ASO Transit of Venus - Clear Skies over Arkansas

Venus Transit photos from June 5.
From a huge selection of photos from sunny and bright Arkansas Sky Observatory
(ASO).

We were able to use the main observatory for imaging with a proper white light
glass solar filter fitted to a William Optic LZOS 4.4 inch APO refractor
operating at f/4.9. Early images were somewhat unsharp due to heat currents
from the 97 degree afternoon, but the air cooled rapidly toward 1800 hours and
steadied things up very well. A week's preparation went into readying ASO for
this event, including assuring that the tree line to the west would not
interfere until very late in the evening, that the piggybacked refractor would
provide proper field and image resolution, and that the large main observatory
telescope and its sensitive cameras were heat-protected with white foam wrap
throughout the exposure to the sun, even though these primary instruments were
not used except to provide a rock solid tracking platform for the APO telescope.

Even with the dense filter in place to block most of the sun's intensity,
exposures with the CCD camera were still kept to only 1/1000 second or
overexposure would have resulted.

We started imaging at "first bite" which occurred at 17:05 CDT when the sun
first encountered enough of the disk of Venus to be noticeable; by full
immersion onto the sun's disk (about 17:23 CDT local time) the seeing had
improved dramatically. Note the short sequence from 1711 to 1843 CDT, which was
really not enough to present a "dramatic picture" but is nonetheless capable of
showing the westward path of Venus across the sun's disk, only about two hours
of this 7-hour encounter were visible from ASO.

This rare event presented the 8,000 mile diameter Venus between the much larger
888,000 mile diameter sun and Earth; the event can give one some idea of the
true scale of the sun, since Venus is about 67 million miles from the sun's
surface, the sun being 93 million miles from Earth. A slight motion of the sun
eastward, while Venus moves westward, as well as the rare direct-line alignment
of the Earth, Venus and the Sun, allowed for this beautiful spectacle of nature,
the last of which can be seen from Earth until 2119.

Although sunspots in recent weeks have been quite active and prevalent, these
were quite small and rather inconspicuous during this historic event on June
5-6; nonetheless, many small spots show in both the color and black and white
photos captured at ASO.

Imaging at the observatory were: P. Clay Sherrod, Patsy Sherrod, Tom Walker,
Anise Walker, and Larry Miller. The observers enjoyed all the comforts of home
with home brewed iced tea served in the air conditioned offices while computers
downloaded the images every five minutes to our files.