See the Transit of Venus Live Here

dlgoff

That is cool.

Drakkith

Nope. Do you think using the eyepiece instead of the lens would have worked better?

jtbell

These pics were taken at 6:24 and 7:08 PM EDT (22:24 and 23:08 UT).

When I was a kid many years ago, my parents bought me a four- or five-volume set of books covering various historical topics in science and math. One chapter was about the transits of Venus. It started with the story of Jeremiah Horrocks, an English astronomer whose "day job" was as parson in a small village. In 1639, he refined Kepler's calculations of the orbit of Venus and predicted the transit which took place less than four weeks later. (Kepler had predicted the transit of 1631 which apparently nobody actually saw, but thought 1639 would be a near-miss.) Horrocks and one of his correspondents, William Crabtree, were the only two people to witness the transit of 1639.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_of_Venus,_1639

The following transits were in 1761, 1769, 1874, 1882, 2004 and 2012. The next one will be in 2117, so if you missed the two most recent ones, you're probably out of luck.

When I was a kid, 2004 and 2012 seemed a loooong time away!

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Ivan92

Bah I had some clear shots...unfortunately the pictures wouldn't come out good. I enjoyed a good day outside with my sis...she loved it! x) My method was to binoculars and I projected the image to a black cloth. I used my guitar stand as a tripod for it. haha

Borek

I have a beautiful blue sky NOW. But it started to clean about two hours ago, long after transit ended.

Borg

Too late now but, I meant to use the main scope without its eyepiece.

Drakkith

No way, it's way to big and I don't want to damage it. I also tried using an 80mm refractor, but it was horribly bright on the paper plate I was projecting on, so I couldn't use it either.

GregJ

I too missed the entire thing Borek. Clouds and rain the whole time, although I may have also missed it due to it being at sunrise in the UK.

Borek

I was ready to wait, I am an owl.

Borg

I've done it with my 8 inch Newtonian without any filters and didn't have a problem. Now that I think about it, it was a partial eclipse (~20% covered). I guess that I'll have to try it against the full sun sometime.

Drakkith

I've always been told not to use a telescope that isn't filtered somehow, as the Sun could damage the mirrors.

BobG

We were able to see it in Colorado Springs most of the time (some clouds that sometimes blocked the Sun).

Projecting it through a telescope onto photographic paper worked great. I didn't have a strong enough filter for my camera to get decent pictures, though. The filters I have worked great for the solar eclipse, but just didn't filter out enough sunlight to pick up Venus.

Thinking about it, I should have just taken a picture of the projection.

And as to the warning about pointing an unfiltered telescope at the Sun, it's true to a certain extent. You wouldn't want to point your telescope at the Sun constantly for the entire eclipse or transit. Best is a filter in front of the opening of the telescope so you don't have to worry about heat accumulating, but short views with an unfiltered telescope are fine.