Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Transit of Venus

On June 5th, Venus will transit the sun; it will take about six hours for it to "cross" the sun from earth's perspective. This will apparently be the last such transit any of us will live to see. The next one won't be until 2117. If you'd like more information about it, or would like to see a live webcast of it, you can go to: NASA\'s Venus transit web page

Joy,
Lynn

I don't get to see it from my country. Guess I'll only have the Internet to view it (if it works at that time).

malu

Well, considering that looking at the sun is a good way to become blind, I would say that the web cast is the best way for most people to observe the transit. I highly doubt that Venus will occlude enough of the sun to result in a noticeable darkening on the ground or to be seen via a pinhole viewer. (Unlike a lunar eclipse.)

Joy,
Lynn

My poor husband took the day off work especially, all set to go with his brand new telescope. But it looks as though it's going to be rain all the way on Wednesday. He's terribly disappointed.

He has a special sun screen, btw, which enables him to view the sun through the telescope safely. I don't think it cost that much.

LabRat

This should be cool. After the last eclipse deal (and being tired of using the pinhole thing to see it) my friend went and bought 25 pairs of the special viewing glasses so next time we're over for any sort of phenomenon he's prepared. :p

The last time around it was all visible from the UK, and I took some pictures using a long lens with a sheet of silver mylar foil (the stuff used for emergency blankets etc.) over the end of the lens, worked pretty well.



Unfortunately I had the camera held a little crooked for the last one.

It's going to mostly happen before dawn this time, viewed from the UK the sun rises at about 5 AM BST and the transit ends at 6 AM. Given I'm in the middle of London with a lot of buildings in the way, I'm not expecting to see it.

Well, I just saw this thread, and wondered. Where is TOC? After all, she is an astronomy geek. (No offense...) I haven't seen her here in ages.

It was overcast where I am so I missed the transit. On the plus side, I did get to see the annular eclipse a couple of weeks ago, which was awesome. I last exchanged emails with Ann about six months ago. She had been slowly withdrawing off the boards for some time prior to that due partially to health reasons. I thought of her when I was watching the eclipse (even though I knew it couldn't be seen in Sweden). I miss her terribly; she was always so generous with her time and her comments on stories.

We got to see it from Park City, Utah. It started at a little after 4 p.m. Mountain time. It was well covered in the local media and ended well after the sun set behind the large mountains we are in the midst of. We could see it easily from our timeshare condo west facing windows. Some clouds passed over and actually helped to find the dot in the bright sphere. We used two panes of welder's glass to view. The report on the TV was clearer. Venus is tiny compared to the sun. The best view was shown on TV with a special telescope that made the sun red and the corona invisible. The black dot was clear then. It didn't moved rapidly.

We saw the lunar eclipse nicely from our back yard at home and had a lot of views of it. It definitely darkened the yard at full coverage. Venus is too tiny to do that.

Sue, thanks for the word on TOC. I wondered what had happened to her. She always gave me great feedback. The last posts I saw were on Crown Princess Victoria's marriage in Sweden. The Crown Princess just recently had her first child, a girl, who will one day be a reigning Queen of Sweden. I was hoping TOC might pop in to comment on that.
r/
Artemis

Saw this yesterday- it was pretty awesome. The glasses worked out really well even though it was a little overcast, it cleared up just in time.

Thanks, Sue.

Sometimes it isn't enough to be in the right area, you have to be lucky. Case in point, a few years ago there was a total eclipse of the sun, in Britain only a small part of Cornwall (the SW tip of Britain) would see totality, everywhere else was going to get a partial eclipse.

So about a hundred thousand people drove there and (inevitably) the weather near the coast was cloudy and nobody saw much. Meanwhile we had perfect weather and 90% or so totality in London, and we ended up having a nice eclipse party in the garden.

Uh, depends on how long you look, really. Once, there was a partial eclipse around here, and I couldn't resist peeking at the sun every once in a while - with absolutely no protection. Sure, I didn't see much for some long moments afterwards, but it wasn't permanent. Might be because I didn't stare at the sun like forever, but only took a quick peek every once in a while. (However, I do not recommend doing this.)

There are ways to do it safely - for telescopes you need a mylar sun filter, but it's possible to improvise with a couple of layers of mylar foil as I did, though quality isn't as good. Put it over the front lens, not the eyepiece. Dark glass eyepiece filters are NOT a good idea, they sometimes overheat and crack. I think the first eclipse picture I took, in the seventies, was through a couple of bits of polaroid plastic held at right angles to absorb almost all the light.