Wow! Amateur astronomers around the world looked to the sky last night and early this morning to observe Venus as it passed across the face of the Sun for the last time this century. The images are coming in fast and furious from what was an awesome event! Our lead image is from Jim Nista in Huntington Beach, California who said on Flickr, “Saw the contrails approaching the Sun’s disk and starting snapping as fast as the Canon 7D could go!”
See more below from all around the world, and also check out some of the first images and videos from last night. You can also watch a replay of our live webcast here. For many of the images from Flickr, click on the images for a higher resolution view.
Our friend Gadi Eidelheit from Israel hosted a transit event, taking this sci-fi- looking image, and many more. He has a full write-up on his Venus Transit blog.
This composite of a sequence of images are from Efrain Morales in Puerto Rico. “Clouds moved out and but the Sahara dust still lingered,” Efrain told Universe Today. “Started my sequence on 22:07ut thru 22:36ut. It was a Spectacular sight.” Equipment: SolarMax40 Refractor, PowerMate 2.5x barlows, P/B LX200ACF 12 in. OTA, CGE mount, PGR Flea3 Ccd, Astronomik Ir filter.
Kaizad Viraf Raimalwala from the Purdue University Astronomy Club in Indiana sent in this image: “In this picture, we were using an 8″ Meade LX-200 and piggybacked my friend’s Nikon D7000 on it. Took this picture myself with my Nikon D90,” he told us. “Had a lot of cloud cover at start so we missed the ‘teardrop’ effect and since we were in West Lafayette, Indiana, the sun set long before Contact 3 and 4.”
Renowned amateur astrophotographer Monthy Leventhal from Australia sent us this ‘digital filtergram’ of the Venus. He said seeing conditions were poor, as it was very cloudy, with showers, but he still managed a great shot. Camera: Canon 600D, Filter: H-alpha 6Å, Telescope: Solaris.
Leonard E. Mercer from Malta wrote us, “Here is one of my images taken today at 6.01.57 local time (UT.04.01.57). The conditions were very favourable. I didn’t expect such sharpness considering the sun was so low. From our region we could only view the end of the transit. But still I am very happy with the resulting image.”
This one from Dave Griffith in Canada, who said, “Made at 6:05 PM with a Pentax K-r, a Takumar-A 2x tele-converter, a Sigma 100-300mm 1:4.5-6.7 DL lens, and a solar filter made from a sheet of Seymour Solar Optical Thin Film. The image was made on the side of Highway 63 between Fort McMurray and Edmonton. This was taken at ISO 100 with an aperture of f/11 and an equivalent focal length of 900mm. A brief tale about how I lucked out in even seeing the sun today is posted here.
Ramiz Qureshi from Pakistan wrote to tell Universe Today, “We were badly clouded out here in Karachi, Pakistan for the past 2 days. In an awesome coincidence, the clouds stayed still on the morning of transit, doubling as an atmospheric filter. This allowed us to observe the Sun plainly with our naked eyes as it rose with the transit already in progress.” Qureshi added that the two silhouettes actually is a composite/overlap of two shots taken an hour apart.
Saeed Amiri from Tehran, Iran took this image at 8:12 AM local time using a Canon PowerShot SX210 with Focal length: 70 mm, Exposure time: 1/640 sec, ISO: 100
F-stop: f/5.9, Filter: Mylar.
Jukka Seppälä from Finland wrote to show us his artistic views of the Venus transit. “I have tried to get some kind of artistic impression by manipulating photos with extreme exposure, contrast, brightness levels etc.”
Patrick Cullis provided this video of an airliner joining in on the transit action:
https://vimeo.com/43523342
Another phenomenon observed during the transit included the ‘black drop’ effect – the small black teardrop shape that appears to connect Venus to the limb of the Sun just after it has fully entered the solar disc and again later, when it begins to leave the disc. Tavi Greiner captured it!
Thanks to everyone who sent in images or posted them to our Flickr page. As always, you can see more great images at our pool page on Flickr.
the first one takes the cake!! brilliant photos all of them 🙂
I should clarify – that picture with two silhouettes actually is a composite/overlap of two shots taken an hour apart. Be better if UT were to include this in the description given 🙂
my roomate’s ex-wife got paid $15158 the prior week. she is making an income on th e laptop and got a $584800 home. All she did was get fortunate and set to work the advice shown on this web site
?????? (Click At My Name For Link)
Yes! I wondered about that photo! Thank You for the clarification.
my friend’s mother-in-law makes $85 every hour on the computer. She has been out of a job for 6 months but last month her paycheck was $19177 just working on the computer for a few hours. Read more here
?????? (Click At My Name For Link)
Thanks for clarifying!
Wasn’t that just too cool! I actually did not expect Venus to be as large. I projected the Sun’s image with Venus and twin bands of Sun Spots! Too cool! I showed the neighbors then took the set up to my wife’s school. I set it up there and showed the remaining kids from study hall the view. They were impressed! Me too!.
Nothing but Wow. I am very happy to be part of this worldwide event and see all the great photos. Many says that there were clouds, we also had clouds, but the clouds made some photos very very unique. After all a regular photo is just a yellow (or red or orange) circle with a small black circle. But the clouds and other atmospheric conditions make the photos above so special and unique. Thanks for all the photographers for sharing.
Thanks a lot for this my second pubblication on Universe Today but i’m Niki Giada, not Niki GAIDA and the photo was taken from Italy 🙂 The title, referring to the Japanese fishermen, it was purely “artistic” 😉
The transposition of letters is a common typo Niki. However I understand your pique about this! 🙂 I am of two minds about “Artistic” titles for photos submitted to a web page devoted to science. Maybe you should have explained the title when you submitted the shot. Because people with a scientific background are Very literal, critical, and precise. As they should be. 🙂
I hadn’t submitted,they chose my photo from flickr,where i write the title using “title” 😀 I’m inspired by the novel “Sadako will leben” of Karl Bruckner,in italian versione “Big Sun on Hiroshima” 🙂
Well, at least you received attribution for your photo! That is more than some sites do, even if they did misspell your name! By the way, I liked your photo! Good work.
Sorry for the typo Niki (as you can imagine we were busily going through tons of photos and trying to get them posted as quickly as possible….) and also for clarifying your location.
I’m glad someone was able to take some shots because Tokyo was clouded and rainy. Speaking of which the shot of the ‘Great Sun of Hiroshima’ is inaccurate as the transit began before 7am local time and finished during lunch time. The sunrise this time of year starts at 4:30. I’m wondering what the shot is you submitted Niki.
IM GLAD I SEE THIS PHOTOS BECAUSE I MISSED TO SEE THE VENUS TRANSIT 🙁 AND IM SO SAD I MISSED IT BECAUSE THE VENUS TRANSIT WILL BE SEEN AGAIN IN THE YEAR OF 2117 AND 2125 🙁 …