Transit of Venus

I spent a lot of effort trying to figure out where in Ohio would be clear enough to see the transit, and ended up heading toward Sandusky because it looked like a hole might open.

GOES of cloud coverage on transit day
GOES of cloud coverage on transit day.

When I got near the lake, a nice blue patch was developing, with a stiff East wind which made it seem even more promising.

 

 

So I headed  east and found a spot at Nickel Plate Beach in Huron.  It’s a small beach near a humongous lime plant;  lots of the nice yellowish sand that Lake Erie manufactures in abundance.

I set up a small telescope, an ETX-125 with a Mylar solar filter and  Canon 60Da mounted on it, and the little PST H-alpha scope for eyeballing, and waited hopefully for the clouds to move off.

 

As it turned out, there was lot of cirrus that stuck around, but I got some decent pictures, and made the

composite below.

 

It’s a bit fuzzy from the clouds, but shows the “black drop” effect that is one of the interesting features of these transits, in which it appears that the disk of Venus stretches a bit as it crosses into the sun.  The pictures are 30 seconds apart.

 

 

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