There’s a little black spot on the sun today... (Sting)

The weather was very good and we were able to see all four contacts! This was so exciting, and it reminded me of the reports I had read in the 1882 stories. The spot really was visible to the naked eye through the viewing glasses we were using.

We got to see it through the Hydrogen-alpha filters too. The surface detail on the sun was exciting to see in real time. We even saw the Black Drop effect, though I don’t think we ever saw the halo event with the cameras. Perhaps processing the images later will turn up something more. CNN and the Today Show contacted Wade Sissler who told us that they wanted to use our images but that the ‘Exploratorium’ logo had to be removed. We did this, so I have to assume that the video was used. The Exploratorium website was so badly hammered by viewers that the server was hung up for hours. Museums that used our special private page to get a high resolution download were often locked out because of the heavy traffic. I assume that we will hear later about how popular this event was compared to the eclipses we have done. The Greek newspaper carried the AP article by Malcolm Ritter who interviewed me a few weeks ago. Before I left, the Kensington and Chevy Chase Gazettes carried the long interview I did with Matt, along with a photo of me. Many other articles, including the ones in the Washington Post, WTOP, CNN and others preferred to interview other astronomers. None mentioned the Exploratorium web cast. If you did a Google search for transit of Venus, it would be Fred Espenak’s page that would turn up, followed by our NASA/Sun Earth Day page - not bad at all!

How did I feel about the transit? I was so intent on doing the web cast that the impact of the event kind of slipped by me. We all commented on how exciting it was to see something not observed for 122 years. The views through the telescopes were spectacularly detailed on the monitors too, as you can see from some of the still shots. I enjoyed the simplicity of seeing the event through my glasses especially. We spent a lot of time squinting at the monitor outside, to see the images of the sun in Hydrogen-alpha and visible light provided by the telescopes. It was very hard to see anything because of the glare on the screen, but fortunately everything was taped and recorded for later playback when we were finished with the programs. At that time, it was exciting to see the transit begin as a miniscule dark semicircle grew at last into the image of the Venus black disk at Second Contact. I never saw the famous Halo event, and I am not really sure I saw the equally famous Black Drop Effect, even when the images were played back afterwards. These were the highlights of the past transits, and I think that our raw images through the telescope just didn't have the clarity to show them well. Sometimes the human eye is a better optical instrument afterall! But, Igor obtained many hindreds of images and when I get back to Goddard I will process the data to see what is actually there. Now THAT will be very fun for me, even more so than the confused experience at the telescope. Astronomers often get a bigger kick doing it this way, than actually getting worked up about what is going through the telescope at the time of the actual observation. Delayed gratification in the age of satellite astronomy is very much the rule of the day - at least for me!