The Venus transit happened as predicted on June 8th 2004 over Dublin. It was a cloudy morning but through the hazy sunshine I was able to see it and get some photos.
First of all I set up my telsecope facing the sun and put a piece of cardboard around the lens area to reduce light leakage from around the telescope. then by standing in front of the telescope, with my back to the sun I aligned it to face towards the sun.
Here is the telescope in position. Note the front two legs of the tripod are extended to give me the elevation to point the telsescope towards the sun. Note also the piece of cardboard stuck on the back leg, which acted as the screen to project the image onto. Note the lens eyepiece pointing towards the screen, from behind the cover around the lens.
This view from behind the telescope shows it again, this time with a larger screen, which you can clearly see the projected image.
OK, now to the intesting bits, the photos. The first two I took show Venus clearly on the right side of the photo. As I was still getting things ready the orientation is wrong
This explains the oblong shape and Venus being towards the top right, as it would properly be towards the bottom. They were both before I set my screen against the leg of the tripod and at this point it was handheld. You can see the eyepiece in the first one. This is the best one. It is on the brown screen that I had above and shows up the colours very well.
You can see also that Venus is closer to the edge of the sun than in the first two.
The last one shows Venus very close to the edge of the sun as it was near the end of the transit. It is again on the grey screen.
Well that was it. The next one is in 2012 but will not be at a time suitable for viewing in Ireland, so this indeed was a once in a lifetime opportunity, which I am glad I took and happy to share with you.
The Moon
Put your cursor over any feature on the above photo. 16 have been labelled.
The Moon and Venus
Click here to see my video of the Moon:
Venus
Saturn
Jupiter
Updated December 1st 2008. This site is still being developed. Come again soon.
