seeing the venus transit

[Kit-Fox]

As per the title i've a question about watching the transit of venus coming this june.

I dont fancy waiting over 100 years for the next one you see

Anywho as you can see from my sig i've got the xlt150 & a galileoscope.

I am planning on getting the vixen VMC110 in the coming month, is it worth getting a full aperature solar filter for the VMC or the xlt to watch the transit with ? Or would it highly unwise to do so?

[Merlin66]

Yes,

A full aperture solar filter (Baader etc) would be an ideal solution!

Buy it early enough that you can get some practice imaging the solar disk..there's plenty to see at the moment...

[Kit-Fox]

So having placed the film over the aperature, whats next? Would be any good visually or would I have to use the webcam to take images?

Would it possible to do projection onto some card or paper with such a setup ?

Really unsure solar wise, and probably more than a lil overly cautious about it (read: paranoid) so need as much advice as possible please

[Merlin66]

You could certainly follow the transit visually... but it would be nice to get a permanent record..You could use any camera..a webcam is OK but may not show the whole sun..youu need to do some practise...

[Kit-Fox]

It would be nice to have a permanent record of it yes something I could say 'I did that' about.

I will have to practise when I get my VMC110 or when my XLT150 & CG4 mount and webcam come back from Chris285 who has them at the moment while he experiments with imaging and seeing what difference a slightly bigger scope brings compared to his skywatcher130.

I'm generally ok with astro stuff once I've located it in the sky at night with tracking via the finderscope. Plenty of time to practise, just getting as much info as I can before hand.

Thanks for the answers Merlin66, put me more at ease over trying some solar observing, what with everything else I can't afford to damage my eyes too :S

[4lefts]

where are you based? from the uk, i think the most we can hope for is about 30 mins of the end of the transit from sunrise. so you need a clear-as-a-bell eastern horizon about 5 am. or travel abroad.

[SeedyF]

I just happened to do a little planning the other day. Day off work booked so I can head off to a location yet to be specified where I can see the horizon. This bit needs to be planned in detail but I have a couple of high locations in mind or the Essex coast is about an hour 15 away.

I have a home made full aperture filter which I plan to set up to capture some stills of the transit then switch to viewing before it finishes. In white light a transit should be fantastic.

Sunrise (in Hemel Hempstead) is at 4:52 give or take a few seconds and the transit is scheduled to finish at 5:55 with the sun at an elevation of 8 degrees.

Useful link here where you can get the timings for your location Local transit times | Venustransit

[Kit-Fox]

Looking at the long term forecasts it may indeed be quite cloudy on the day, but i'm in the trent valley so might get lucky.

I am of ocurse planning on checking the weather much closer to the event as we all know just how reliable the weather forecasting can be :S

If I have to take make a journey in order to see it I shall certainly make every effort to do so. It really is a once in a lifetime chance.

[LukeSkywatcher]

I was reading recently that to work out if you will be able to see the transit a good test is to draw a 2mm dot on a piece of paper and place it about 27M from your scope/eye. If you can see the dot then you will be able to see the transit.

I may have some of the calculations wrong (27M), but essentially its a 2mm dot on a piece of paper a fair distance away from you.

[lukebl]

Looking at the long term forecasts it may indeed be quite cloudy on the day, ....

I think it's a wee bit optimistic to expect a reliable weather forecast for a day five months hence, or for anyone to claim that they can forecast that far ahead! That just isn't possible. A day or two in advance would be more realistic.

[LukeSkywatcher]

This is happening just as the Sun rises (here in the British Isles)?. That rules me out completely as the Sun is too low from my observing location to see at that time. I'm a mile from the coast and lots of trees etc in the way.

Sorry.....................i'm getting way ahead of myself. I dont even have a solar filter.

Might add a solar filter (ready made) from FLO for my 8" SCT to my birthday list. Not to see the transit...................but for general solar observing this "summer".

[Hawksmoor]

The last time around (2004?),I managed to get some nice photographs of the transit using my Meade 90RA Mak with a white light filter and a digital compact camera held at the eyepiece using one of the readily available clamps (Afocal style). This set up with a 26mm eyepiece (I seem to remember) not only showed the whole solar disc but also just about picked up a couple of large sunspots. I remember having a practice run before and that this was actually invaluable when it came to the day.

Must try and find a copy of the images. Seem to remember the file was on my Company laptop, for a long time it was my screen background. Not sure I retained a copy when I retired four years ago.

[LukeSkywatcher]

I have read comments from people who saw the last transit and they said it was like watching paint dry or grass grow.

Not quite sure how dedicated of an astronomer they were.

[Kit-Fox]

I think it's a wee bit optimistic to expect a reliable weather forecast for a day five months hence, or for anyone to claim that they can forecast that far ahead! That just isn't possible. A day or two in advance would be more realistic.

Yeah i'm a little wary of these 'long term' forecasts and prediction models that seem to usually make assumptions about certain patterns of weather. Some seem to get things plain wrong :S

Again tho, The expected 'forecasted' weather is for a lot of cloud cover over the UK it seems, I will however be looking much closer to the event and keeping a close on whats said weather wise for it.

I'm also thinking that the VMC100L will be the better scope to watch it with, as it'll be easier for me to handle than the larger xlt150. Am I right in thinking that the difference in size will make no major difference to what will be visible any way?

[Stu]

Although I missed the 2004 Venus transit, I seem to remember watching the last transit of Mercury. I just had a small pair of Binomite solar binoculars and was able to see it ok. The next one is 2016 I believe. I didn't watch the whole thing, just popped out every now and then to check progress.

With Venus it is really the contact events which are worth looking at I guess, particularly 2nd and 3rd I think where you can see the 'black drop' effect where the shadow elongates out towards the limb.

It looks like it will be a fairly brief event in June and that we will be lucky to get a glimpse of it between sunrise and end of transit. I'm still harbouring ambitions of hopping on a flight somewhere to get a better view but don't know where!

Stu

[4lefts]

I'm still harbouring ambitions of hopping on a flight somewhere to get a better view but don't know where!

Stu

Me too - i was thinking somewhere like dubai? Pretty much guaranteed some cloudlessness.

[Alastair Rae]

I remember the 2004 transit well. I set up a spotting scope and projected an image of the sun about 1m across on a slide screen. Venus made a dot about 1cm across. All very low tech and I didn't realise it was a once in a lifetime opportunity.

[661-pete]

I have read comments from people who saw the last transit and they said it was like watching paint dry or grass grow.

Not quite sure how dedicated of an astronomer they were.

That's as maybe, but it wasn't my experience.

I didn't have any telescope in those days (2004), but I set up in a corner of the works car park with an old pair of bins (one lens covered) on a tripod projecting onto a piece of cardboard. Very crude and poorly-focused, but I sent out an E-mail before the event, inviting everyone to come out and have a look.

The weather was excellent and so was the turnout. I was pleasantly surprised! I think I must have had getting on for a hundred people come out and have a look at the projection and ask what was going on.

Of course this year's transit will be a much lower-key affair and I haven't got anything planned. The Sun's very low altitude will be a help to some observers, as it should be reasonably safe to look direct at the Sun (assuming it's not clouded over!) with the unprotected eye for short glimpses - provided you do this when the Sun is just on the horizon and not higher.

But a solar scope or projection is still by far the safest option.

[michael8554]

For the 2004 episode I took webcam sequences of the two contacts and made still frames of interesting moments. I also took full disk images every 10 minutes or so with a digital still camera to make a composite of the track across the sun. The whole transit took hours so there was plenty of time to switch between the webcam and still camera.

Not relevant this time, but I made sure the telescope with webcam was pointed at the correct side of the sun for first contact (tricky because of inversions and lateral reversals, depending on your setup). Not like the Beeb unit in the Middle East who were zoomed in on the wrong side and missed it!

[Chris H]

Looking at the long term forecasts it may indeed be quite cloudy on the day, but i'm in the trent valley so might get lucky.

Where did you get such a long range forecast?