Transit of Venus

Over the past 5 weeks or so I've been able to experiment with some really cool celestial events. First there was the Supermoon, then the Annular Eclipse, now the Transit of Venus!! I've never really followed these kind of events, only by accident, but now that I have a small capability to capture them, it's really quite fun! It also helps being in Arizona where we usually don't have to worry too much about cloud cover!!

So for this rare cosmic event I was going to use my homemade solar filter from the eclipse viewing. I was also working both of my jobs so I only had a small window of opportunity...or did I?  The first couple of shots I set up on the parking structure at Sky Harbor Internat'l. I then decided to take my gear with me to work with the hope that I could capture a few shots just before sunset.

There she is!! 1/1000th exposure.

This one was using 1/1500th exposure

I managed to only snap one photo, about 30 minutes before sunset. Notice the new position of Venus compared to the first two photos.

I had to adjust the exposure down to 1/350th for this one.

My flight came in and I raced around the tarmac as fast as a tug will allow hoping to beat the sunset. I had a couple of minutes to grab my gear and set things up once again.

Kind of a cool shot, but not what I wanted. A couple of minutes too late! :(

If you're around, the next Transit of Venus will be in 2117!! Here are a few parting shots from the tarmac.

Downtown Phoenix

The 'new' tower.