Venus Transit

Spent the afternoon in semi-outreach mode. My friend's a science teacher at La Canada High School. He had a small story written up in the local throw-away, letting folks know he'd have telescopes set up in one of the lots at the high school. I took off a couple of personal hours from work to help staff this. Wound up on the opposite side of the parking lot from everyone else, though. When I got there, I asked the only other person who looked to be setting up to view the transit, and he said yes, he was with the transit viewing group. So I set up on the baseball field, adjacent to the lot, but partially behind a chainlink fence. After I set up, other kids came down from the school with my friend's telescopes and set them up on the east side of the lot. When I got there, there were still lots of cars in the lot, so that looked like a bad idea.

Still spent about four hours on the field, and another hour after I packed up my telescopes helping out my friend, Tom.

Probably had only 30 or so people look through my telescopes, which obviously isn't much over four hours. Several long conversations, though, including a number with folks who had driven down the hill from JPL. This had to be the best informed group of outreach targets I ever spoke to. ;D

In addition to my 100ED with a white light filter, I had my 60mm Coronado set up on the dual saddle, again (just like in Cedar City).

Some decent shots through the white light filter. The h-alpha ones are tougher, though. The contrast in brightness between the background, the main part of the sun, and the rim areas is just so great I can never get the whole thing in proper exposure. The one I posted here has a severely overexposed body, properly exposed rim, and just the trace of a couple of prominences, including one more or less across the disc from the mid-transit Venus.

My wife also brought a trio of "eclipse glasses" at Griffith Observatory on Sunday. They were a big hit, too. The picture at the top of this post is of kids having a ball with $3 glasses rather than multi-thousand dollar telescopes. . . .