Sra.do Monte, Leiria - Portugal
6:20 and 12:25 (UT)
This long waited astronomical event happened on a perfect day , with clear sky all over the country during all the event. The meteorologic conditions were really the only aspect that could stop me to witness such rare and unique event.
The day started some hours before with loading the the equipment in the car , ready to follow the clouds holes if I have to, but the satellite photos at 3 AM were sufficiently good ( in contrast of the forecasts in some websites), so off Sra. do Monte in Cortes, Leiria to arrive on time and still be able to see the pole star to line up the mount.
The sunrise marked the beginning of a scene witnessed by the Humanity almost 120 years ago, not only important for this fact, but because this transit is an impressive event for itself - it could happen every year, but it always be a beautiful demonstration of the mechanics of our Solar System, then to witness this in the first person was strong.
It had the inevitable excitement and natural bustle of wanting simultaneously to observe, to appreciate and to regist a scene that probably will never repeat again in the life. There are unique moments and this was one one of them.
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| The Sun at 5:23 UTC 2 degrees altitude Solar disk looking a bit like smashed potatoe caused by atmospheric refraction and turbulence. The transit already had started … |
It was possible to photograph the Sun before Venus started “to bite” the limb, but the turbulence and clouds prevent to get clear images, but however it provided some images of the Sun strongly distorted.
I left the machines register the famous “drop effect” that is quite perceivable in the ingress's animation . Really, I think that the drop effect is quite related with the turbulence, therefore in the case of the egress I did fail to detect such effect visually or in the images.
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| O efeito de "gota" By this time de Venus disk has completed the ingress.. The turbulence can not be the only cause but does exarcebate sufficiently the effect of “drop” |
After having seen a simulation and photographs on the event, nothing prepared me for that enormous absolutely black disk with a perfect cut at the moments of low turbulence. The visual and three-dimensional sensation is quite non-reproducible. Being accustomed to observe the Sun almost every day, I've found this “ black spot” really uncommon. During the transit the times had been several that put me to appreciate such macula, intercalating with small naps interrupted by the alarm clock each 12 minutes to take another photo.
Then the last moments of the transit arrived and for the last time the hurry activity. One of the telescopes (Tak FC60) was in charge taking off photos each 10 seconds while in the ETX90 was intercalating with making short movies and visual observation. It was a long and exciting session, in one perfect day with lots of pure air and the first skin ten of the year.
The images and animations below are the material memory to later appreciation and remember, and obviously to share with all of you.
Important note :
In all the images and observations the appropriate solar filters had been used to look to the Sun through a telescope. These filters only allow to pass 0,00001% of the light's intensity, also blocking completely the harmful radiations such as the UV.
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 Ingress animation (282Kb) |
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 Transit animation (1.2Mb) |
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| Transit of Venus 05:45 - 11:00 UTC Animation ~12 minutes The ingress and Egress animations 10 seconds Takahashi FC60+ExtQ 1.6x f/12.4 (745mm) and Nikon D70 |
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It was a pitty and were almost no dark spots to contrast with the Venus silhouette, therefore would become more interesting for who observed the Sun for the first time. I had hope that groups 0627 and 0628 would evolved more, but such did not occur wich is normal for current phase of the solar cycle.
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| At mid- transit Takahashi FC60+ExtQ 1.6x f/12.4 (745mm)+ Nikon D70 (clique na imagem - click on the image) |
Having Vénus practically the same Earth's diameter silhouette has the size of our planet observed about 43 million quilometers. But still more amazing it is that the Sun is still more than 100 million quilometers behind… everything is dwarfed next to the Sun. If hypothetically we carried the silhouette to the Sun's “surface” the silhouette would not be much that half of in the distance between the two bigger solar spots in the photo above (at the center).
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| The finest moment of the transit The 3d efect at the final was quite remarkable helped by the limb darkening. Meade ETX90 f/14.3 (1283mm)+ toucam pro |
Contact Times
- Site: Sra do Monte, Cortes - Leiria - Portugal - 39°40'58"N 08°45'18"W alt:395m
- Equipment: ETX90 and Toucam pro at f/14.3 (1283mm)
- Time Measure : Computer time by Internet Time Server - visual confirmation with DCF77 clock at field.
- Time determinationmethod : calculated by AVI file timestamp - no dropped frames at 5/photograms second. *the contacto IV image is previous second at 11:25:07 TUC.
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Contact III - 11:06:04 UTC |
Contact IV - 11:25:08 UTC* |
Earth-Sun distance determination VT-2004 Observation Campaign em http://vt2004.imcce.fr/vt2004i/Index.php  |
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Views from the site and equipment |
* click for more details about the transit http://www.tv2004.org/