Transit of Venus: first pics

Posted: June 6, 2012 by tallbloke in Astronomy
Tags: , ,

Friends in the parts of the world where the transit of Venus was visible have been snapping away. Here are the first few pics:

Comments
  1. Harold Ambler says:
    June 6, 2012 at 11:25 am

    Wondering if the bottom one is upside-down … Each is beautiful — thank you!

  2. Harold Ambler says:
    June 6, 2012 at 11:52 am

    OK, sorry, scratch that. I’d thought, wrongly, that Venus was staying visible on the upper half of the solar disk. Beware early-morning commenting!

  3. steveta_uk says:
    June 6, 2012 at 11:55 am

    I didn’t know the sun had a “top” – so what defines upside-down?

  4. Richard111 says:
    June 6, 2012 at 1:05 pm

    I managed to catch a picture from http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/realtime-update.html which is ‘inverted’ wrt the third picture above.
    Blowed if I know which is right side up. 🙂

  5. tallbloke says:
    June 6, 2012 at 4:16 pm

    It gets confusing when you use reflecting telescopes to mount your camera on, but
    I think these shots are the ‘right way round’.

  6. Bart Leplae says:
    June 6, 2012 at 7:01 pm

    Food for thought …

    For both the Sun and Venus, we observe the apparent images which are displaced from the actual direction. The apparent displacement of Sun and Venus are different in both magnitude and direction. And in addition, we only observe light coming from the Sun (part of which is missing because of Venus).

    “The effect of planetary aberration on Venus transit observations”
    http://www.gsjournal.net/Science-Journals/Essays/View/4044

  7. Gray says:
    June 6, 2012 at 7:12 pm

    NASA’s SDO collection is worth a look.

    http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?collection_id=14483&media_id=145648241

  8. Brian H says:
    June 7, 2012 at 5:44 am

    Obviously, observers in down-underland will see the Sun as being upside down, like themselves.

    |8-)

  9. Brian H says:
    June 7, 2012 at 5:53 am

    Harold;
    You were right the first time. Watch this RT movie:
    http://solar.nro.nao.ac.jp/norh/html/10min/2012/06/06/movie.html

  10. Wayne Job says:
    June 7, 2012 at 10:53 am

    Brian H, A long time ago the positive and negative terminals on batteries were classified wrongly, as electrons are negative and flow from the positive to negative terminal, that is impossible, so batteries are bassakwards. The same mistake was made with magnetism as the north pole on a magnet points north. This would suggest that those of us down under are actually pointing upwards, that makes us on top of the world. Science has yet to come to terms with up and down but they have been successful with spin and charm.

  11. tallbloke says:
    June 7, 2012 at 11:31 am

    Wayne J: You need a one of these.

    http://www.mapcenter.com/?c=web2.42&product=HEMA+WOR+UP+WA

  12. Brian H says:
    June 8, 2012 at 1:48 pm

    Wayne;
    ya, ya, I know all that. But my point stands. People in Oddstrahlya see the Sun inverted from those of us on the proper hemisphere.