On 8th June 2004 something happened no living person ever saw, a transit of the planet Venus in front of the sun. Due to the tilt of the orbits of Venus and Earth this happens not everytime Venus overtakes Earth in it´s Orbit nearer to the Sun, but only if Earth and Venus are on the so-called nodes of Venus´orbit. The last time it happened was 122 years ago...

We, the Vorarlberger Amateur Astronomen set up on the Bödele a pass near the city of Dornbirn in Vorarlberg/Austria. We were very happy to have a clear blue sky for the whole event. With 7 telescopes we were able to give interested visitors a chance to view the event close-up and also had some great views for ourselves. I made some pictures of the transit, and our transit party, which you can see here:

All white-light transit images were made using my Vixen R-130S telescope on a Super Polaris mount using a Nikon Coolpix 4500 camera and a Vixen LV 12mm eyepiece in a Vixen Digital Camera Adapter.

Click on the thumbnails to see a higher resolution version...

While watching the ingress of the planet´s disc across the Sun´s edge through Robert Seebergers 10" LX200 Meade telescope, I noticed a faint arc silhouetting the dark limb of Venus. The backlighted atmosphere was visible! Even through the ND5 Astrosolar solar filter, which let´s only about 1/10000 ot light pass through. I intentionally overexposed the images above, to make the arc (faintly) visible.