2004 Venus Transit In Pictures

oneiros27 writes "For those astronomy fans out there -- pictures are starting to come in from the 2004 Venus Transit (where Venus passes in front of the sun). Times of the transit will vary by city, but make sure you use safe techniques for viewing the sun if you want to look for yourself." Anonymous Coward writes "Check out the transit of Venus webcast from Australia. It starts at 4.50 UTC on June 8." Update: 06/07 04:03 GMT by T : Linked webcast link updated to a URL projected to better handle the load, thanks to reader Tom Minchin.

If it hasn't started yet...

[Anonymous Coward]

how are "pictures starting to come in"?

eye safety

[Sinful_Shirts]

When I was in middle school my teachers told me it was safe to look at partial eclipses with a welders mask on, but I have heard otherwise. Does anyone know about this?

Celestia Link

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a Celestia link, if it works:

cel://Follow/Sol:Earth/2004-06-08T05:18:54.92152 ?x =KLYE5/iNG0G6DA&y=igqBtiEyCQ&z=bcUYwwychqsP&ow=0.9 94123&ox=0.000593&oy=0.108122&oz=-0.005415&select= Sol:Venus&fov=1.399520&ts=1.000000&ltd=0&rf=36755& lm=49152

Crater Naming

[Aardpig]

Back when the Magellan mission [nasa.gov] was mapping the surface of Venus, I had a planetary geology friend who was involved in assigning names to features. I managed to persuade him to name a crater [usra.edu] after my girlfriend Marianne, as a birthday present to her. At the time I thought this gift was pretty cool; unlike star names, which are meaningless, this was an official designation, and furthermore Venus was the Planet O' Love.

My mistake, however, was to forgetting that Venus is eternal, but love isn't. Every time I see Venus hanging in the evening sky, I realize I named that damn crater after the wrong woman. LOL!

Re:OH DEAR GOD

[AsmCoder8088]

You can actually look at the Venus-Sun transit through telescopes using a solar filter. I own an eight inch schmidt-cassegrain, and equipped with an appropriate eight inch filter, I would be able to see the transit much better than just regular gazers of the transit. Hypothetically, if you had a few grand lying around right now, you could buy a nice telescope and have a much better look at the transit.

Re:BBC Coverage

[phlako66]

There's also a nice site in New Zealand (even though we won't be able to see the Transit this time round) about the T of V and Cook's 'voyage of discovery' that took place partially funded by the Royal Society sending him to Tahiti to record the transit. http://transitofvenus.auckland.ac.nz/ [auckland.ac.nz]

Re:Safety, Remember Safety

[Theresa1]

(Specifically, the edges of the mirror act as an aperture similar to the pinhole camera effect.)
Or why not just make a pinhole camera! Just get two bits of card. Make a hole with a pin in one, point at the sun and project the image onto the other one. The bigger the hole, the brighter, but fuzzier the image. You can get fancy if you like, go into a darkens room, black out the window except for a pinhole and project the image onto the opposite wall. The image will be bigger because the distance is greater. You could also try sticking a lens behind the pinhole, but you don't have to bother.
Have fun

1882 Venus Transit Quote

[Titanium Angel]

Just thought this might be an interesting thing to share with you:

"There will be no other [transit of Venus] till the twenty-first century of our era has dawned upon the earth, and the June flowers are blooming in 2004. What will be the state of science when the next transit season arrives God only knows." - William Harkness, USNO, 1882

Yuppers

[SnappingTurtle]

One time I was writing a web bot and it went berserk and started downloading images from NASA as fast as it could... 10,000 in half an hour. I emailed an apology to the web master. He emailed back and said they hadn't even noticed, that that my hits constituted an insignificant fraction of their daily traffic.

Pictures of Venus transit from Casablanca, Morocco

[scitek]

Taken around 5:40 AM GMT, Sunrise - http://www.actane.com/perso/jvincent