Transit of Venus

If you didn't know about the transit of Venus yesterday, you aren't following the right people on Twitter. It's something that happens in pairs eight years apart separated by long intervals of over a century due to Venus orbiting the Sun at a wonky angle. Historically, we used it to figure out just how big this solar system we are inhabiting really is. You can learn more about it at the Wikipedia page.


This being pretty much a once-in-a-lifetime event^*, and despite all the marking I still need to get done, I knew I would kick myself if I didn't at least try to see it. But with no special sunglasses or welding goggles, and with a history of bad luck with pin-hole viewers, the question was how.

The answer was: Galileo to the rescue.

When my dad died, he left behind two telescopes. One was a super-fancy reflector that can be hooked up to a computer and probably show you Orion's armpit up close and personal. That went to P1 because he lives, for the most part, in the boonies in BC and has access to much more darkness than I do. I asked for and got the inexpensive Galilean refracting telescope which is good for not much more than viewing the moon and seeing the Galilean moons of Jupiter, and, as it turns out, the transit of Venus!



I remember there used to be a sun filter for this telescope, but since I had no idea where it was, I made do with the supplied screen in lieu of burning my eyes out.

Yes, it's a tiny image, but when I saw the tinier black dot that was Venus, I literally squeed. It's really round! And tiny, compared to the Sun. Squee!


You don't want to let too much sunlight through, because as it turns out that can be pretty blinding on a white screen.

I tried to take a picture of the actual transit, but my camera did not capture it. I have many nearly-identical shots of a pencil-eraser-sized circle of light with no corresponding pencil-tip-sized black dot near the edge. I would look at my pictures on the computer and would get really excited because I'd think I had captured Venus, only to zoom in and discover that no, it was just a piece of dust on my monitor.

The sun was moving behind the tree in my neighbour's yard as I took this shot.

Can you see Venus? The close-up is at the beginning of the post. If you can't see Venus there, try this:


I'm slightly disappointed that I couldn't capture the transit photographically. I'm beyond happy that I did get to see it live, because the next transit is in 2117 and as Phil Plait said, the experience won't be the same when my head's in a jar.

Speaking of whom, click here to see some great shots of the transit from people who are much more adept at that sort of thing than I am.

^*The 2004 transit was in the morning. I no doubt had to get to work. On the subway. And I didn't have the telescope then. Or a deck. Fine. I don't really remember why I couldn't see it.