Venus Transit

The Transit of Venus took place June 5th. A transit is where a planet goes between its star and the observer. So Venus was going to go between us and the Sun.

I still had available the solar observing telescope that was used for the eclipse a couple of weeks ago. This time set up in my backyard here in Tehachapi.

The transit started in the mid afternoon and continued through early evening. The usual Tuesday Poetry group gathered in my backyard and watched the transit. Then went inside and created poems inspired by the event that won't be seen again until 2117.

Here is an image of the transit, projected through the telescope onto the white metal screen of the solar observing system. The black dot on the image of the Sun is Venus.

 The citizen science group planethunters.org uses changing light levels as a way of detecting transits of extra-solar planets, that is, planets around other stars.