by Bob Jardine
Up until last night, it had been easy. Just scan around with binoculars when the sky started getting a little bit dark after sunset. But Venus has been "dropping" fast, so I started looking earlier each night.
Last night, 4 and a fraction days prior to the transit, I was able to spot it without too much difficulty with binoculars at around 8:15 PM. That's a few minutes before nominal sunset, but after the sun has set from the perspective of my house. Venus is still pretty bright, but it is now very low in the West and the sky is still very bright at that time, so Venus is not at all obvious.
Tonight, I knew that just sweeping with binoculars probably wasn't going to work. Based on its "trajectory" over the past few evenings, I figured that it would be too low and too difficult that way.
So instead, I set up my telescope, with solar filter, and aimed it at the Sun right before effective local sunset (behind the house across the street). That was about 7:50 PM local time. The sun went behind the house at 7:55, and I removed the solar filter. I knew it would be only about 10 minutes or so before Venus entered the field. While I waited, I scanned with binoculars in the same location that I found it last night at 8:15. Nothing doing. I was pretty sure I was in the right place -- I stood in exactly the same spot as the night before, and the roofline across the street and a couple of tall trees framed the field nicely. But there was nothing there -- the sky was just too bright.
So I went back to the 'scope and watched and waited. The sky was still very bright at 8:05. I wasn't very hopeful. Finally, right at 8:10, I caught it -- and just in time. It was even lower than I expected, and within a minute it ducked down behind the normal coastal fog/cloud bank that was sitting out West, no more than a degree or two above the house, and not much more than 8 or 10 degrees above the horizon. I think this observation was also before "official" sunset time about 10 minutes later.
8:10 PM PDT should be 03:10 UT, I guess, on 6/5. So that's about 3 days and 2 hours and a few minutes before the transit starts (6/8 at just after 5:00 UT). 74 and a fraction hours to start of transit. Maybe 3 hours more than that to inferior conjunction.
Tomorrow night, I'll be on an airplane, so I'll probably miss it, and I'm sure it will be way too close to the Sun on Sunday. So that's probably as close as I'm going to get.
Please let me know, anyone, if you manage to see Venus Saturday night.
Happy Venus Transit, everyone!
Posted on sf-bay-tac Jun 05, 2004 00:16:31 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.1 Jul 12, 2004 21:45:57 PT