VENUS 2012

  I finally finished my long overdue video of Venus 2012.  I spent the first half of the year photographing the Evening Star during brilliant conjunctions with Jupiter, the Moon, the Pleiades, and then the Transit of Venus.  I had meant to continue through the summer and fall as Venus moved to the other side of the Sun, but I'm really not a morning person.  I've also moved on to bigger projects with my new telescope, which is much improved after I discovered, and clean out, a spider web in front of the secondary mirror.

  Whoops!

Sunset Transit Photo

Transit of Venus at Sunset over the Rocky Mountains

  Been working on a couple of photos now that I'm mostly done with my video of the transit.  This is one I really like of the Sun right before setting over the Rocky Mountains.  I was so happy that the sky stayed clear enough to see the Sun on the horizon.

  Also, this is in a pretty remarkable set of photos on the Astronomy Picture of the Day Venus Transit Gallery.

Upgrading Video

  I'm currently uploading all of my videos over to YouTube.  My Transit of Venus movie can now be seen in all its 1080p high def glory.

Science Friday Venus Transit Contest

My Transit of Venus photo on Science Friday Photo Contest

Science Friday Homepage

  I've been struggling through the intricacies of getting my videos to show up on Google search.  For how easy people keep saying this is, it really isn't.  I guess that's why web optimization is such a big business these days.  But, the root of my problem is that I just found out all my embedded Vimeo videos use the new header page that (finally) allows them to work on mobile devices such as the iPhone and iPad, but which amazingly make them invisible to the horde of Google spiders crawling the web for search mapping.  Google isn't too concerned with the plight of Vimeo users since they own YouTube, but I would think that Vimeo would be working harder at rectifying this.  But, the good news is that while following my video stats this morning to see where people are actually able to find my stuff, I saw a new blip on the radar coming from the Science Friday website!  Booyah!

and the Daily Camera

My photo in the Boulder Daily Camera

  I was also emailed today that my photo had been included in this Sunday's edition of the Daily Camera.  Awesome!

Bad Astronomy Blog

My videos on the Bad Astronomy Blog

  Phil Plait, a fellow Boulderite and author of Discover Magazine's Bad Astronomy Blog has posted on my videos!  He also sent me a message:

I tweeted a link, and you may be amused to know Mia Farrow liked it!twitter.com/MiaFarrow/status/211845841722417154

TRANSIT of VENUS

 The Transit of Venus. I Finally finished putting together my video of the transit on June 5, 2012. It was a lot of work aligning a lot of images that were especially troublesome because of the 25mph winds during the transit. I got some good footage though, including video of an airplane flying across the Sun during the event. I hope you enjoy it. I had a lot of fun planning and executing this shoot.

Transit of Venus and an Airplane

  It's going to take me a while to get all the footage sorted, but I thought this short little video was worth posting right away.  Pretty cool.

Preparing for the Transit - Pt II

Binocular Solar Projection

  Just finished making a solar projector for the upcoming Transit of Venus.  I've had two days of glorious blue skies to practice with all of the hardware, software, and thinking up a few varying ways of capturing the event.  Hopefully it will be clear skies on the 5th and I'll be able to shoot it from right here in Boulder.