Venus Transit

[Dschur]

Okay everyone that wants to do something that can't be done again in your lifetime the Venus Transit is coming up in two weeks. So if you have your set up for observing the sun you can see or photograph this too...

A transit of Venus across the Sun takes place when the planet Venus passes directly between the Sun and Earth, becoming visible against (and hence obscuring a small portion of) the solar disk. During a transit, Venus can be seen from Earth as a small black disk moving across the face of the Sun. The duration of such transits is usually measured in hours (the transit of 2004 lasted six hours). A transit is similar to a solar eclipse by the Moon. While the diameter of Venus is almost four times that of the Moon, Venus appears smaller, and travels more slowly across the face of the Sun, because it is much farther away from Earth. Observations of transits of Venus helped scientists use the principle of parallax to calculate the distance between the Sun and the Earth.

Transits of Venus are among the rarest of predictable astronomical phenomena. They occur in a pattern that repeats every 243 years, with pairs of transits eight years apart separated by long gaps of 121.5 years and 105.5 years. The periodicity is a reflection of the fact that the orbital periods of Earth and Venus are close to 8:13 and 243:395 commensurabilities.
The next transit of Venus will be on 5 and 6 June 2012, and it will be the last Venus transit this century. The prior transit took place on 8 June 2004.

[desertgirl]

I am planning on it --

[nonot]

I presume someone needs special equipment to view this? How can someone stare at the sun?

[Dschur]

They same type of equipment you use to view a solar eclipse... welders glasses, solar filters or other safe means of looking at the sun... for us will be at just before sunset and sunset...

[autumnstars]

Now to think of a good place to go watch this.
Maybe somewhere a bit cooler...

[chumley]

I just saw the coolest photo of the transit and thought I'd share. Via NASA.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hinod ... inode.html

[The_Eagle]

Wow..

[Dschur]

As soon as the images are processed I will post a few of the transit...

[juliachaos]

I only had a 200mm zoom lens on a camera with 6mp, so here's the pixellated result of what I was able to capture

[Dschur]

Here is a link to our pictures on our website..
http://schursastrophotography.com/solar ... 60512.html

[autumnstars]

Very nice!
Thanks for sharing

[desertgirl]

Great images -- Thanks for sharing!