Venus transit 5 June 2012

[Fay]

Amazing NASA pictures of the transit


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2155140/Transit-Venus-2012-Spectacular-seen-time-2117.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

[MarkS]

I attempted to get to St Malo but wasn't feeling well so kept stopping for a sleep.  I reached the general area and although there were breaks in the cloud, they weren't enough to allow me to see anything.  So a disappointment.

Mark

[mickw]

Bummer 

[Fay]

oh dear, hope you are ok now Mark

[The Thing]

It was a washout at Joss Bay. There was me and about 10 from Crayford plus a couple of interested locals. Gaps in the cloud kept looking promising but nothing was seen.

[Kenny]

SDO animation... very cool.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z9rM8ChTjY&feature=youtube_gdata_player

[Whitters]

Got up at 3:30 GMT, already had the car loaded with gear, scopes mounts and the like. The sky was not looking very promising. I did consider changing my mind on the location as the cloud breaks were due in the west first, but decided to stick with my origional plan of Kings Standing on the AshDown Forrest. Got there about 3:50 GMT  a father and son were already at the car park and had been there of 30 minutes but reported that the cloud had been about the same. That is completely clouded in. Set up the scopes, th eLunt and William Optics 66 then waited. The cloud was very fast moving, which gives a chance at least. A few small breaks came over but didn't go where they needed to. Then the radio mast at the police training centre was hidden by fog. Only 20 minutes to go, then a small break which was followed by a very promising larger one. We waited for it to move across and reveal the Sun. We saw the black circle of Venus nearing the edge of the sun, only to be covered by cloud again. Another break rolled overhead this time larger than before, would it reach the point where the sun was before the end of the transit. It did I had planned to image using a webcam but it would take too long to set up, I remembered I had thrown in my DSLR and tripod at the last minute, grabbed them and quickly set up, took the molar filter off of the 66 and took a couple of shots. I had forgotten that the auto focus would struggle with the low light so the first shot or so were completely out of focus. Manually focused and took a few more shots, they were over exposed, so manual focus and manual exposure, and sucess. Well at least I could see Venus sharp, leaving the Sun's disk. That was it as the cloud rolled back in to hide the remainder of the transit. 

Looking forward to May 9th 2016 for the transit of Mercury. http://www.venus-transit.de/Mercury2016/index.html

[MarkS]

oh dear, hope you are ok now Mark

Back at home now - still ill so not at work.

Mark

[Whitters]

Get well soon Mark

[julian]

Get well soon Mark

[mickw]

Get back to work 

Any idea what's wrong ?  It's not Venus envy is it ?

[doug]

Hope you recover very soon, Mark.

[nigelf]

Hi guys and gals, some fascinating posts here on the venus transit and great pictures on the web. But I am trying to find (reasonably) accurate 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th contact timings for the june 2012 transit as seen from at least two distant locations in the world. I can't find any anywhere on the web. I am (sad man that I am...!) trying to replicate the calculations of 1760s that first gave us the size of the solar system from venus transit data. Perhaps nobody bothers with this any more since we have better ways of measuring the astonomical unit. Anyway, if anyone comes across these timing I would be glad to have them, together with the locations that they apply to. I have emailed both the Sydney Australia observatory and the Japanese national observatory Tokyo, but no reply.

PS I realised the other day that the date of the June 2004 venus transit was my first visit to OAS and when I became a member, so thanks to you all for a great 8 years! Anyone got plans for 2117? (me neither!) - Nigel

[mickw]

Nige, I'm too bone idle to come up with a link but you could try contacting Subaru at Mauna Kea (NAOJ), they have good PR.

[Vera]

I was fortunate to view the transit at the Varsity Stadium of Toronto University along with 5000 others in perfect conditions.  The event was organised by the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics.  They are exceptionally user friendly.  Here is a link (hopefully it will work) - http://dunlap.utoronto.ca/