Cheshire Cat smile

  I'm not the only one who thinks of the Cheshire Cat when they see a crescent moon like this...right??

OH except this is a crescent sun!

Welcome to the rest of our solar eclipse pictures, folks.

 Finally.

These were the experimental pictures we took with my film SLR camera hooked up to our telescope with a special filter. It was old film and we'd never taken pictures with a telescope before. But we took two rolls anyway and hoped for the best.

 And although they didn't turn out nearly as good as James' did, they were still pretty darn cool! Check out those sun spots!!

Remember this time lapse series I took with my handheld DSLR with half a pair of eclipse glasses taped over the lens? Well, now I can compare them to this:

AWESOMENESSSSSSSSSSS

We had some light leaking in somehow at the end there (or maybe it was just the film gone bad) but still, not too shabby! I really want to take pictures of the moon next.

Then, last Tuesday, we got to witness Venus transit the sun. It happened 8 years ago, but now the next time it will happen is in the year 2117. So unless you're planning on living till then, this was your last chance to see it.

Mark was at work all day and I don't know how to work the telescope, but I still had my eclipse glasses and ghetto camera setup, so I kept popping outside to take a look. For the first hour, I couldn't see anything, but that was because I was misinformed on when we'd be able to see it happening in our area. Eventually I just started taking pictures because I couldn't tell if anything was going on or not. The first picture I snapped turned out like this:

 Even though I couldn't see it with the naked eye, I had captured the moment of transition of ingress to second contact. Probably couldn't have timed that better if I'd tried!

Over the next couple of hours. I kept taking pictures as well as I could in between all the interruptions of the kids. Venus looked a lot tinier than I had expected. It's neat that you usually only see it looking bright like a star, but here it was like a shadow.

 I made sure to get the kids out for a look (although Luke didn't quite get what was going on...). Madelyn's friend Melissa was there playing so she got to see it too.

 Finally Mark got home. I'm so glad he didn't miss it.

 Of course he had to get out the telescope then. We could see lots of sunspots, that looked every bit as big as Venus did. If you want your mind blown, pick up June's issue of National Geographic. Its main article is about the sun. It shows solar flares that could fit 3 Earths side by side.

A little while later when I went out to take a picture, the sun had dropped below my view. My dad had just come by for a visit so I hauled everyone in my car up the hill from our house, hoping we could still see it.

 Some clouds had moved in over the sun, but you could still see Venus peeking out. It was moody looking and cool.

 Then the sun set below the mountains. If we'd been up at Cedar Breaks again at 10,000 feet, we could have watched for longer.

 Still, it was a pretty special day.