On June 06 2012, a rare celestial event occured, when the planet Venus made a transit across Sun.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_transit
From India, it was visible from the sunrise till around 11 AM, and I had my lens kit ready to shoot the Sun. It is normally difficult to reduce the amount of sunlight coming into the lens, that too to a level to see the Venus making a transit. I used minimum aperture, maximum shutter speed and tried all other filtering options to limit the light. The Sun started coming out at 5:50 AM and when I had the first shot, it was almost dark with a big orange cirlcle in the center. But then, the sun rise was amazing – within minutes, the intensity of the light increased to such an extent that I could not spot the Venus after 3 minutes of my first shot.
I got some photos and put them into my lap to filter out my best, and sent one to BBC. To my surprise, it was featured in the website. Below is the one.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-18336717
Later on that day, around 7:30 AM, I went to the Birla Planetorium to have a detailed look of this transit. We were provided sunglasses to witness the event, and we were insisted that this would occur again only after 105 years. So, it’s good, the last opportunity to view this spectacle in my lifetime was best utilised.
On this note, the great thing about studying and learning about these events is, it makes us feel that we are none in this vast universe.
Karthikeyan Ramachandran 