EEVblog #288 - Transit Of Venus 2012

Dave attempting to capture the transit of venus amid the clouds and rain.

[tagno]

It was/is a twice in a lifetime event. There was one in 2004, then this one, now a wait of 105 years til the next one.

[mllarson]

I watched it live via The Weather Channel's site. Was pretty cool.

[AllAroundBang]

It was cloudy all day straight to the evening. Sadly, it still was when it first showed up, but the rest of the evening was pure awesomeness.

[spelunkerd]

Captain Cook traveled to Australia to watch the transit of Venus, with the scientific goal to be estimation of the distance of Earth to the Sun. Seems like a long way to go for that, but you had to appreciate that other methods of distance estimation weren't developed.

Yesterday I saw Venus through two welding plates, and I tipped my hat to brilliant astronomers of ages gone by....

[EEVblog]

I had maybe 10-20 minutes total daylight all day. Got rained on half a dozen times. I was lucky to get any footage at all. And my first location got too much wind and vibration. Not a pleasant day at all.

[ForViewingOnly]

Nice one Dave. I was up at 5am to be greated by cloudy skies. Ah well, I'll catch the next one :)

[CatamaranAir]

Great Video, How about flickering LED candle for Tear Down Tuesdays? Loved your interview with Colin.

[CrocoShack]

Earth population : Eclipse shades

Dave : Whiteboard, like a boss.

[emactan]

Used a point and shoot with welding mask lens in front as solar filter. Damn pain to get the exposure just right. Very cloudy over here but every now and then there'd be breaks

[Satchmoeddie]

I gave up with the binocs and camera, but did get a great transit of Venus across the sun. The eclipse was much better. I had a very badly banged up elbow so opted to stay home and not do the 6 hour round trip to get the total effect. Welding glasses (#11 dark glass and a #9) worked for the eclipse, but were useless for the transit of Venus. 115 degrees is shitty weather and that is what we had! The sun was going down before the transit was complete in Arizona.

[Skyfox]

I got some great photos of the transit by using some IR filters to darken the view.

[RageRioting]

I think adjusting the distance of the board and the binocular should have give you better focus.

at least you got to experience it, here in the UK it was night and the last stages of the transition might have been visible at 5 in the morning but then clouds would have ruined it

[Filewalkr]

you're lucky ... here in central europe this happened at like 6am or so ;D

[curlyfry]

We had the same set-up in our lab today.

[AlexM]

I stayed up all night to photograph this but when the time came my view was obscured by clouds ) :

[Gobhoblin]

I got to watch it at the uni's telescopes on the roof!!!

[aiden]

I know the Sun is massive, but when you use Venus as a size comparison you realize how massive the Sun really is.

[toxanbi]

I have used welding glasses with my Sony camcoder (40× optical zoom).
Here is the result:
/watch?v=C_dCS6mBCfA
Sorry for vibration.

[izimsi]

I've woken up at 5 AM just to find out that you can't actually see the sun because of the clouds.

[adamlumpkins]

Dave I believe that the size relation is 1/32