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Pawel Lancucki | profile | all galleries >> Pawel Lancucki - Amateur Astronomy >> Astronomy Trips and Events >> Transit of Venus Expedition - 6th June 2012 tree view | thumbnails | slideshow

Transit of Venus Expedition - 6th June 2012

Preparations for the Transit of Venus (ToV) of 2012 lasted for more than a year. An initial idea was to fly to a location where entire transit could be observed - US, Far East and Pacific excluded, we were considering Svalbard (Spitsbergen) beyond the North Polar Circle, where the sun would be visible all night, and less exotic locations like Astana and Ulan-Bator. Finally, lack of funds and other commitments made us to confine our plans to Poland.

Logistics planning covered preparation of a large "side by side" plate allowing me to mount two telescopes and other devices as well as careful configuring and testing all optical trains, exposure parameters etc. My optical trains were set bearing in mind the fact that the sun would be observed low - no higher than 22 degrees above horizon, hence I did not plan for long FL and very high resolution. For the prime white light configuration, I selected Takahashi FSQ85ED with TOA Extender 1,6x, Baader Astrofoil ND 3.8 filter and Canon 5D Mk II - giving EFL of around 720mm and sun image diameter around 1200 pixels. With ISO 200, the exposures would be extremely short, down to 1/8000s. For Ha images, I have picked FS60 with Extender-Q (EFL = 580mm) with Coronado SM60 and BF10 filter set and MS Lifecam. Finally, I decided to use my SONY video camera with 2x focal extender and another Baader Astrofil ND 5.0 filter. This allowed me to film a couple of shots during transit and full 30min coverage of the 3rd and 4th contact. Mount was my venerable AP400 GTO.

Initially we selected a specific location on a bank of large lake Zalew Zegrzynski north of Warsaw. This location was tested in very similar conditions a couple of years ago during a sunrise partial solar eclipse. Viewing over large body of water brought the benefit of a very stable seeing. We agreed with the property owner that he would admit us there in the evening, allowing full night for preparations, and would provide AC power.

Late May weather was dominated by long standing high pressure areas with generally nice blue skies - to the level that the forest service raised fire alerts and banned forest entry. As the June approached, weather become quite unstable, with low pressure areas passing over Poland every few days.

A large team of my astro buddies gathered in various locations in Warsaw.

Two days before transit our team decided to be mobile as the weather went really chaotic. Visit at the lake was cancelled on the 5th June.

Late in the evening we gathered in my friend Dominik's house - which is already north of Warsaw - cars fully loaded with our stuff. Around midnight, after lots and lots of inspecting of satellite images, public and aviation weather forecasts, and making best educated guesses, we decided to drive some 220km north.

It was a right decision. For the first 180km, we were rushing under completely overcast skies. It started to clear up as we approached city of Torun. After some more inspection of updated satellite images, we decided to drive more to the east and finally landed near Golub-Dobrzyn. We arrived at a spot - real middle of nowhere - one of my friends used to know the location as he frequently flies glider over this area. We escaped the clouds by maybe 20km, and they were moving further east. The next cloudy deck arriving from west would not threat us until noon.

We were there at 2:30 AM and this allowed us to see Polaris for few moments to polar align our mounts. It was just enough time to set our telescopes, connect all cabling and - voila - the sun raised @ 4:16 right from the horizon due to amazing transparency after the cold front passing. There was just one cloud low around the horizon, which allowed us for some scenic shots and than the sky was literally crystal clear for the rest of the transit. We got some nice shots, although the seeing was also not very favorable - probably due to the same cold front.

Michal even managed to upload some Ha images in near-life mode on his web pages using 3G mobile link ;-)

We packed @ 7:30 with some high level clouds just starting to arrive and I was back home unloading my car @ 11:00.

Needles to say the unlucky guys in Warsaw were overcast for entire transit duration...

Janusz Wiland - record of public observing in Warsaw

Images of the transit can be seen here:

Transit of Venus Images
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