Preparing for the Venus Transit

The Sun
The Sun on 13May2012
Time to start preparing the gear for Venus Transit! This means dismantling the astrophotography rig in the garage and reconfiguring for solar work. Taking the the AT6RC telescope off and remounting the 90mm APO. The APO has just the right focal length to produce a nicely sized solar image on an APC-C sized sensor, such as the sensor in the Canon 60D.

First up? just setup the ‘scope in the driveway and take a few photos of the Sun. Just checking the photographic setup, the necessary parts and pieces. Nothing misplaced? Where did I store the solar filter? A nice focus on the camera? Perhaps take some nice photos of the large sunspots that current grace the surface of the Sun while I am set up. I hope we have some nice spots during the transit, they make focusing so much easier!

Next step is to get autoguiding operational, this will be a seven hour event and I really do not want to manually guide for the entire duration. Particularly with a telescope that was setup in the daytime and is not properly polar aligned.

A couple other steps remain in the preparation. Automate the camera to take photos at a regular interval. Insure I can provide a good video feed to the computer sending out the webcast. I do have a few more weeks to accomplish this. I am certain those weeks with speed by surprisingly quickly. Time to get ready!

Author: Andrew

An electrical engineer, amateur astronomer, and diver, living and working on the island of Hawaiʻi.

2 thoughts on “Preparing for the Venus Transit”

  1. The Keck Observatory Facebook page led me here. I’d love to watch your webcast of the transit (I’ll only be able to catch the first half of it here on the west coast). Will it be through this site or another?

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