Pictures that I took thru my telescope from the transit of Venus on June 8th, 2004 (note that I do have a solar filter that allows for such observations of the sun. NEVER look at the sun thru a telescope without such protection!). For those not familar with what a transit is, simply put it's when a celestial body cuts across the sky in front of the sun. By definition, from the Earth, few objects can make such passes, as they have to lie between the Earth and the sun, thus only Mercury, Venus, the Moon (a.k.a. a solar eclipse), and any other satellite orbiting overhead can produce a transit. The Venusian Transit is special due to it's rarity; the event occurs only twice every 130 years or so! Actually they take place following a 121½, 8, 105½, 8 year cycle. The next transit will be June 6, 2012, but if you miss that, you'll have to wait until 2117!!!

	5:43am - The transit wasn't supposed to be visible for long here in Iowa, and was supposed to only be visible for a little less than an hour after sunrise. Unfortunately, things weren't looking good when I got up and headed out back to set everything. Fortunately, the skies began to clear enough for the sun to poke out just in time to see the last 10 minutes of the 8 hour event!
	5:52am - A few clouds were still in the way, but with only 8 minutes left in the transit, I had to try anyway. Fortunately, as you can see, with my 6mm eyepiece I was still able to find it!
	5:53am
	5:54am
	5:55am
	5:56am - At this point I decided to use my 10mm eyepiece instead, opting for a slightly wider view.
	5:57am
	5:58am
	5:59am
	6:00am - Like before, opting for yet another wider view, here I switched to my 20mm eyepiece, just as the event came to a close.