The photographer and Venus... At MIRA Public Observatory, among many other telescopes, people could admire this view of the Sun+Venus with our heliostat. It projects an image of the sun (with a diameter of 140 cm) inside a lecture room.

The event was spectacular, though most images look the same: the sun with a dot. Here is my try for something special. This is a multi-exposure on a single piece of film of the Venus transit. The first exposure, taken without a solar filter, captured the silhouette of the leaves and the blue background. After that 5 shots through a solar filter were taken to capture the Sun and transiting Venus. [Photo details; Olympus OM-1, Zuiko 300/4.5, Fuji Provia 100F; 10:04:40 UT, 1/250s @ F/32 w/o filter, then from 10:08:00 till 10:28:00 with 4 minute intervals 6x 1/125 s @ F/8 w/ filter.]

Thanks to pristine weather in the eastern Mediterranean, these time series photos represent a dedicated effort lasting nearly seven hours of this truly wonderful event! The absence of any dominant features on the solar disk, particularly sunspots, provided for a view which was both breathtaking and beyond any imagination possible. It begs a trip to Australia in 2012 for a second dose of this magnificent event!

Date: 08 june 2004; time: 5:20-11:24 UT Site: Cast Observatory-Talmassons (UD) Instruments: C11 with Digicam Nikon Coolpix 4300

2nd edition, SkyWalker 127F6.45 & Canon PowerShot A70.

Coronado Nearstar/Solarmax 60 H-alpha with Canon PS A60 (ISO 200, 1/20 sec, F4.8) revealed Venus next to a giant solar flare when the transit had just started.

I took these high resolution images of the Venus Transit to see if there is a "black drop" effect.

At sunrise the haze was so heavy that no solar filter was required for the first 15 minutes. Sony DSC-F707 digital camera attached to Meade 8' LX10 telescope.

6:45 am Eastern Daylight Time; through thick fog taken from Washington, DC; Canon EOS Rebel digital camera and Coronado MaxScope 90 Halpha. 4/10 sec. exposure. Processed in MaxIm DL and Adobe PhotoShop

more: from Mike Lynch of Frankfort, Kentucky; from So Chu Wing of Hong Kong; from Richard Schueller of Chelmsford, Massachusetts, USA; from Darren Osborne at CSIRO Headquarters, Canberra, Australia; from Gilberto Klar Renner of Tramandai, RS, Brazil; from Furio Pieri of Prosecco- Trieste ITALY; from Marcos Cue and Juan D. Rodriguez of Leon, Spain (this is a projection of the Sun through a telescope onto a white screen); from Ivar Hamberg of Stockholm, Sweden; from Nejc Ucman of Verdun, Novo mesto, Slovenia; from Roland Nogal of Hillsborough, New Jersey, USA;