Well, it's started! View from Dublin has been intermittent so far. I'm observing with a pair of 10x50 binoculars fitted with AstroSolar filters.

6:19 - First Contact - Sun barely visible through hazy clouds

6:23:25 - first clear glimpse; Venus just about visible encroaching onto the Solar disk

6:24 - cloudy

6:35 - EUREKA! Sky clears - Venus is obvious as a large black dot in the 7-o'clock position - unfortunately the black-drop effect is over, and second contact has passed

6:41 - clouded over again, giving me time to type this message up!

Clear skies!
=D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D>

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7:16 - very clear now. There don't appear to be any sunspots visible, which is a pity.

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ITS NOT GONNA BE VISIBLE IN ARIZONA :-(. ::cries:: lol

I saw it! \/

For once the clouds didn't spoil the view!
I couldn't spot the atmosphere, but the "black drop" effect was clearly visible.

Not the greatest picture but I just woke up and can't seem to get my digital camera to work (had to plug it in and use live video mode).

After all the eclipses I've missed because of cloud - it's clear, well, clear enough here (NW London), high cirrus cloud (probably con trails ).

I'm using my old (and non-astronomical) telescope. The sunlight falling directly on the paper is white (like the paper!) but by the time it's gone through all the lenses, it's pale yellow!! ?

Can't see any sunspots either - Mercury last year was about the same size as a spot on the Sun. I'd be a bit worried if there were a sunspot as big as Venus

BTW did anyone see the Sky At Night on BBC1, early Monday morning? (repeated next Saturday morning, available on the BBC site later this month). I loved the explanation of the transit of Venus using a lemon, several lengths of string and two hoops!

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Carolyn

"All the screens are filled with heroes and losers, but the sky's still filled with stars"
...Midnight Oil - 'Golden Age'

Yeah I saw it. It was amusing watching the guy struggle with the big hoops and lemon strangled in string.
If I hadn't been so busy at work I would have liked to have made a little webcam/filter setup like that one guy had.

Got my scope set out in front of my house so the neighbours can have a look as well. Great weather, slight wispy clouds but nothing that's affecting the view.

Got to say it looks superb!

Gave my Webcam it's first try out connected to the scope and the results aren't too bad, will try and get onto my website once i've processed the video files. Only problem is CCD chip is too small to get a complete image of the solar disk and I don't have a reducer for the scope, oh well. Still got some fairly nice images. Woohoo!

Which webcam do you have? I've been trying to find a cheap CCD webcam for a while but no stores seem to have one :\

Sky here in Karlsruhe is great, no cloud since two days. But currently the sun is in a position where I can't watch it from my flat. Should be possible in one hour and sure I'll catch 3rd contact.

Harald

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Got a brief look about an hour ago, with the Sun low in the west, and dodging clouds and trees. Some folks across the road projected a decent image through binoculars onto a piece of paper, and Venus was an obvious dot.

Well, I've seen it!

Using a Phillips ToUCam Pro II with a telescope adapter. Webcam cost £50 and the adapter £20.

I now have an image on my website.

Have now got a small flash movie of 2nd contact. Should be in space section of my website.

http://jim.smits.name/Space/Photos.htm

For me as well: Finally the clouds don't ruin my view. I got to work just before 6:00am (EDT). The sun had not risen yet. Then I saw the northern tip trying to clear the haze. I have 9x63 binocs with solar filters. The sun was so dim you couldn't see a thing through them. So I popped off one of the filters and took a quick peak. And there it was at about 3:15 on the edge of the disk. I put the filter back on and waited. It's getting brighter and clearer, getting close to third contact here in central OH (USA).

I was running around trying to find someone so they can see it too. It's a little early for most.

Beautiful. Glad I made the effort.

I just projected it onto some paper while holding binoculars, well actually now it's a monocular.

NASA sure can pull off a hoax!

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12:24 - and the show's over. Next performance in 8 years!

I managed to see the black drop at third contact. \/

Awesome sight!

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Saw the transit from Stockholm, Sweden!

Tried to get a coworker interested.
First, he thought I was trying to set fire to the paper I projected the image on. When I explained, he grabbed the binoculars and tried to look straight
at the Sun...

I've already posted about the transit in another thread but Bermuda got a clear break in the clouds this morning so it was clearly visible for about 15 minutes! \/

It was a little hazy here in Maryland, but not prohibitively so. I tried to see it near home with my eclipse glasses, without success. Then I went over to the University of Maryland and saw it in a couple of telescopes over there. Their eclipse glasses weren't quite so dark as mine, and I was able to see Venus through them. I stuck around through third contact (around 7:05 am EST) and then came on back.

There were at least a hundred people on the viewing balcony with me - the professor who'd organized it said he thought they'd gotten around 400 total. Just in College Park that's more people than have seen Nancy's Planet X!

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Tried to get a video sequence of third contact but it clouded over just before it happened. Never mind, managed to get 2nd contact at least!

Have any of you figured out what the "black drop" effect really is?

I read the Venus Crossing's article in Scientific American with incredulity. It appears the scientists have yet to figure out what really causes the "black drop."

The article even mentioned "optical blurring," which is a non-technical term for how light waves tend to bend around corners. To observe this first-hand, look closely at this print through one eye. Then, point your right index finger to the left and slowly intrude from the right upon your fovial vision (the center of what you're looking at).

At the very edge of your finger, you'll see that it's not blurred, but rather, the image closest to your finger appears to shift to the left. That's because the light waves are bending around the edge of your finger.

And that's why "optical blurring" can NOT be the cause of the black dot. If it were, it wouldn't be a black dot at all, but rather, an orange dimple as the sunlight curved around the planet.

Besides - waves refracting around a small object occurs only with small objects - not planets.

Nor is it the atmosphere. As mentioned in the article, Mercury produces the same effect during transit, without the benefit of an atmosphere. Furthermore, if the atmosphere were refracting, you'd again have an orange dimple effect, not a black dot effect.

So - what is it?

Simple - just think back to physics, more specifically, to the reflectivity of any surface as the angle of incidence approaches zero.

Aha!

It increases! And at near zero angles, it's close to mirror-perfect.

That's why you can see someone's reflection in a rough tabletop provided you and the individual at whom you're looking create a low angle of incidence.

When the planet Venus (or Mercury) nears the limb of the sun, the low angle of incidence reflect the black area of space just beyond the sun's edge - the black dot.

I'm inclined to believe some (perhaps many?) astronomers are so steeped in math (theoretical physics) they forget the basic principles of physics!

And no, for those space nuts out there, it's not a reflection off the alien's cloaking shields, either...

There just HAPPENED to be a bank of clouds sitting on the eastern horizon here in Wichita. What a rip.

Well, it got cloudy here so I missed the very end of the affair, but it was mostly pretty good in Massachusetts. Heh. First time I got up at four in the morning to go watch something. What's the next cool thing that happens this year, this is fun!

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It was mostly clear at USNO, although the biggest problem was dew collocting on the telescopes. But enough of it burned off so that we were able to see the latter part of the transit. (Except for fourth contact. Enough clouds moved in around then that we couldn't see that event.)

Got a good view of the period between third and fourth contact, during sunrise here in N MS. Unfortunately the pictures (of projected images) don't show much. It was nice to see it happening though, even right at the end

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Hey, you've still got the 2012 transit to look forward to. You get to see the bulk of the transit before sunset.

I didn't see it, here in Chicago. I was up, got my home-made solar filter (4-5 layers of AL PE) for my camera and went out. The camera is 10x optical with 3 digital. so I had it at 30x or ~1140mm at 4 megapixels. I made several exposures with f.8 and varied shutter from 1" to .5" at ISO 80 in B&W. Maybe I was too late or the sky was hazy that low on the horizon, because I did not image venus on the Sun's disk.

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J Pax

Good view in Wisconsin. A little hazy, but not too bad. Watched it rise over Lake Michigan. Had a Sunspotter telescope, a pair of Binomites (10x25 binoculars with built in solar filters) and a filtered C-8.

Unfortunately, my pictures don't look that good. Still, had a lot of morning walkers on the lake stop by and take a look, so I would say it was a successful EPO morning

Rob

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I got some reasonably 'OK' pictures in Chicago right at sunrise over the lake, using a Sony 5.0 megapixel with 5x optical zoom, a neutral density filter (not a solar filter), at f/8 with 1/1000 sec. exposure. Not great, but the Venus disk is clearly visible in all of them. Only worked for about the first 15 minutes after sunrise, though, after that the Sun was too bright and completely overwhelmed Venus.

Weather was decent here in New York, for the most part. We had quite a few clouds, so it was a daytime sucker hole contest. All in all, it was a pretty good morning.



Nice to see the BA on NASA TV too as I write. Great images from around the world today.