On the Day of the Transit of Venus

The Diamond Jubilee was a bit of a wash out with regards to the weather and the chances of seeing the Venus transit grew slim over weekend.

I woke up at 4am on Wednesday 6 June expecting it to be still raining followed by my head laying back down on the pillow. Instead, I was greeted by a bright full moon and clear sky all around.

With that burst of blurry eyed enthusiasm I was dressed and out the door in 10 minutes. This was when I noticed that the moon had disappeared and the sky was covered by cloud.

Still, I'm up and ready now.

Arriving at my usual spot I set up the telescope and waited and hoped for the cloud to disappear.

It never did. It broke up a little but this was the only shot I could take. It was so cloudy I didn't see the sun at all.

Transit of Venus

The Jubilee weekend is upon us but that isn't the only thing that is happening. After the weekend on Wednesday there will be a transit of the planet Venus. This is when Venus moves in-between the Earth and the Sun and can be seen moving across the surface as a small black disk. It's a bit like an eclipse of sun where the moon moves in front of the sun.

You shouldn't look directly at the sun to see the transit. Instead check out this website which gives some ideas on viewing options.

To see the transit in the UK you're going to need to get up real early on Wednesday 6 June from about 5am to 6pm. Check out this website which provides a great simulation of the transit.

This will never happen again in your life time so it's worth a look. I intend to video the event so here's hoping for clear skies.

Check out this video for more information.

Astrophotos November 2011

What I've never done is look at the sun with a telescope and that's because it is extremely dangerous, it would blind you in an instant.

When I was a kid I used to burn ants using nothing more than the power of the sun and a magnifying glass (my granddad taught me this). You can see the bright point of light burning everything it touches like a mega strength laser from a James Bond movie. This is how I imagine what the sun shining through a telescope would be like. The bright point of light from the eye piece would burn a hole through your eye, then your head and continue burning the trees and anything else in it's path.

So, I never looked through a telescope at the sun...until I brought some very special solar film. The one piece of A4 solar film looks like very thin kitchen foil but it very delicate and lets through 2% light. With the foil and a CD spindle tub lid (normally found containing blank CDs) I made a sun filter which fits snuggly over the ETX telescope.

Hooking up the webcam this is what I took.

A sun spot. You can also see different surface detail. This is my first and favourite sun photo

These following images are of the same sun spot on the same day a couple of weeks after the image above was taken. To me it looks like the same sun spot. 

Taken with the x2 barlow lens. I got a bit of dirt in there too noticeable by the big smudge.

Maybe a couple of minutes later and the same spot looks different