Last night I was out late at a friends house observing with Faac members

Here is another picture from the Venus transit. This a composite of four photos I took through eyepieces at the event.

There were Faac members at Kensington metro park as well. Some were concentrating on taking some really good transit photos. One was spectacular, but that photo is of course copyrighted by the member who took it and I haven't sought permission to repost it here. As it was of very high quality and had some other interesting details not captured in many transit photos, it's likely worth money and something he could sell to a magazine or win awards for a great photo.

Anyway to continue, last night I was at a friends house who has darker skies than we have at the observatory, another Faac member joined us and we looked at the sky and talked late into the night, so I didn't open the observatory last night.

I may open tonight, depending on the weather and how things go today.

I'll put another post out if I open up tonight.

Also last week I tested beaming the sun directly into the middle school classroom. That test worked out really well. I stood outside the school aiming the projector and a white light image of the sun and sunspots was projected into the second floor window of a science classroom. Many science class students were able to take turns looking at the sun.

It was a last minute test event, kind of impromptu, and the teacher, principle and students seemed to enjoy it.

I'm going to return this week and do it for another science class if the weather cooperates and all goes well.

To return to comments on the photos below, you can see Venus starting across the surface of the sun taking a small bite out of it in one image. The clouds were partially obscuring the sun a bit.

Then Venus is basically fully inside the sun in the second photo. The last white light photo on the top row shows part of the sun and some cloud bands from low clouds near the horizon on earth. (These aren't clouds on the sun.). The tree leaves are covering part of the sun. The sun looks really spectacular, in an artistic kind of way with tree leaves in part of the view when using solar binoculars.

Lastly there is an image of Venus through the observatory hydrogen alpha telescope. It's a little out of focus, because I was rushing and didn't take a lot of photos. Why did I rush to take a photo and not take more? 50 people were in line waiting to take a look, when I snapped this so I didn't spend as much tine as I might normally. It was after all a public event and I often give visual observing priority over photography at HJRO if visitors arrive we want them to enjoy the view.






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