“There’s a little black spot on the sun today…” Now that I have the Police running through your head, let me share an image I took of the Transit of Venus. Recently, we had the eclipse, which is a rare sight indeed, but so few people heard of or watched the Transit of Venus, which was exactly like the eclipse, but Venus is so small, that instead of blocking out the sun, it was simply a dot passing through. The amazing thing about this sight is that it is the last time in our lifetime it will happen. It will be over one hundred years before this happens again.
To capture this image, I had looked into getting a special filter for my camera, as photographing it directly, I heard, could fry my sensor. But the filters were sold out, and cost in the neighborhood of $300. So the day of the Transit, we were at my Mother and Father in Law’s house. They had a pair of those special glasses you can use to look at the sun/eclipse/transit safely. I had a little bokeh kit in my bag, which when used, covers the lens almost completely, leaving a little spot for a filter of sorts to shape your bokeh if you use the little shapes provided. I didn’t use the shapes, but covered my lens so that only the center was open and I then put the sunglasses over that whole. I metered, focused on the hyperfocal distance, and photographed as well as I could. I think I would have done better had I thought to bring my tripod, but I’ll take what I got.
So here is the Transit of Venus. The little black spot in the top right hand corner of the sun is Venus.
