Transit of Venus

[ffutures]

A reminder that Venus transits the sun tonight / tomorrow. It'll be most visible from Eastern Europe, Alaska, etc., unfortunately it won't be visible from the UK until about the last hour, from dawn to about 6 AM BST.

I don't expect to be able to see it due to the crap weather etc., fortunately I had a really good view of the 2004 one, where the weather was perfect. I took some pictures using a 500mm lens with a sheet of silver mylar foil (the stuff used for emergency blankets etc.) over the end of the lens, worked pretty well. See icon. Unfortunately I had the camera held a little crooked for the last one, and now can't find the original non-digital photos to fix it.

All sorts of details etc. here

http://venustransit.nasa.gov/2012/transit/index.php
http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/OH/transit12.html

Comments

[uk-sef.livejournal.com]

Having gone to bed early (for me!), I was awake in plenty of time to see anything worth seeing but it was far too cloudy here, even if the sun had been able to get above the tree level in time (which I wasn't sure about).

Last time, I think I used my new double-glazing to repeatedly bounce the sun's image down to an intensity on the Nth echo/reflection which was possible to view safely. I didn't take any pictures though.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Too cloudy here too. Shame, but at least I did see it last time.