Transit of Venus

As with last year's transit of Mercury, we once again enjoyed perfect timing in beautiful sunny weather to witness the transit of Venus on 8 June 2004. These pictures were taken at Liss Mill, Hampshire, England, with a 2 megapixel Nikon CoolPix 2000 digital camera pointing into a 25mm Plossl eyepiece, both provided by my colleague Costa Nikols, mounted on my Celestron C5+ Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope fitted with a Thousand Oaks full-aperture solar filter. The pictures have been resized by a factor of two in each direction.

Near mid-transit

Just before third contact

Between third and fourth contact