2012 Venus Transit Observation from Mauna Kea

Equipment

• Celestron 14 Edge HD telescope, full aperture Baader solar film, photographic grade (ND 3.8)
• Canon 550D DSLR camera, shooting at ~2 fps in RAW mode
• Andor Zyla camera, shooting at 25 fps full frame, 16 bit resolution, rolling shutter

Observing Equipment

Observing was done from the parking lot at the foot of the Subaru telescope dome

The telescope is shielded from wind by cars and a large tarp

Telescope and cameras.

Telescope focal plane: a beam splitter is used to share light between the DSLR camera and the Zyla camera.

Transit images - DSLR camera

Single DSLR frame during ingress.

Single DSLR frame during ingress. Same image as above, with different brightness scale. The light refracted by Venus' atmosphere is clearly visible

Single DSLR frame during ingress. Both bright and dark features are shown, as two different brightness scales are used for the bright and faint parts of the image.

Transit images - CMOS camera

Single CMOS frame during ingress (no processing). Such images were acquired at 25fps for the whole transit duration.

Current project status

• Measure the light refracted by Venus' atmosphere during ingress as a function of time and color (4 colors available)
• Measure small-scale features on the Sun surface using Venus disk as a moving mask