Transit of Venus 2

Nick Bailey used a solar filter for this spectacular shot of the Venus transit; although the sun was very 'quiet' for this event, near the centre you can see a small group of sunspots. Nick writes:

The BC&F solar filter is really good and, as you'll see from the pics, works well.

Mine is 70mm as I use it off axis on my 200mm Newtonian with BC&F's focus-master. I'm sure you can get larger diameters that fit the larger ETX range from Meade.

Incidently, my Newtonian is mounted on a Vixen GP mount that I converted to Goto with Meade DS motors and AutoStar. Works very well, and didn't cost and arm and leg. Tracked the Sun throughout the transit with only minor adjustment, mainly caused by rough alignment only.

EXIF data produced by EXIFinfo

VenusTransitJun04b/jpg Taken :  10:53:39am Tue 8 Jun 2004 Camera :  C4040Z Size :  2272 x 1704 pixels Filesize :  450 Kbytes

shooting information Exposure :  1/500 sec at ISO100 f :  3.20 Focal length :  7.30mm Bias :  0 Program :  Normal Metering :  Pattern Flash :  Not fired Orientation :  x0,y0=left,top Compression :  2

olympus information JPEG quality :  SQ Special mode :  Normal Macro :  Off Digital zoom :  1 Software :  SX55 PictureInfo :  [pictureInfo] Resolution=1 [Camera Info] Type=SX552 Camera ID :  OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA