Venus Transit June 8, 2004 by Jeff Ball

Dale and Thom Iwancio (from the APML list) joined me for the Venus transit at Myrtle Beach, SC. We camped and imaged from Huntington Beach State Park which is located south of Myrtle near Murrell's inlet. I chose the park for various reasons. Primarily I had confidence that the beach would have a great opportunity for a sunrise shot. I also had just acquired a Wimberly Gimbal mount for the Traveler. The Venus transit gave me a great reason to pick up the mount. It is one I have wanted for quite sometime. One of the main reasons for the mount is to expand the utilization of the Traveler to landscape and wildlife photography. Huntington Beach is known for the birding and alligator photographic opportunities. What a great opportunity for wildlife and astrophotography in the same trip! I will soon post a review of the Traveler/Wimberly and some wildlife/landscape photos with the setup.

My imaging goal for the Venus transit was to capture an unfiltered image with some interesting foreground or lighting conditions. I had originally planned to explore opportunities at Greenbank Observatory in West Virginia, but my fears for bad weather and/or ground fog caused me to look elsewhere. I was familiar with Huntington Beach and decided that this would provide me with the opportunity to image the sun in the haze of the ocean air and perhaps provide an interesting landscape image. Venus in the landscape images is simply an isolated black dot outlined against the solar disk. The middle image below shows a more traditional white light image with increased magnification.

Thom Iwancio (right) and Jeff Ball on the beach at Huntington Beach State Park. Thom had an assortment of
Nikon cameras and lenses as well as a C8. I imaged with the Canon 10D and 70-200mm f2.8 lens with 2x
Canon converter and the Traveler with Pentax 67 camera.

The conditions were really ideal for the event. I had hoped for some horizon haze and/or clouds to allow unfiltered exposures of the Sun with Venus silhouetted against the fiery ball. We had a very brief window for unfiltered exposures lasting approximately 3 minutes. I had hoped for a little longer window, but the advantage to the sun clearing the haze permitted early imaging with solar filters in place.

I took 6 exposures each with film and digital in the unfiltered window timeframe. The print film really handled the dynamic range better than the digital CMOS chip, even with digital blending techniques with the CMOS images.

After the unfiltered window closed, we had about one hour to enjoy the show and image with filters in place. We had a handful of early morning beach walkers who found our setups intriguing and wandered over for some views through the viewfinder.

My guess is that reactions from seasoned amateur astronomers were quite different from the public. I know that my first reaction to seeing Venus through the viewfinder was "it is huge." My benchmark was Mercury during its transit in 1999. The public tends to say "its that little dot over there on the right side." I think the public observers really did enjoy the moment, especially after some historical context was added. It was a beautiful site at a great location. The print from the Traveler/Pentax combination meets my expectations. It does require a large print in order to bring enough scale to the Sun and Venus. The Fuji NPS has a "cool" look to the setting that I really enjoy. Looks like the Gulf of Mexico for 2012 for me! I hope you enjoy the images and clear skies to you.

The Traveler and Wimberly Gimbal mount on Gitzo 1340 tripod provided a great
deal of imaging fun over the 2 days at the park. Wildlife and landscape
images will be posted in the coming days.

To view the Venus transit images, please click on the large thumbnails in the table below. Thanks a for visiting and I hope you enjoy the images. It was a fantastic event!

I used the Canon 10D as a metering device and visualization device.	After the sunrise unfiltered imaging, the Baader filter was placed on the Traveler with AP barlow and Canon 10D	The Penax 67 offered ample room for framing and 600mm focal length, enough to provide a nice contrasty Venus as well as other interesting elements in the picture. The web format does not do the image scale justice.