Transit of Venus June 8th 2004
I observed the transit of Venus on June 8th from Villfranco de los Barros in Spain with my friends Dave Galvin and Steve Southern. We had completely clear skies for the whole event. We also made timings visually from the laptop screen and also from the resulting AVI's for submission as part of the European Southern Observatory project to measure the AU and solar parallax. A full report of the results and our trip was expertly compiled by Steve Southern. Many thanks to Juan and Marisa who kindly looked after us and allowed us to stay at their apartment in Madrid.
Composite of images processed from AVI's taken at
approximately hourly intervals with a 300mm telephoto lens and a Phillips ToUcam Pro 740K,
5fps
Taken at 1013UT via Steve Southern's Borg refractor with a Nikon
Coolpix 885, auto settings, afocal. Lightly contrast enhanced and made
greyscale in Photoshop. Although this image was taken by the simplest
method it is probably the best image I have from the transit!
Venus now rapidly approaching this very special conjunction
with the Sun on June 8th when Venus will transit the solar disk for the
first time in 122 years. The phase of Venus here only a mere 6%
illuminated. This image was
taken on 25th May 2004, 1821UT, via my 14" reflector with a
Philips ToUcam Pro 740K. 3X Barlow used, efl = 5694mm. 5fps, 1/500s, gain
~20%. The very unsteady atmosphere near to the Sun in daylight meant that
just 20 frames were steady enough to be stacked
and auto-processed with Registax.
The next transit of Venus occurs on June 5-6th 2012. Europe is not favoured this time but the transit will be well placed from Pacific regions and the USA.