Transit of Venus: First Images

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The transit of Venus across the face of the Sun — the last one for another 105 years — has begun! Here are some first images from various astrophotographers, telescopes, space missions. This first one comes from amateur astronomer Jason Melquist from Minneapolis, Minnesota USA taken just as Venus began its ingress into the Sun’s interior face.

See more below, and we’ll be adding images as they come in! And if you aren’t watching our live webcast, see it here.

This image from the Solar Dynamics Observatory has a definite ‘WOW!’ factor, with huge coronal loops just under Venus transiting the Sun:

This one comes via Camilla SDO, the fearless mascot of the Solar Dynamics Observatory, who says of this image taken in 304 Angstrom wavelength, “This channel is especially good at showing areas where cooler dense plumes of plasma (filaments and prominences) are located above the visible surface of the Sun. Many of these features either can’t be seen or appear as dark lines in the other channels. The bright areas show places where the plasma has a high density.”

Below is a quick first movie from SDO of Venus’ ingress in 171 Angstrom!

And here’s SDO’s first “official” image of the transit, in 171 Anstrom wavelength:

Jeremy Smith from Atlanta Georgia sent us views of his setup for ‘safe’ viewing of the transit. “My safe viewing rig is composed of a cheap tripod, a faulty rifle scope, three FedEx boxes and a FedEx mailer,” he said. “I got to see it with my daughter at home but we lost it behind the trees. We hightailed it to the local park but by the time we got there, it was a wash. We lost it behind clouds. The pictures of the transit didn’t turn out very well though. But I saw it!”

His view, below:

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