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Threads - Venus Transit Update, Sunny Transit Day, Sic Transit Day

On 6/6/2004, Ian Musgrave wrote:

If you have been hiding under a rock, you will be unaware that the historic transit of Venus is on this Tuesday, 8 June at approximately 2.30 pm. See
http://home.mira.net/~reynella/skywatch/trans04.htm
for the times that it will be visible from your location, plus other useful information. If I have time I'll re-organise the photography links so they are explicitly visible.

For those clouded out there is live web cams at Perth Observatory
http://www.wa.gov.au/perthobs/Venus/venus.html
NASA's sunearth site
http://sunearthday.nasa.gov
and lots more links at space weather
http://spaceweather.com

The ISS will cross the face of the sun during the transit at several locations, check out to see if you can see the transit and the ISS at the same time at
http://iss-transit.sourceforge.net/IssVenusTransit.html

You can currently see Venus in the SOHO LASCO 3C images
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime-images.html

Justin McGuire added:

There's also a webcast from CSIRO Headquarters in Canberra www.transit.csiro.au

Kevin Phyland said:

Urgent info required!!

I have made a viewing tube as shown on your website but the image of the Sun produced is so small (~ 1cm diameter) that it is practically useless!!

What am I doing wrong here?

My tube is a 600mm long postal tube of 85mm diameter.

Margaret Ruwoldt responded:

I'd try moving the flat surface further away, and possibly taping two tubes together, end to end. This page...
http://www.exploratorium.edu/eclipse/how.html
...reckons the distance between pinhole and 'projection' surface is crucial.

Pertinent extract:

There are safe ways to view the sun. The simplest requires only a long box (at least 6 feet long), a piece of aluminum foil, a pin, and a sheet of white paper. The length of the box is important. The longer the box, the bigger the pinhole image. To find the size of the image, multiply the length of the box by the number 0.00873. For a box that is 1 meter long, the image will be 0.00873 meters (or 8.77 mm) in diameter. If your box is 5 feet (60 inches) long, your solar image will be 60 x 0.00873 = 0.52 inches in diameter. If you want to round things off, the size of the image is about 1/100th the length of the box. If you can't find a long box or tube, you can tape together two or more boxes to make a longer one. In the illustrations below, we found that taping together two triangular UPS shipping tubes works well. Of course, if you do this, you must cut out the cardboard at the ends of the tube in the middle!

Good luck :-)

BTW, if any Melbournians are in the vicinity of Carlton/Parkville, there will be viewing equipment set up behind the Physics building with webcast coverage in a nearby lecture theatre in case of inclement weather. There's also a free lecture at 5.30 pm. All welcome. Details here:
http://kiosk.ph.unimelb.edu.au/geeklog/public_html/article.php?story=2004060410005120

cheers--*

mlr in Melbourne with blue skies and occasional fluffy clouds

and:

Add the phrase "at Melbourne University" anywhere it makes sense in the preceding paragraph.

Campus map is here as a PDF
http://www.pb.unimelb.edu.au/whereis.php3?subcat=8

Physics building 192 is at grid reference E12.

Peter Macinnis wrote:

For an explanation:

See http://www.websterworld.com/temp/venus.html

Alternatively, go to www.websterworld.com.au and look for the link to animations on the right, the transit of Venus link in the middle of the screen, or "What's New", just above, as there are others that can be tried out for free (at the moment).

Ray noted:

I believe that some places (like Australia's East) you will need to be ready and pretty quick with taking any images, since sunset might need you to be in geostationary orbit to get the altitude for observation after the Sun has set ;)

Maybe Kosciusko is high enough?

Robin posted:

In Sydney, at least. The radar looks good, so fingers crossed, touch wood. I have my viewing spot organised, thanks to the Physics Dept, and came in to work early so I can skive off and see first contact.

Excited now. I hope everyone's photography endeavours work out and that we get to see the results soon.

Peter Adderley responded:

> That site at csiro at 1354 8 June SA time was saying the transit will occur
> in 1 days 8 hours and 11 minutes
>
> hmmm
>
> Cheers
>
> David from a just clouded Tumby Bay

And nothing else seemed to work on that site either. What a shame.

Although I was hoping to get down to West Lindfield I had a function this morning and so decided to get what I could with the equipment I had, knowing that the results were going to be far less than prestigious. They were. The astigmatism from the welding filter really wrecked my efforts. I even tried a polycarbonate filter which was much thinner, but that led to astigmatism AND fuzziness. So here's what I've got so far. Please understand that the blur is caused by the filter and not movement.

I guess, despite our awesome access to backyard technology, I still just wasn't prepared.

http://www.acay.com.au/~adderley/transit/

The transit event is setting just now in Sydney, at 4:45, so I'm hoping to see better results later in the evening from more westerly observers.

Alan Emmerson wrote:

Nice sunny start to the day in Brisbane. Got a good projected sun image through reversed 20 X 80 binoculars. At 3:06 pm clouds passed in front of sun!!!!

Neverthe less managed to see several very clear images as clouds moved . Pleased with ourselves.

Couldn't get anything useful from CSIRO Canberra or Perth observatory.

No live TV.

Kirsten wrote:

Rain, Rain, go away today.... it pissed down in Perth :-((((((

But I did get to see a lovely rainbow with my sons at about 4pm - a full 180deg arc - well, as close as we could get with a house on one side. :-) There was even a partial second ring at one point.

Of course 2 sets of the digital camera's batteries were flat and I couldn't find the spare third set.... oh well, there will be more rainbows soon no doubt. We are disappointed at missing out on the real event though.

However, WA needs the rain so we shouldn't complain too loudly.

>>A crowd of about 200 people came along with some going home to collect their cameras to take photos of what was on show.

Tristan wrote:

My 1st Astronomical observation where the hype was worth it.

I took my Monocular (like binocular but only one tube) and with the sun focused onto a card behind it I got a sharp image about 6 inches diameter on the cardboard with Venus as a small sharp black spot moving across starting from where the minute hand of a watch is at 25min past the hour and heading toward the 40 minutes past position before it was sunset.

I took some digital pictures of it I was so impressed. If any other people here took digital snaps perhaps we can compare and swap images ( is it possible to create attachments to posts on this list). I can't wait to get a telescope. When is the next big astronomical event anyone? cheers

Margaret Ruwoldt added:

> Clear sunny sky and a great view. Yay for Sydney.

Melbourne, too :-) And the Astronomical Society of Victoria did us proud: they set up about a dozen telescopes and other viewing devices and gathered quite the crowd of interested nerds.

Some of the telescopes had hand-made mylar (and other) filters; others
had the expensive, commercial variety. Several were set up for viewing
shadows cast on a piece of cardboard or on a portable projector screen.

All the ASV volunteers were happy to chat and to hold small children up so they could look through eyepieces. The crowd was a broad variety of people, young and old: parents and kids, shop assistants who'd ducked out for a 10-minute smoko, quite a few grey-haired enthusiasts... Queues formed quietly and politely, and people chatted and laughed as they waited their turn.

Through some of the telescopes we were able to see sunspots as well as Venus. There were two largeish dark spots at the centre of the Sun, which one of the ASV blokes said were approximately the same diameter as Earth. They looked much smaller than Venus nevertheless--an effect of the relative distances between Earth, Venus and the Sun.

As well, through 3-4 telescopes, we could see two much smaller sunspots to the west and south-west of the two larger ones.

One ASV member brought not his telescope but the solar filter from it. It was quite large, about 30 cm across, and people took turns holding it up like a mirror. And I mean *mirror*, 'cos it reflected your face and everything behind you. You had to adjust your eyes' focal length to find the tiny Sun glowing golden in the middle of the reflection. And then you could see not only Sun but the little black dot of Venus with your very own almost-unaided eyes. Cool!

Historical footnote: One handsome antique (80-odd years) telescope stood on a beautifully crafted wooden tripod with brass feet and shone a lovely clear image onto its bit of cardboard. It had a small electric motor attached so that it could automatically track the Sun's movement. And the ASV member in charge of it said the telescope had belonged to Sir John Monash, who donated it to the society. (There was another, fancier telescope of similar vintage, but we didn't get to hear the
story about that one.)

The ASV has put some photos on its web site:
http://www.asv.org.au/

Peter Adderley wrote:

Seems that many experiences of the transit were just as much of a social as an observational occasion.
I set up my gear a few yards down the road. A few minutes after 3pm a rather static cumulus cloud decided to make its presence felt. The damn thing wafted about for ages as there was very little air movement.

At this time of day kids were coming home from school. Three high school kids passed and I invited them to view. What a great experience? The first two seemed pretty switched on but the third couldn't quite relate to what he was seeing. With a little joshing the last bloke finally made contact. It's pretty satisfying to hear expressions of "mad" and "kyewl" from these kids.

A few minutes later a truck pulled up beside me. A bloke got out and asked "seen anything?". Oh yeah! I said and showed him a clear dot piercing the sun. He was hugely impressed and, somehow sated, went on his way.

What counted for me was the ability of sharing the experience with strangers.

Unfortunately the actual results were pretty poor as the filter astigatism produced a blurred double image. I did try a larger polycarbonate lens which covered the objective on the telescope but it was pretty hopeless. Later on when I had packed up the telescope I had a peek at the transit through a pair of binoculars using the plastic filter. I was surprised that the image was so crisp and clear.

Anyway for what it's worth:
http://www.acay.com.au/~adderley/transit/

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Transit of Venus

Transit of Venus