My Venus transit experience – South Island, New Zealand
The neighbours must have thought I was a bit odd; for the last few weeks, each of my days off work I’d been at the end of the garden pointing a telescope with a bunch of tinfoil taped to it up into the bright sunny sky. Getting ready for the Venus transit, I had high hopes for clear skies. In fact every practice day was absolutely perfect conditions. Plus I knew if it happened to be cloudy, I could drive somewhere else.
Then a week ago my car died, doh! Repairing it would cost more than what the car was worth. So I REALLY had to hope for clear skies here! Then possible reports of snow came in, double doh!! Waking up today, I looked outside and saw nothing but white. Snow covering the ground, snow falling from the sky, and white clouds no doubt full of more snow up above. Crap!!!
Many roads around the South Island here in New Zealand were closed, but I found a traffic camera online that showed blue sky several hours south of where I live. Being able to borrow Mum’s car, after calling to check that road was in fact open, I piled everything into the car and set off. My Meade 8” LX200 scope lay across the back seat.
Now Mum’s car is rather old. It doesn’t like to start on cold days, it leaks water, and there’s a fine art to using the accelerator. I packed plenty of emergency supplies however, should I get stranded in a blizzard. Braving the slushy roads, I head South with nothing but that patch of blue sky I saw on a traffic camera giving me hope.
After a few hours it was starting to get late in the day, but at last I saw patches of blue sky! I drove further, often looking behind me to try and see if the Sun was still hidden by cloud or not. When it was in a gap, I very quickly setup my telescope on the edge of a dirt road that had more than its fair share of horse poo on the ground.
There was no time for alignment, I just had to attach the camera and push my scope around to quickly locate the sun. Thankfully I located it faster than in any of my practice sessions, and I fired off three shots with my Canon 5D Mark II. I didn’t even have time to adjust the focus, I just hoped it was still in focus from my last session. There would be time to check that in a minute. Or so I thought.
After just two or so minutes, thicker clouds took the sun away once again. More and more clouds came in after that, and the sun never shone through again. I was so lucky I stopped when I did!
Was two or three minutes worth the journey? Totally!! Also before the Sun went back into hiding, I held the filter up to my eyes and with no telescope, could see Venus. As I was driving home I thought more about what I’d seen. To see an entire planet as more than just a twinkle in the night sky with my naked eye (plus filter!) is something no one can repeat for over 100 years. I’m so lucky to have seen it (plus a dose of “slightly crazy determination” helped) and even luckier to have one of only a three shots come out as well as it did…
ISO 1600, 1/1600th Shutter Speed, Baader Solar Film
(Click image for larger - Note: Looks more orange than yellow in non-color managed web browsers)
Thanks!!!! It's fantastic to be able to share it all too.
You're right there, the memories will stay with me forever. And seeing such a thing really gave me much more of a sense of scale to our solar system.
I'm sure I'll try and take better sun shots from time to time as well, to capture those sun spots. Perhaps when I figure out how to actually work stacking programs, lol.
I loved your story telling capabilities! I was holding my breath and felt for you in your car there... yay!
(Might be something worthwhile taking up on cloudy nights: story telling. )
Thanks! And by the way, the image of Saturn in your user pic there looks fantastic. Here's hoping I can catch that one day
This is my solar filter. I put three different types of filter film in there (Baader for viewing, Baader for photography only and one seymour solar film) and I can just open one up at a time. The Seymour film was the darkest, and shutter speeds were too slow for photography. The Baader film was good, but the photography version of it was, as the name suggests, ideal because I could use even an faster shutter speed.