Yesterday was I day I’d been literally counting down to for 6 1/2 years, or 2,935 days — and it totally lived up to the hype. My first and last viewing of a Transit of Venus was simply awesome, and well worth the drive to Carbondale.
(Now, only 1,902 days until the next big event! Heh.)
Anyway, after returning home from the mountains at around 12:30 AM, I downloaded all of my transit photos and videos, but I haven’t had a chance to process and upload them yet. I hope to do that tonight. I’ll eventually be posting a full gallery on Flickr, and some Vimeo clips. So, stay tuned.
In the mean time, to tide you over, here’s a picture I got of the “black drop effect“:
I took that photo 13 seconds after the one that I tweeted. Both were shot through the viewfinder of a telescope. (I would eventually figure out how to reduce the exposure a bit, resulting in less overexposed pics, through the same telescope, like this one.)
Also, here’s a photo of me next to the Transit of Venus — well, next to a pinhole projection thereof, anyway.
If you look really closely, you can just barely make out Venus in the “southwest” portion of the Sun (which is upside-down due to the pinhole device’s mirror). You can see it more easily if you look at a larger version of the photo.
Here’s one where you can see Venus more clearly, but me less clearly:
Hey, last chance till 2117 — I needed photographic proof that I was there. 🙂
After the jump, my personal Storify timeline of the transit, chronicling — with tweets, RTs replies and @mentions — my experience, starting with my decision about where to watch from (Tucson, Denver, or the Rocky Mountains?) and then continuing with my road trip to Carbondale, Colorado, and my viewing of the transit.