Eclipse

8 June 2024

Capturing the 2012 transit of Venus: a rare celestial event

claudio Eclipse, Solar Imaging, Solar System Eclipse, lucky imaging, planetary cameras, planetary imaging, Planets, solar imaging, solar system

Capturing the 2012 transit of Venus: a rare celestial event

Less than 1 minute

The transit of Venus happened on June 05, 2012. The planet appeared as a small, dark spot passing across the face of the Sun.

I was able to capture this celestial event from Rome (Italy) with my C8 SCT, a certified solar filter and a DSLR camera.

Transits of Venus are extremely rare events that occur in a cyclical pattern repeating every 243 years, with pairs of transits separated by 8 years, followed by long gaps of 121.5 years and 105.5 years before the next pair.

The next transit of Venus across the Sun will occur on December 11, 2117. After that, the following transit will take place on December 8, 2125.

That’s really a once in a lifetime event!

17 May 2022

A total lunar eclipse on a cloudy night

claudio Eclipse, Planets, Solar System, YouTube Eclipse, lucky imaging, Lunar eclipse, Moon, Planetary

A total lunar eclipse on a cloudy night

Less than 1 minute Minutes

After one entire week of clear sky (very rare for my location), the weather forecast was discouraging for the eclipse night (May 15-16, 2022).

Despite the clouds, I carefully planned my setup by chosing the telescope, the camera, and even planned a live streaming on YouTube.

As expected, I had a rough journey with the weather, but there were some clear breaks in the clouds around the time of the totality. I was able to capture a few frames between 10:55pm and 11:35pm with my 80mm APO refractor and a dedicated CMOS camera (ZWO ASI533MC).

It seemed a dark eclipse compared with the last one, maybe because of the eruption in the Tongan archipelago (Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha’apai) on 20 December 2021.

The images below are a stacked image from the beginning of the totality and an animated gif that shows the progress of the eclipse.

Lesson I learned last night: Never give up!

Date: 2022-05-15

Location: Richmond Hill (ON)

Scope: Explore Scientific ED80CF

Mount: Celestron AVX

Camera: ASI533MC PRO
Focuser: ZWO EAF

Software: FireCapture, AS!3 (30% images stacked from multiple 10 second videos), Registax, GIMP, PIPP (for the animated gif).

I was also live streaming the eclipse. Below you can see the YouTube link.

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Spoiler alert … planet season is coming soon, so stay tuned!

19 November 2021

The longest partial lunar eclipse in almost 600 years

claudio Eclipse, Planets, Solar System Eclipse, lucky imaging, Lunar eclipse, Moon, Planetary

The longest partial lunar eclipse in almost 600 years!

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This is THE picture!

The partial lunar eclipse occurred on November 19, 2021 at its maximum (97% of the Moon in Earth’s shadow).

97% of the Moon was covered by the Earth’s shadow at the peak of the eclipse (4:02 AM EST).

The entire eclipse duration was over 3 and a half hours and it made it the longest partial lunar eclipse in 580 years.

Date: 2021-11-19

Location: Richmond Hill (ON)

Scope: Explore Scientific ED80CF

Mount: Celestron CG-5

Camera: ASI533MC PRO + Starfield 1.0x Field Flattener
Focuser: ZWO EAF

Software: ASIStudio, AS!3 (30% images stacked from 1 minute video), Registax, GIMP