started snapping away. It was relatively clear and I was fortunate that the sky was pretty much clear for contact 3 and 4. Another 30 mins and I would have missed them as the clouds rolled in.

Here's my first image. It's a stack of 8 images

Details
Scope: 8" Newt (off axis ~50mm aperture)
Camera: unmodded 400D
Camera settings: 1/100secs at ISO100

[swannies1983 (Dan)]

Here's my attempt at producing a composite image of the transit. I was only able to start imaging from about 11.30am.

[swannies1983 (Dan)]

Made a gif showing 3rd and 4th contact. You can see the black drop effect.

http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/5222/transit.gif

WARNING: ~2.4MB

[Paul Haese]

That composite is quite nice. If only we had clear skies on the day.

[swannies1983 (Dan)]

Thanks Paul. This was my first attempt at solar imaging. I initially only planned to project the image using my 60mm refractor (as I did in 2004) but Matthew Lovell said he had some solar film in stock.

Yep, I won't be looking at Skippy Weather anytime soon

[swannies1983 (Dan)]

Close up of black drop effect.