Unlike most of the rest of the country, we had a rather clear day today and were able to observe the transit of Venus. Furthermore, the transit occurred during the reasonable hours of 10:15 am to 4:30 pm. Very convenient!
The guys in the lab down the hall set up a little projector system with an ancient looking telescope, some polystyrene to block the light, and some paper taped to a board to project the image on, like so:
Venus was clearly visible in the projected image as a little dot slowly traveling across the sun:
The guys in the lab down the hall set up a little projector system with an ancient looking telescope, some polystyrene to block the light, and some paper taped to a board to project the image on, like so:
Venus was clearly visible in the projected image as a little dot slowly traveling across the sun:
We also had some neat filters that let you look at the sun directly through them. I tried to take a photo with my phone, but the image was saturated around the sun, so no good. Silly me, leaving my proper camera with adjustable exposure time at home!
Next time it will happen will be in 2117. None of us are likely to be alive then, unless life expectancy goes up drastically or we get robot bodies.
It was beautiful. One of the rare moments. Whole family watched it a number of time. It was a small black spot over the sun moves from left bottom to the top of the sun.
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