2012 Venus Transit Timelapse Monochrome Version

© Greg Gibbs. You may not use, replicate, manipulate, or modify this image without my written permission. All Rights Reserved.

5th and 6th of June 2012. The planet Venus makes it's way slowly across the face of the sun for the last time this century (as seen from Earth). The next Venus Transit will not occur until December 2117.

I was absolutely blessed with beautiful weather for this event. I was fully prepared to pack up my gear and head off to chase clear skies but two days out from the transit all the weather forecasts pointed to a fine and clear day for my home area. I decided to trust it and I invited family and friends around to witness it with me. Despite many casting doubts over my weather forecast due to the persistent rain in the days leading up to the event, I never backed down and the day dawned with not a cloud in sight. It remained that way until about one hour after the transit had finished when the clouds started to roll back through. In addition to the Coronado solar scope I also had an 8" F/6 Dobsonian Telescope setup with a white light solar filter so that family, friends and I could visually observe the transit at the same time as my camera was doing it's thing on the other scope.

This sequence spans a 6 hour period from second contact (left) at 8:30am (Australian EST) through to third contact (right) at 2:30pm. The shots in between were taken at half hour intervals.

Canon 60D
Baader Hyperion 8-24mm Zoom EP
H-alpha Coronado PST (Personal Solar Telescope)
NEQ6 Pro Goto Telescope Mount
50 images stacked together in Registax 6 for the faint prominences around the solar limb.
5 images stacked together for the surface detail of the sun and one of the Venus images.
Additional 12 images of Venus processed individually and then layer masked on top of the background image.

By far and away the longest time I have spent on a single astro image. 2 hours or so of setting up and packing away gear. 6 hours or so of imaging. A couple of hours of downloading, converting and backing up the 1500 odd images that I took on the day. 9 hours of image editing, and it STILL isn't finished! I'll add colour tomorrow.

Colour version.....