Lorenzo Comolli's Astronomy HomePage

A transit of a planet in front of the Sun is a very rare event, especially when the planet is Venus. I've observed both Transits of Venus that where possible during my life (2004 and 2012). I've also observed a Transit of Mercury in 2003, but thanks to the digital technologies now available, I strongly desired to observe the 2016 transit.

Unfortunately the weather from my home (Tradate, near Milan) was hopeless at least in a radius of 400 km. So I packed my instrumentation and drove toward South, stopping on the coast of Tuscany, where I was lucky to find clear skyes. This adventure was a joint venture with Emmanuele Sordini, starting from his home in Genova.

I used two main setup: TEC140 apo refractor with Canon 60D at direct focus, and Coronado 60 H-alpha telescope with ASI 174MM video camera.
With the first I've shot about 1000 shots in raw format, total size 17 GB.
With the latter I've captured 40 video in SER format, for a total size of 300 GB.
A very big "thanks" to Giorgio for borrowing the Coronado 60 and ASI 174MM !!!

Processing was quite hard due to the large file sizes and needed computer processing power, especially for producing the timelapse video.

I hope you'll enjoy the results below. Let me know any feedback: comolli@libero.it .

H-alpha composite.

	The complete story of the adventure ONLY IN ITALIAN LANGUAGE. The adventure started early in the morning, with a stormy weather outside. I needed to travel to Central Italy to get clear skyes, driving for more than 400 km. Read the complete adventure story... (click on the map at left)
	Transit Images Click on the image at left to look at the still images in white light, h-alpha and compositions.
	Time-lapse A timelapse shows in a few seconds all the long event, with the details of the images shown above.. Options: Youtube - MP4 H264
	Daytime images Click on the image at left to open the album with some shot taken during the observations.