Venus Transit 2012... Since the Venus Transit wont happen again for another 105 years, I made sure I was in a prime position to photograph it yesterday. A "Transit" is one of the most rare astronomical events due to the fact that orbits are tilted. It happens when either of the planets with smaller orbital paths than the Earth align and from our view here on the Earth, the planet appears and crosses the solar disk of the Sun. The Venus Transit happens in pairs 8 years apart, followed by a gap of over a century before the next pair. Only 8 Venus Transits (including 2012) have occurred since the invention of the telescope and only 4 since the invention of the camera. Here is the transit as the Sun sets over the horizon in Chicago Il. FYI: I had someone message me about "dust" on my sensor and I wanted to clear up any confusion. There are two spots on the solar disk in this photo. The large one is venus, and the smaller one is sunspot AR1494, which is caused by intense magnetic activity and harbors energy for C-class solar flares...

gallery pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 >

< 5 of 53 >

Lock and Dam 14 Sunrise

Epic sunrise before a day of Eagle watching on the Mississippi River @ Lock and Dam 14 in Davenport, Iowa. The Eagles were scattered all over on this day so there weren't many action shots to be had, but witnessing this epic sunrise definitely made it worth the trip for sure!!!

Sunrise at the Rocks Remixed....

I have been trying a few new techniques in the digital darkroom the past couple of weeks to so I decided to take a look into the archives and try a re-edit of one of my older shoots to see if I could get them looking a bit better. Im really happy with the look and feel of this shot and its a look that I could never quite get with the skills I had at the time.

English Barley Field Sunset...

Ok first off, photographing the English countryside is a royal PITA. All of the roads have these thorny bushes that extend like 10 feet high, so when you reach the top of a hill and expect to see a nice open landscape, thats just not the case 9 times out of 10. Im assuming these bushes are here for 3 reasons, first, they act as sound dampening for the roads to keep noise pollution to a minimum. Secondly, the keep cars from running off the road, and lastly, they keep people for trespassing on their land and stealing their crops. I totally understand the concept, but it makes it really difficult for taking pictures of the rolling English countryside from the roadside. Anyways, after 3 days of complete overcast on our trek through southwestern England, the sky had opened up a bit and I had a feeling that sunset would be a good one. In England at this time of year, sunset isnt till around 9:45pm, and since you are pretty far north, it last's forever and doesn't get totally dark till around 11:30pm. Armed with this knowledge and fully realizing that I was in a completely foreign country and had no idea where to go, I headed out at about 6pm. I started driving around, thinking I had plenty of time to find a workable composition that had a north western view so I could see the sunset. Boy was I wrong! I drove around for the next 3 hours, desperately searching for a view that I liked as the time slowly slipped away. At around 9:20, I started getting worried that I wasnt going to find a location I was satisfied with and time was starting to slip away. The one route that I was fully confident about took me to three military roads that all had signs saying, "Authorized Military Personnel only, Deadly force is authorized to all trespassers" or something along those lines. Definitely not going to chance that, lol. I continued on and continued west down motorway M26, thinking that all of this effort was going to be for not. It was just then that I past an opening in the thick bushes in the side of the road and this barley field came into view. I quickly grabbed the e-brake on the little stick shift Peugeot 207 rental car, skidded around while downshifting to first, then quickly turned around and parked the grass next to the opening. I grabbed my camera and hopped the fence into this field of barley, setup my tripod and relaxed a bit while I got to witness this amazing sunset.

Stonehenge...

Ever since I was a little boy, I have always found Stonehenge fascinating and I have to say that visiting there last summer on the return trip from Africa was absolutely incredible. These stones are massive in person and its just crazy to imagine what the Druids went through to move each of these stones more than 25 miles to build this amazing structure. There's all sorts of crazy theories about why Stonehenge was built and what purposes it served and since the Druids didnt keep any written records, we will never know for sure. Some have suggested that Stonehenge was a place of healing while others have suggested it was part of a religious ritual landscape. Whatever religious, mystical or spiritual elements were central to Stonehenge, its design includes a celestial observatory function, which might have allowed prediction of eclipse, solstice, equinox and other celestial events important to a contemporary religion.

Venus Transit 2012...

Since the Venus Transit wont happen again for another 105 years, I made sure I was in a prime position to photograph it yesterday. A "Transit" is one of the most rare astronomical events due to the fact that orbits are tilted. It happens when either of the planets with smaller orbital paths than the Earth align and from our view here on the Earth, the planet appears and crosses the solar disk of the Sun. The Venus Transit happens in pairs 8 years apart, followed by a gap of over a century before the next pair. Only 8 Venus Transits (including 2012) have occurred since the invention of the telescope and only 4 since the invention of the camera. Here is the transit as the Sun sets over the horizon in Chicago Il.

FYI: I had someone message me about "dust" on my sensor and I wanted to clear up any confusion. There are two spots on the solar disk in this photo. The large one is venus, and the smaller one is sunspot AR1494, which is caused by intense magnetic activity and harbors energy for C-class solar flares...

Soloar Eclipse over Chicago 2012...

A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, thereby totally or partially obscuring the image of the Sun for a viewer on Earth. An annular solar eclipse occurs when the Moon's apparent diameter is smaller than the Sun, causing the Sun to look like an annulus (ring), blocking most of the Sun's light. The ring of fire was only visible through the lower southwestern states, here in we only could see half of the eclipse, just before sunset....

www.jamielinkphotography.com

Sunrise in the Clouds...

On my last trip out to Colorado, I booked a 6am flight out of Midway so that I arrived in Denver with Plenty of time to make it up into the mountains to shoot for sunset. Going through security these days with tons of camera gear is pretty comical to say the least. You have to take out every last piece of gear and put them in the blue tubs, which meant that I myself took up 8 bins between my gear, laptop, and other carry on items. I think everyone behind me was pretty annoyed but it was beyond my control. I hadn't planned on taking my camera out until I got to Denver, but after take-off I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to watch this amazing sunrise out my window from about 30,000ft and I couldn't resist a quick photo op.

Voted Photo of the Day by Capture My Chicago: http://www.capturemychicago.com/photos/2012/5/17

Sunset after the Solar Eclipse...

After the solar eclipse passed behind the horizon, the sky was filled with this amazing glow of color!!! It was a breathtaking couple of hours and a sunset that I will never forget!!!

Pink Maroon Bells Sunrise

A fiery pink glow fills the sky over Maroon Bells at Sunrise. The Maroon Bells are two peaks just outside of Aspen, Colorado deep in the Elk Mountains. A US Forest Service sign on the access trail refers to these mountains as "The Deadly Bells" and warns would-be climbers of "downsloping, loose, rotten and unstable" rock that "kills without warning". Dozens of people have lost their lives climbing these two peaks, which both qualify as 14ers. The two peaks are Maroon Peak at 14,156 feet, which is the 27th highest peak in Colorado, and North Maroon Peak, at 14,014 feet, which is the 50th highest.

Venus Transit 2012...

Since the Venus Transit wont happen again for another 105 years, I made sure I was in a prime position to photograph it yesterday. A "Transit" is one of the most rare astronomical events due to the fact that orbits are tilted. It happens when either of the planets with smaller orbital paths than the Earth align and from our view here on the Earth, the planet appears and crosses the solar disk of the Sun. The Venus Transit happens in pairs 8 years apart, followed by a gap of over a century before the next pair. Only 8 Venus Transits (including 2012) have occurred since the invention of the telescope and only 4 since the invention of the camera. Here is the transit as the Sun sets over the horizon in Chicago Il.

FYI: I had someone message me about "dust" on my sensor and I wanted to clear up any confusion. There are two spots on the solar disk in this photo. The large one is venus, and the smaller one is sunspot AR1494, which is caused by intense magnetic activity and harbors energy for C-class solar flares...

Share photo: links, forums, blogs |

Keywords: sunset venus transit 2012 venus transit chicago commercial outdoor photography rare astronomical events chicago venus transit photos usa venus transit 2012 canon astronomical photos

gallery pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 >

< 5 of 53 >

Comments

Available Feeds

Gallery Photos:

Atom |

RSS