So......anyone able to view the Venus transit today?

[redshifter]

As is usually the case around here when there's a cool astronomical event coming up, today is cloudy with rain. There 'may be a sunbreak' later today, but I'm not holding my breath...

Looks like I'm checking it out via the internet thingy...anyone able to view the transit today without needing a computer monitor?

[Torsten]

The weather is so ugly here today there's been a "rainfall warning" issued. I'm not holding my breath for it to clear up even long enough to catch a glimpse. Though, I was able to observe the last eclipse briefly through the overcast as it periodically thinned.

[JustAFriend]

My part of Sunny Southeast Florida is also mostly overcast/rainy so it's up to the internet for me, too.

[George]

We are having a company TOV event to observe through several scopes. We should have around 75 folks here. Clouds are a marginal issue at the moment.

If you are indeed stuck indoors, you might want to check out the various TOV sites found at the bottom of this web page here.

[RickJ]

Clear Sky Chart lives up to its name and says the sky is totally clear with 10% cloud cover at the start of the transit going to clear soon after. My eyes say it is overcast and has been for the last couple hours. Which do I believe? IR satellite casts the deciding vote -- it says overcast. It was clear for 2004. That will have to do.

Rick

[glappkaeft]

Here in Uppsala, Sweden it looks like the clouds won't spoil the event entirely. We will however miss half the event since the sun doesn't rise until 3.30 CET (here the transit begins at midnight).

[Perikles]

Here in Tenerife, we are blessed with almost guaranteed good visibilty at sunrise and sunset. Unfortunately, it all happens during our night, so we won't see anything.

[Tog]

Fraser and Phil are doing a podcast on Google+ which is also available here:
http://cosmoquest.org/Hangouts/

[Gsquare]

I'm posting the link here to the live stream of the Venus Transit from Griffith Observatory:
So far its good viewing....Venus transit begins in about 25 minutes....about 15:06 UT on US West Coast.
Click here to get it live:
http://new.livestream.com/GriffithOb...V/VenusTransit

G^2

[Gsquare]

Pretty awesome ingress....Don't forget to switch t full screen mode.

http://new.livestream.com/GriffithOb...V/VenusTransit

G^2

[Nereid]

Pretty awesome ingress....Don't forget to switch t full screen mode.

http://new.livestream.com/GriffithOb...V/VenusTransit

G^2

This is great, the best!

[Robert Tulip]

I've had a perfect view of the transit of Venus in my backyard in Canberra using my Tasco two inch refractor telescope, with the image of the sun on a piece of paper on a music stand. I took some photos and will post them. I did the same thing eight years ago. We had heavy rain yesterday, but today dawned clear.

Venus is such a tiny dot, it amazes me that Captain Cook could get such precise measurements of the ingress in Tahiti in 1769. I could not see anything until 9.30 am, 75 minutes after first contact.

Now I just have to live to be 154 to see it again.

[John Mendenhall]

The Sun has just set here, New Castle, Delaware, U.S., about 30 miles South of Philadelphia. Terrific piece of luck here. Was cloudy all day. Nothing until 30 minutes or so after first contact. Then the low clouds parted to reveal a high cirrus layer - and a beautiful cloud filtered very sharp Sun with a tiny black dot! No filters, naked eye visible. This alternated with obscuring clouds and too bright (goggle time) every few minutes for about an hour before heavy cloud cover returned.

And compliments to all the good live videos. Great experience.

[Marakai]

Very good stream from Australia: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/transit2012

[glappkaeft]

Here in Uppsala, Sweden it looks like the clouds won't spoil the event entirely. We will however miss half the event since the sun doesn't rise until 3.30 CET (here the transit begins at midnight).

Actual weather was even worse than predicted weather but a 10-15 min break from the thicker clouds just before the exit made it possible to show the transit to well over a 100 people.

[Torsten]

The clouds didn't clear up here even for a minute, so I missed it. However, I was really pleased by my son calling me, and with great excitement telling me that the clouds finally cleared long enough where he lives for him to see it.

[Hornblower]

I was clouded out. There were breaks in the clouds, but they never cooperated for me. I will count my blessings, as I got a great look at the transit of 2004.

[Grey]

We had a very nice view up in Michigan. The kids thought it was pretty cool.

[RickJ]

I got sort of lucky. 10 minutes into the transit the sky started to lighten. As it has been sprinkling moments before and I'd missed ingress that I most want to look for the black drop illusion, I'd pretty well given up. When it lightened up after an afternoon of clouds and light rain I had to get ready fast. Found everything and was just ready when 40 minutes later a hole developed. Then suddenly cars started streaming in. Families around the for the summer suddenly started to show up. I had a gaggle of the under 5 set. Most couldn't use an eyepiece so I went to projection mode which I hadn't even thought about. I was going to use my DayStar filter. My wife had to hold a white board for the screen while I explained to the little ones (and many clueless adults) what was going on. 30 minutes later it clouded back up and the light rain returned.

One thing though caught me off guard. Several decided it was fake! I'd had that with the public seeing Saturn for the first time in a scope but never with the projected sun. Seems that they saw Venus as "too round to be real". They'd heard so much about the earth being an oblate spheroid they figured Venus our "twin" wouldn't be round. I tried to explain even the not perfectly round Earth would look perfectly round as it transited the sun as seen from Mars. But not until the clouds returned and they saw them moving across the sun did they decide it was real after all.

At least they didn't say it was Nibiru or Planet X.

Rick

[Gsquare]

Several decided it was fake! I'd had that with the public seeing Saturn for the first time in a scope but never with the projected sun. Seems that they saw Venus as "too round to be real". They'd heard so much about the earth being an oblate spheroid they figured Venus our "twin" wouldn't be round.
At least they didn't say it was Nibiru or Planet X.

Rick

This would've scambled their brains....
http://www.universetoday.com/wp-cont...bill-davis.jpg

G^2

[redshifter]

My GOD! That plane must be HUGE! Venus is so tiny next to it...what is NASA not telling US?????

[RonPrice]

I saw the transit of Venus on TV several times and, after watching it and reading about it, as well as listening to two radio programs about it and its history---I wrote the following:
---------------------
ECLIPSE*

The rare conjunction of orbital mechanics, the transit of Venus, was perhaps the most anticipated scientific event of the 18th century. Expeditions set off for the far corners of the Earth, including one by Capt. James Cook who sailed to Tahiti to observe the transit. He went on to discover the continent of Australia where I have lived for the last four decades. Explorers like Cook went in hopes of answering one of the most vexing scientific questions of the day: How far away is the Sun?

“This was the big unknown for astronomy 250 years ago,” said Owen Gingerich, an emeritus professor of astronomy and history of science at Harvard. Without that number, much else about the solar system was also uncertain: the size of the Sun, the distance between planets, inter alia. The answer that came out of the worldwide 1769 observations was pretty close at 95 million miles. “Historically speaking, it was the beginning of big international science,” said Dr. Gingerich.

It was only in 1627 that anyone realized Venus transits occurred at all. That year, Johannes Kepler, the mathematician and astronomer, published data about the planetary orbits that predicted that Venus would pass directly between Earth and the Sun in 1631.-Ron Price with thanks to: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/sc...l?ref=eclipses

What a set of revolutions we’ve
seen since Captain Cook was in
Tahiti and we finally learned the
distance to the Sun among other
bodies in our solar system! What
a story it has been in the last 250
years! We each follow these many
revolutions as suits our tastes and
interests. My particular interest is
in the revolutions that have taken
place in history, science, politics,
the many social sciences, applied
and physical sciences, indeed, in
more areas than can be listed here:
revolutions that have eclipsed so
many things that have gone before.

* The term eclipse is derived from an ancient Greek noun, a noun which means "the abandonment", "the downfall", or "the darkening of a heavenly body." This noun is derived from a verb which means "to abandon", "to darken", or "to cease to exist." The prefix of the word eclipse, e, comes from a preposition meaning "out," and from a verb meaning "to be absent".

Ron Price
8 June 2012

PS for my writing in many areas of these revolutionary changes go to my website at: http://www.ronpriceepoch.com/ ....married for 43 years, a teacher for 35, a writer & editor for 10 and a Baha'i for 51(in 2010).

[RickJ]

Being a supervisor of a public observatory I have a zillion stories about dealing with the public. We have a rear projection solar telescope to allow a whole class of kids to see the sun at once. One group was so large we split it in two (5th graders I believe). One half went to see the sun and night telescopes while the other group saw a AV presentation in our classroom. While the first group was looking at the sun an airliner that had just taken off from the airport 10 miles away flew right across the sun for all to see. Nothing I had to offer could possibly beat the plane, I'd lost the group as they demanded I call the tower and have it do it again. Of course as we switched groups the story was passed on. So even before I began the second group was demanding a plane of their own. It went down hill from there.

I must have shown the sun to at least one group, often two or three a week for those 27 years but that was the one and only time a plane did that. Now I've seen at least 5 different shots of a plane going across the sun during the transit. BA posted a shot of the transit with the Hubble space telescope passing over the sun as well. It was taken from Australia. Path would have been rather narrow so doubt many saw that. It was a planned image, not a coincidence at all. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/ba...venus-transit/

Rick

[agingjb]

Just about picked it out using projection from indifferent binoculars onto white paper. This was in Crete, clear enough sky, but a hill blocking the sunrise until almost too late. Much easier from the Scillies in 2004.

[astropaz]

A bit late I know but we were in Santorini to view it and caught most of what was visible. There was a thin layer of cloud that formed on the island but thankfully the horizon was clear and we got a good view of the sunrise.
We were in Crete too for most of that trip though, just headed to the volcano for the transit.