Venus

My early life is marked by several astronomical memories:

• Dad taking me outside to see constellations.
• Dad and I watching Halley's Comet through the window of the basement in Columbus.
• Dad and I viewing a solar eclipse through a pinhole projection.
• Dad and us kids watching the Shoemaker-Levy Comet (and going to a presentation at the Franklin Institute).

For his 60th birthday, we kids bought him a telescope, an 8" Dobsonion reflector by Zhumell:

It hasn't seen as much use as Dad might have liked or imagined when he first got it:  work and school and family stuff has taken some precedence.  But even so, he's managed to visualize the moon and some binary star systems and other phenomena that we don't often get to see with the naked eye.

This past Tuesday was the Venus transit.  (Hopefully I'll have a better vantage point for the next one in 2117.)  The telescope was out, and I had my camera with the 400 and a Hoya ND400 (9-stop) filter attached.  The weather was absolutely miserable for viewing the transit:  almost all clouds.  I was fortunate enough to get two usable shots:  both before Venus had completed the ingress:

5 June 2012 / 6:19pm EDT

5 June 2012 / 6:16pm EDT

Venus is tough to see in the latter picture, but it's there.

Life often comes full circle.  Just like Dad teaching me the Greek alphabet and me getting to quiz him on declensions.  This was a real treat—the experience of a lifetime (of two lifetimes!).