Venus Transit of the Sun 8th June 2004

Subject:	Venus Transit of the Sun 8th June 2004 11:05:31 UT
Telescope:	ST-80mm refractor f/5 2x barlow 9mm Plossl H-Alpha
Mount:	German Equatorial
Imager:	This is a sketch of the event that was viewed from a Walmart parking lot in Epping NH. The sketch was done using pencil on paper, then transferred to Adobe Photoshop for fine editing and color. There was a flare visible. Note the interesting teardrop effect which should have been minimized by the H-Alpha filter. It was not. Notes from the event: Well this was a morning to remember! We went to the Hampton Beach location and met up with CMP and channel 9 news. A bunch of people there. Lots of scopes. NO SUN! FOG. so we waited it out, ate donuts and drank coffee. Met a lot of ham radio operators there ;-) Then at about 6:15am, we decided to head inland to see Sun. Breaking the limits, we went straight out 101 west to Epping where the Sun was peaking through the haze. We stopped at the Walmart and the Sun broke through. A wonderful site. We set up with H-alpha, while two others had an 80mm ST and an 8” SCT with Nikon digital imaging. Location: 43d 01.691m North 071d 04.233m West Altitude 53m Accuracy to within 12 feet. GPS used. Seeing: good to excellent. Lots of solar detail visible. Two small spots in a single group near the center of the disk. Slight teardrop started at 07h 05m31s Contact 3: 11h 05m 31s Contact 4: 11h 25m 40s UT accuracy to 1 second. Used a 9mm with 2x Barlow on the ST-80mm scope with H-Alpha. Interestingly enough there was a VERY slight teardrop in H-Alpha, which should not happen. Venus was not visible after contact 4. We were hoping to see it against a prominence. The only flares were located further up the solar disk and were very small. Thank you New Hampshire skies!!!

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