Venus Transit

Transit

Acquire a telescope (with sufficient zoom, diameter at least 5 cm and zoom at least 100x) and a tripod few days before the transit. In front of the lens, fix a clingfilm made for watching Sun (eg. BAADER AstroSolar™ Safety Film (http://www.baader-planetarium.com/)
One day before transit you should make sure that you know the trajectory of the Sun in the sky. Check everything you need (So you won't have to improvise). You should better check the weather report and decide if it wouldn't be better to travel somewhere else where you would have better chances for sunny weather.

The Theory

    On 8th June at about 7 a.m. (DST) you should be ready. Venus will appear (roughly) at quarter past seven at lower left side of the Sun circle. At first it will be noticeable only as a small black bulge.
    The entry into the circle will take about twenty minutes. During this time you'll have chance to see the halo and black droplet effects. You don't have to hurry so try more than one magnification.
    In next few hours Venus will slowly move to the right side of the Sun. In that time you can try to look at it without a telescope.
    Next surge of interesting events will come at 1 p.m. o'clock. Venus will slowly start to leave the Sun and at about 1:23 p.m. (note. All times in daylight-saving time DST) it will leave for good.

How to photograph this phenomenon?

    To photograph, you'll need a camera with manual exposition settings, equipped with some larger lens (not any automatic one). Standard objective will make the Sun only about half a millimeter and without any details. For good photos you'll need lens with focus distance one and half meter or longer. Otherwise the Venus will not be visible! Very important factor is also clean air.
    As well as for telescope observation you'll need a filter to photograph. Suitable exposition time is a matter of testing, so try. Buy a film with sensitivity 100 or 200 ISO and try to make few photos of unhidden Sun with exposition between 1/1000 and 1 second. After the development of the negative, you'll surely find the best solution.
    Because of need of clean air, you may try to take advantage of digital technology and use digital video recorder or web camera as well.

And what about camera?

You can proceed the same way when you'll try to record this sky show with ordinary video camera. Present devices are equipped by protection against sunlight. As with camera you should use the filter with video camera. Some video cameras have possibility to change exposition time. Try to take advantage of it.

Last advice

And the last advice? Try to observe the Venus carefully with your own eyes too (with sufficient eyes protection). It will be much more interesting than with a camera.

And how did it finished?

    8.6.2004
    It's D day, hour H. Everything is ready. Weather is nice and the wind is calm. Thanks to good weather conditions we were able to take solid records of the transit and were able to process them. Our endings can be found in a table below. The table was taken from our credit on ESO pages.
    For each contact the table contents:

Average distance between Sun and Earth - so called AU - Astronomical Unit that was calculated from our measuring.
Proper angle under which we would see Earth diameter from Sun core (Sun parallax Π)
Departures from accurate values. Δ(AU) and Δ(?).
Error expressed in percents.

	Instants (UTC)	AU (km)	Π ('')	Δ(AU) (km)	Δ(Π) ('')	Error
1	5 h 19 m 49.00 s	149570958	8.7957	26912	0.0016	0.018 %
2	5 h 39 m 34.00 s	149638089	8.7918	40219	0.0024	0.027 %
3	11 h 3 m 38.00 s	149620186	8.7928	22316	0.0013	0.015 %
4	11 h 23 m 4.00 s	149553014	8.7968	44856	0.0026	0.030 %
Average AU = 149595562 km
Average Π = 8.7943 ''
Average Error= 0.002 %

2004 Designed by Melcolm