Wednesday, June 09, 2004
Venus traversed the sun on 8th June 2004
Yesterday for about six hours in the morning Venus traversed the sun for the first time since 1882. The next traverse is in 2012 visible in the pacific and the next after that will be in 2247 – 243 years from now.
The sun shone all morning and I got an image through my binoculars onto a piece of paper at about 8.30 am. The small black dot was in the top right part of the sun. When I saw images on TV they generally showed the black dot in the lower left part of the sun. I was reassured however that one did show the dot in the top right as mine had and it was one that displayed the image onto a screen like mine.
If I remember my school physics correctly the image through binoculars would normally focus at the eyepiece which only produced a tiny bright image of the sun so I moved the paper away and got a larger clearer image about three feet away. The image must have inverted when I went away from the normal focal point.
