A Note from the President

This was the first Venusian Solar Transit in more than 121 years, and we were out in full force to observe it. June is often plagued with clouds and rain, so we divided up into many small groups rather than all congregate in one spot. In theory, at least, this should increase our chances of someone being in the right place at the right time. In spite of our wide dispersal across dozens of miles of shoreline, many of us experienced nearly identical conditions. The clouds and rain obscured most of the transit, but the sun popped out in time to see the last few minutes during egress. We are happy to have seen as much as we did, and we are all eagerly awaiting the next and final (for this century) Venusian transit on June 6, 2012.

Charlie Fredrickson

Venus Transit Glimpsed & Imaged at Lake Worth!

In anticipation of the Venus transit, we had an excellent turnout from ASPB at the Lake Worth public beach. We had a total of 13 telescopes set up in two groups. I, along with Joe Badal and Ben Kolstad and guests, were south of the Lake Worth pier. Another larger group was located north of the pier, and consisted of Fred Lehman, Jay Albert, George Debarros, Dan Wickles, Roland Culberson and other ASPB'ers and guests. Media representatives from the Palm Beach Post and Channel 12 news were there, all hoping to view the historical transit. There was a brief glimpse of the sun through clouds close to the horizon, about three minutes after sunrise. However, nobody caught a glimpse of the transit at this time because of partial cloud cover. After this, the sun moved behind a heavy cloud bank, and most folks were discouraged, and began to break down their equipment. It looked like we had been skunked again by the weather gods! As the scopes began to be dismantled, Jeff and Laura Woods were interviewed at length by the Channel 12 crew.

At 7:15 AM, we were well past 3rd contact of the transit, when the clouds parted, and the transit was observed! I still had my scope set up, and about 6 others, including Joe Badal and Jim Mayes, were able to glimpse the tail-end of the transit as well. We observed the partial disc of Venus clearly at the edge of the Solar disc. The attached digital image is the only proof that the transit was, indeed, observed at Lake Worth! I shot it with my trusty Canon S30 Powershot, through a 500mm f/5.6 Maksutov scope, which I use for solar observing and eclipses. Time of the picture was about 7:23, with Venus' disc about 75% off the edge of the sun. Jeff Woods was still set up as well, and a good number of folks viewed the transit in his scope. Others were able to see the transit naked-eye, through their solar filters. Apparently our ASPB team at Jupiter was rained upon, but Kye Ewing out in Venus, Florida, got good views of the complete transit.

We had a good number of visitors, and I distributed at least 15 copies of the newsletter to various folks, who seemed anxious to join our club. At least 3-4 dozen folks were around for the event. Afterwards, we enjoyed a very hearty breakfast at the legendary John G's restaurant, right in the casino complex at the beach. The excellent food nourished our bodies, while the glimpse of the tail-end of the transit had already nourished our brains!!!

Joe Badal & crew	Early morning Moon
Ben Kolstad & crew	Northern Group
More Northern Group	News Crew Interview
More News Crew Interview

Bill Williams

Out-Smarting the Clouds along Alligator Alley

The prediction for the weather in southern Florida for the much anticipated June 8, 2004 Venus Transit was favorable for the East Coast. But, as so often happens here, the weather didn't cooperate. Following the Lightning-Calgary hockey game, I ventured outside and saw huge thunderheads already forming just offshore with abundant lightning! And I downloaded a GOES satellite weather image which showed multiple storms brewing (see attached satellite image). I knew this was an ominous sign for imaging the transit on the East Coast. Catching a glimpse of the event seemed possible between storms but as anyone who images knows, there is considerable set-up time and multiple exposures are necessary to catch a few good ones. Furthermore, imaging with webcams means having a laptop on site; computers don't like getting wet! So I figured the only way to beat these eastern storms, which I figured would only grow by morning, was to head west out Alligator Alley.

I left at 4 AM and the storms shrank in my rear-view mirror as I headed towards Naples. But they didn't totally disappear and as it was getting light by 6 AM, I had to setup getting as far as mile marker 63, which is a rest stop (see attached map image). I set up on a berm above a swamp (my feet were totally soaked) and was shocked that by 6:45 AM, the clouds kept growing almost "following the sun up"! I have attached an image showing the "beautiful" sunrise complete with crepuscular rays. I then wondered if I had gone far enough west. By 7 AM, things hadn't improved and I was feeling defeated when the sun suddenly popped above the clouds at 7:03 AM! It was like a Chinese fire drill finding the sun in the webcam, positioning the image, focusing and making the appropriate settings in the software!

I managed to capture a close-up of Venus on the Sun just before third contact and the image is attached! Granulation can be seen on the photosphere despite the sun still being behind cirrus clouds. The sun danced in and out of clouds and I have have some very interesting videos of the transit mysteriously cloaked in clouds! I took off the webcam and also took some hand-held digital images with my Olympus 4040Z camera. The image that is attached of the whole sun was taken after third contact. You can still see clouds and a few faint sunspots. I have also attached an image of me with the scopes.

I feel very fortunate that I bagged a few images on my transit mini-safari! A few more miles east and I would have gotten nothing! And I did NOT forget to see the transit visually through the refractor – that is a sight I will never forget. Venus was HUGE! And to top it all off, I made it to work the same morning.

I would have preferred Egypt but this wasn't so bad after all!

Sun with Venus just prior to third contact

Whole sun with Venus in egress

Pre-dawn IRC image	Map of where I set up
Beautiful sunrise but no Sun	Setup on the Berm
Catching a Glimpse

Gary Wasserstein

Success in New York

I'm back in NY now. I did view the transit from Jones Beach NY this morning. Got there 5:30 AM. The sun broke through some horizon cloudiness about 6 AM. The attached photo was taken through an 8" Meade SCT with a Thousand Oaks type II solar filter. A Nikon Cool Pix 885 digital camera hand held to a 22mm Panoptic eyepiece.

Sorry the Florida weather wasn't kind to you and the rest of the club.

Tom Sarko

Chasing the clouds in Palm Beach

I had a very similar experience in Palm Beach at the eastern/beach end of Royal Palm Way. A small group of one student, one parent, three other teachers and I (plus some passersby) assembled at about 6:15. We also had a brief glimpse of the Sun, with no transit revealed, shortly after sunrise. Shortly before 7:00 AM, we had a "sucker hole" that the Sun almost completely rose into, but the mostly northward moving clouds just prevented the disk of Venus from being observed. At that point, the student and I decided to go mobile, driving north. We had two good viewing stops, using filtered binoculars and hand-held, cardboard-framed filters. While we certainly didn't witness, much less time, third contact, our first stop must have been close to it, because we observed almost all of Venus' disk. Our second and last stop was at the Palm Beach Inlet where we continued to observe the transit past fourth contact. At that point, we were too happy just to have the clear view, and I was too busy trying to get at least one photo, to do any serious timing. Being "on-the-fly" as we were, the binoculars proved much more valuable than the two small telescopes I had with me.

I don't know if I got anything worthwhile on film or not. However, after seeing lots of beautiful images on the Internet earlier in the morning, there was still something very special about having the photons associated with the event (fairly) directly hitting my retinas.

Joe Daukantas

Clouds and Mosquitoes in Hobe Sound

Went to Hobe Sound Beach at 6:15 AM. Completely cloudy at the horizon. Stayed till 6:45, received about 50 bug bites #$%%^&, and left for some food. While savoring my pancakes, the Sun pops out at about 7:05. Ran out of the restaurant grabbed my video camera that was all set up already from before with a 8x50 finder in front of it and got about a little over 4 minutes of 3rd contact going into 4th, then a large cloud move in. The waitress came out and said, "Are going to pay your bill?" Good thing they know I'm a nut.

Bob Rowland

Thirty Seconds in Hobe Sound

I tried to observe in Jupiter at Coral Cove on Jupiter Island. It was mostly cloudy to the east but not so bad that I wasn't hopeful for a gap in the clouds. To the immediate south it looked like it was raining hard on South Jupiter and Juno. The rain was moving north so I packed up and drove to Hobe Sound. The sun was shining through a break in the clouds there and I had enough time to set up my little scope and project the sun onto a shadow box. For about 30 seconds at about 7:05 I saw Venus preparing to leave the sun's disk, then the sun was behind the clouds again until after the transit ended.

Jerry Niksch

Venus Wiped Out in Jupiter Florida

Hope you guys at Lake Worth had better luck than we did here in Jupiter. We were totally wiped out! Mike Palermiti, a friend of his and myself were at the beach and watched a large thunderstorm came up from the south along the coast and it rained from 6:45 to 7:45. There was actually the beginnings of a waterspout. Oh well, there's always 2012! The transit looked good on TV though.

Kye Ewing

Venus Transit from Venus Florida

I got up this morning - ready to enjoy the Venus transit - only to notice a thunderhead looming over the eastern horizon. Since everything was already set up and ready to go, I figured I might as well give it a try. I had prepared to take pictures of the sunrise, so the clouds might at least make for some good shots. As it turned out it was a very interesting sunrise to photograph. Unfortunately I later learned that my astro-friends along the coast were UNDER that thundercloud - getting rained out! As I took pictures I debated with myself on whether I should save some shots for another low-tech attempt at eyepiece projection. The sunrise was so spectacular that I decided to use the film on it and just watch the transit. While it was in progress I found myself wishing I had saved a few shots to at least "give it a shot". As the sun rose over the distant treetops the transit came into view. WOW -- Venus was still several acrminutes from the edge! Then it happened!!! The clouds moved over the Sun and my view was blocked! How frustrating! This reminded me of the day several years ago when my son, Carl, and I were at the South Florida Science Museum for the Jupiter/Venus conjunction. Undaunted by the fact that it was happening in the daytime, we had plenty of pesky clouds for that one, too. We located the pair with binoculars - using the Moon for a guide - and no sooner got the eerie view of Jupiter and Venus in the same one-degree telescope field - than the clouds moved in again! We had a crowd of anxious visitors and only Carl and I had glimpsed the conjunction. The clouds never cleared. Was this going to be a repeat of that irritating event! Who ordered these clouds anyway!?! Just as I was noticing how "not of this world" the illuminated clouds looked through the solar filter out popped the Sun again! Venus was still at least one of its diameters from the edge. This time the clouds stayed politely out of the way and I settled in for "the grand tour." I noticed that with 80X magnification, Venus was a sharp round disk. At higher magnifications there was a hazy zone around it. Was this the atmospherics of Earth or Venus? The edge of the Sun didn't show this type of effect at all. Sure, everything was "boiling" a bit, but as the Sun got higher things got a bit steadier, while the hazy effect around Venus stayed very much the same. As 3rd contact approached I watched carefully for the much-talked-about "black drop effect". Venus' disk seemed to come right up to the Sun's edge with no real change. Then as contact actually occurred it became kind-of a hairline "boil-zone". I wondered - was this the black drop effect? Not what I expected! Sure wish I saved the last few shots of film! From there it was pretty much as would be expected. Venus made its way off the edge and the Sun was left with a couple of nice sunspots near the center. No pictures of the transit, but find attached a picture of a pretty nice sunrise!

Venusian Solar Transit -June 8, 2004