Updated: 2004-06-08 04:00 UTC

The 2004 Transit of Venus.




Live WebCam Images of the Venus Transit on 2004-06-08.

Worth Hill Observatory, Worth Matravers, Dorset, England.



To prevent server overload the images are now being posted to several mirror sites, follow the link to see a list of these sites. The link will open into a new window. The Venus Transit Images from Worth Hill Observatory.



News @ 2004-06-08 04:00 UTC -- The sky is clear, and the Sun is about to rise. Nice half-Moon, as the stars fade away in the twilight.

Introduction to the 2004 Jun 08 Transit of Venus.



A rare chance to see a transit of the planet Venus across the Sun's disc. This happens just a couple of times per roughly 120 years, and this event is quite long, lasting about six hours. The event can be seen across Europe and Africa, but for most of the US it occurs just before their sun rise.

A transit is simply where a planet passes in front of the Sun's disc as seen by the observer. There was a transit of Mercury in 2003, which was widely seen around the daylight side of the world. Only the inferior planets, Mercury and Venus, can Transit the Sun.

Warning: You will go blind in a fraction of a second if you look at the Sun through binoculars or a telescope. The only safe way is to project the image onto a piece of card.

This page will have live images added to it on 2004 Jun 08, approximately every 10 minutes from 05:00 to 12:00 UTC.

When the Moon passes in front of the Sun it can partially or sometimes completely obscure it, and that is known as an eclipse. Another type of eclipse occurs when the full Moon passes through the Earth's shadow, as happened at the beginning of 2004 May. Sometimes the Moon, or one of the planets, will pass in front of a star, or very rarely in front of a planet, and that event is known as an occultation. There was an occultation of Venus by the Moon on 2003 May 21 during daylight hours.



Getting Images of the Venus Transit on 2004-06-08.



This page will have near realtime live images added to it on 2004 Jun 08, approximately every 10 minutes from 05:00 to 12:00 UTC. After the event, these images will hopefully also be assembled into an animation file, which will then be made available on this site.

Some other sites may be running a webcam showing a live picture or images taken at very small intervals. Here we decided to upload a new image every few minutes, as from minute to minute there is very little change in the position of Venus as seen on the Sun. Mercury is quite a small object, but was easily seen last year. Venus is somewhat larger, so there should be no problem finding it on the image.

The images from Worth Hill Observatory last year were from an Astro-Vid camera with frame capture software. Initially, a CCD camera was going to be used, but it was found to saturate easily. Early trials of the Astro-Vid used a small lens in front of the camera to gain a larger image. The camera was heavily protected with several sheets of Baader AstroSolar filter film, to cut down the light level. These are fixed on the Sun side of the lens. A telescope isn't really necessary for this job, but the observatory will also be using one to take some close up views of the transit from time to time throughout the event. This will be heavily protected with special filters at the "big" end of the scope, NOT at the eyepiece. This year, we are going to trial a ToUCam webcam as well as the Astro-Vid camera. Also on site will be a telescope with a Hydrogen Alpha filter and we hope to get some images through that too.

We hope that Jun 8 has clear skies for some serious daytime astronomy!

The date of the event is 2004-06-08, as written in the standard Year-Month-Day format that astronomers have now been using for several centuries. In your old local format you may see the date as either 08/06/2004 (UK) or as 06/08/2004 (US). These correspond to 8th June 2004, or 8 Jun 2004 for UK readers, and for the US as either June 8th 2004 or as Jun 8 2004 in longhand formats. These latter ambiguous numerical formats, where the meaning of the 6 and 8 may be accidentally transposed, and hence misunderstood by the reader, should now all be replaced by the unambiguous YYYY-MM-DD formats shown in International Standard ISO 8601 and in the new Internet Standard RFC 3339.



Transit Information for 2004 Jun 8th.



The transit of Venus is already mentioned by many other web sites. Some provide maps and diagrams of the event, even photographs of previous such events. A few of these are listed below. A Google search will find many more, perhaps that is how you arrived here? On the day there should be no shortage of information about the event from many sources worldwide.

Worth Hill Observatory will be placing live images on this site as they happen. Additional information will be linked from this page, and there may even be some other image galleries of equipment and people to see here. A chat server may also be running during the transit, with Astronomers live and online to answer any questions that you may have.

Warning: You will go blind in a fraction of a second if you look at the Sun through binoculars or a telescope. The only safe way is to project the image onto a piece of card.



Imaging Equipment Used at Worth Hill Observatory.



The equipment to record the transit of Venus



Linking to this site.



Why not link to this page? Add a line of code somewhere on your site, perhaps something like:

<a href="http://home.freeuk.net/dgstrange/transit.venus.2004/" title="Venus Transit, 2004 Jun 8th at Worth Hill Observatory">Live Images of the Transit of Venus 2004</a>



Other Pages with Venus Transit Information:



These links all open in a new window each time.

NASA: 2004 Venus Transit information page.

NASA Diagrams for 2004 Jun 08 Transit.

Transit information pages from Germany.

Live Solar Views from SOHO and LASCO satellites.



Other Useful Sites:



Worth Hill Observatory Main Web Site.

Learn more about Wessex Astronomical Society.

What are those 2004-06-08 format dates all about?

To prevent server overload the images are now being posted to several mirror sites, follow the link to see a list of these sites. The link will open into a new window. The Venus Transit Images from Worth Hill Observatory.



Location:

Worth Hill Observatory, Dorset, U.K.

Latitude: 50deg 36min N     Longitude: 002deg 02min W     Elevation: 130 metres     David Strange.

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