Venus Observed!

[JimmyH155]

Fabulous through my PST. Not many sunspots though. There was a group of them around the middle of the sun about 5 of them in a roughly triangular pattern. None near Venus. Cloud came in at 10:00, so I abandoned it and went to work

[gary]

The transit is getting a lot of media coverage. Certainly far, far more than the
2004 event.

Yahoo 7 News is running a story today about a road worker in Mataranka, Northern Territory,
putting a back hoe through fibre optic cables yesterday which Telstra said caused internet,
mobile phone and landline services in parts of the Territory to go out.

Part of the NASA live coverage of the transit had been planned to be streamed from an
Alice Springs school where Columbus State University had set up imaging equipment.

A mathematics teacher at the Centralian Middle School said the webcast had
been working intermittently whilst communications were being restored but that
nevertheless pupils at the school were excited to be part of a global event organised by NASA.

He reported that there had also been occasional been high cloud over Alice Springs
that at times obstructed the view.

Story here -
http://au.news.yahoo.com/latest/a/-/...cast-in-chaos/

[Mariposa (Amalia)]

I didn't have the right equipment for imaging, so I focused in showing the transit to as many people as possible with my little Coronado PST mounted on a regular camera tripod, first stop was my son's class, where he did some "show and tell" explaining what was happening, he is mad about astronomy and was begging me for weeks to take the scope to his school for show and tell...what better opportunity than this?.

The children loved it! I spent a lot more time there than I expected. Next step, a public viewing organised by the local astronomy club at the wharf.....it went very well, we promoted the viewing days before and a lot of people turned to see it.

I don't regret not having photos, I knew there will be tons of awesome pics online. I left everything for the last moment and didn't find a suitable filter for my 10'' sct and don't have the right gear to fit the camera to the coronado.

[alistairsam]

Quite a large turnout at the Melbourne Observatory.
Had a Look through most scopes including a few PST's.
Some nice projection setups, plenty of amateur scopes, the tours through the big observatory scopes were booked out.
Hope I'm not infringing on any copyrights here, I don't mean to.

[hotspur (Chris)]

WOW!,it has been such a wonderful day.great to all the wonderful results-the best being-getting out there and sharing our wonderful hobby,we had some neighbours and friends all turn up and enjoy this treat.

That one child that came back to an IIS member's scope 5 or 6 times to view,is where I was 40 years ago-once well bittern by the astronomy bug-it will come back later in life.Makes it all worth while having all this gear for a unique event.

Here is an image from 2.24 pm today,through 4 inch Vixen apo refractor with a Canon 50d.

[AdrianF (Adrian)]

Cloudless until 7ish then clouds rolled in until 1ish missed it completely have to wait until 2117

Adrian

[kustard (Simon)]

Managed to get about 30 minutes all up today during work for some observing. I had three of the IIS solar glasses with me and showed about 10 to 15 people the transit in progress. It was great to see their interest in it