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Transit of Venus 3 / How I photograph the Sun


camera_conjurer

PROJECTING THE SUN THROUGH A TELESCOPE. I've been photographing the Sun since I was thirteen years old. I started doing it to photograph the sunspots. Some reflecting telescopes, ( The lenses in refractors get too hot. DON'T do this with a refracting telescope. ) come with a solar projection screen right in the box. Edmund Scientific used to sell one. But all you need to do is use a board, or even a wall, and don't use your eye to point the telescope into the Sun. When there's shade all the way around the telescope tube, it's pointing at the Sun. ( Understand ? ) The farther away you move the screen, the larger the image will be. I've blown the sun up to an image over 20 feet in diameter, and you can really see the sunspots. It's amazing. Then just photograph the screen. By the way, it's startling that there were absolutely NO spots on the Sun for this. Very unusual. -Noah TWO IMPORTANT NOTES. FIRST: THE SUNLIGHT COMING OUT OF THE EYEPIECE CAN BLIND YOU IN AN INSTANT. TREAT THE EYEPIECE LIKE A LOADED GUN AS YOU SET UP. AND DON'T ACCIDENTALLY BLIND A FRIEND STANDING NEARBY. SECOND: BEAR IN MIND THE HEAT OF THE SUN CAN AFFECT THE OPTICS OF THE TELESCOPE. DON'T LEAVE A TELESCOPE POINTING AT THE SUN UNATTENDED, AND DON'T PUT YOUR EYE UP TO THE EYEPIECE IF IT HASN'T HAD THE TIME TO COOL OFF.


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Performing Arts

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The image of the Sun can be projected through a fairly inexpensive

reflecting telescope. Then that image can be photographed with a

conventional camera. Just be careful ! Don't blind anyone and bear in

mind that the telescope can get ruined by the heat.

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the yellow-orange disc is the projected image of the sun and the black dot in it's upper left quadrant is venus.

 

I like the detailed information you give on obtaining solar images, but this one is a bit flat. You'd get beter results if you block off as much ambient light as possible, similar to darkening the room for a slide show. Now how you manage to do that in the field, I don't really know :) but it would certainly give better contrast if you can manage it.

 

just noticed the 4x5 related images in your folder, surprised you don't use large format with movements to correct the convergence in the projected image.

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This is NOT pinhole photography. This is a photo of a projection of the image of the Sun through a telescope involving lenses and mirrors. It's the same technique many solar observatories use to photograph the Sun.

 

And, in my opinion, pinhole photography is more difficult and mystical than 'conventional' photography.

 

Not to mention that the event displayed here is so very special.

 

Venus regularly passes between Earth and the Sun, but usually it is slightly above or below our line of site. Not for 122 years has Venus transited the Sun. And because the first Venusian

transit was only predicted in the 1600s, by Johannes Kepler, only five have been recorded, in 1639, 1761, 1769 and 1874 and 1882. There is some strange mathematical sense to the years

between Venusian transits. The circumstances repeat in this manner: 8 years, 1211/2 years, 8 years, 1051/2 years.

 

So no one alive has seen this before.

 

Early astronomers hoped the transits would allow them to pin down distances from Earth to Venus and to the Sun, but efforts proved disappointing.

 

The next transit is on June 6, 2012.

 

I'm just showing you one way to take a picture of it.

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