Venus Transit – 5 June 2012

I took off work a little early and came home to set up my 12.5″ Dobsonian telescope in our front yard to view the Venus transit (where the planet Venus comes between the Earth and the Sun).  The last Venus transit was in 2004. The one before that was in 1882. The next one won’t be until 2117.

I used a stopped down white light filter affixed to the front of the scope. It was partly cloudy and very windy. I was paranoid about the wind possibly blowing the filter off the scope and allowing the focused sun to melt my eyeball so I put extra tape all around to secure it.

All of the following shots of the Sun were taken with my Canon Power Shot SD1100 IS digital camera hand held at the telescope lens. First Contact was right at 5:05 pm CDT. You can see the silhouette of Venus just starting to appear at the bottom left of the picture below. Several good sunspots were also visible.

Above shot was through a 26mm Plossl (59x). Next two shots were through a 9mm Televue (169x).

This next picture really doesn’t show it but I could definitely see a very thin band of light (called an aureole) around the edge of the planet beyond the limb of the Sun. About 3-4 minutes before 2nd contact (where the trailing edge of Venus comes inside the Sun’s limb) I could see two very faint glows along the back edge of the planet nearest the Sun’s limb and about 1-2 minutes before 2nd contact I could see a very thin streak of light all the way around. I will try to do a sketch or two of this phenomenon for posting at a later date.

I did not, however, see any “teardrop effect” (where the silhouette of Venus appears to still be connected to the Sun’s limb by a small thread following 2nd contact).

At this point, I could clearly see Venus “naked eye” through filter glasses. I tried to take some pictures through the filter glasses but they didn’t turn out very well.

The blackness of the silhouette of Venus seemed darker than the blackness surrounding the Sun. This must have been an illusion because earlier I had not been able to discern the outline of the planet before first contact.

Nearly two hours into the transit, the Sun started to set into the treetops in our backyard.

About 7:20 pm CDT. Last glimpse of beautiful Venus transiting the Sun for 105 years. I wonder what the world will be like then?