Planet Venus Does a Solar Transit Today

I had fun watching and doing some simple photography of the venus transit. Using just an inexpensive pair of binoculars, a tripod, a piece of paper, and my Canon compact digital camera with no filters, I took pictures of this rare and extraordinary celestial event. - The next time the planet Venus does it thing again crossing the sun it will be in another 105 years in 2117.

The set up: A binocular taped on tripod. The white circle on the sheet of paper was a tranferred image of the sun. The planet Venus should appear as a dot moving across the white circle (sun) beginning at 1506 hours Pacific Time.

2012-06-05 1612 hours. The planet Venus was seen as a smudge (lower left) on the sun.

2012-06-05 1709 hours. The planet Venus was now moving almost half-way across the sun.