Transit of Venus in Pakistan on 6th June 2012

Finally the 6th of June 2012 arrived and we had a morning with venus in front of the Sun.. Yes… You got it right.. The Venus Transit was underway when we saw the Sun just after the Sun rise and had gained a reasonable altitude. It was cloudy and hazy, hence providing natural filter. And KAS participants at the KAStrodome were welcomed by Naked-Eye view as they stepped in the KAStrodome at around 6:30AM. Venus could be seen as a dot in the picture below. This is how it was looking with the naked-eye.

The hosts of the KAStrodome had already seen the transit by the time I reached along with other 2 KAS members. They had already set up the Telescopes and Laptops enjoying the pictures from Tasmania, Australia. The observation had started as we kept looking Venus and the Sun with the natural filter haze. 🙂 We were quite amazed by this natural filter. Within 1 hour, some other KASian folks reached KAStrodome and we told them about the phenomenon and how to observe it. Everyone was happy to see once in a life time opportunity.

After a while, we set up Ebrahim’s Nikon Binoculars 10×50 with the Solar filter on it and we were able to observe something similar to the photo below. Venus is shown as a dot on the upper left side.

We not only used the Advanced method, but we also observed it with the pin hole technique and image projection technique. The projection technique is quite easy and safe. One has to point the telescope or a Binoculars towards the Sun while removing the eye-piece of the scope. In front of the eye-piece, you put a paper or a white card. Once you focus the scope and the image is sharp, you will see the projected image on the paper. You can safely see it. 🙂 capture it. Love it. Show it. Here how it looks. See in the below picture.. You will see the image upside-down.. this is because now the light is coming from the telescope which inverts the image. This is almost the end of the transit. If you look closely in the picture below, you might be able to see 3 sun spots arranged in a triangular position.

Few more snaps from the session.