2004 Transit of Venus

Lerwick, Shetland 8 June 2004

On 8 June 2004 Venus crossed the face of the Sun as seen from Earth. The last time that occurred was 1882 and the next time will be 6 June 2012 - though that transit will only be visible for only about the last hour and three-quarters from Shetland, after sunrise at about 4 am local time. A planetary transit is like a solar eclipse, but instead of the Moon being between the Earth and Sun it is a planet. Also, unlike a solar eclipse, which blocks out much, or the entire suns disk, a transit obscures only a very small part of the sun and a solar-filtered optical aid is necessary to see it properly. Only Mercury and Venus can transit the Sun since they are the only two planets between the Earth and the Sun. I took these images with an Optolyth TBS-80 30x spotting scope and a Nikon Coolpix 3100 digital camera attached to the eyepiece, which provided a challenge in terms of getting good images. The transit was obscured by cloud in Lerwick at first but the sky cleared about 07:30 until 10:15 and the transit was visible off and on through cloud until about 11:45. The sky cleared again for much of remainder of the transit and these are some of my best images.