Venus in Transit!

Late this afternoon on the East Coast Venus began to transit the sun--an extremely rare event that will not happen again for more than a hundred years, in 2117.

I finally managed to see Venus against the sun, using an outdoor pinhole camera, after a series of efforts lasting over an hour (racing against passing clouds and the setting sun). First I placed a pinhole near a window inside, but I couldn't get my white screen far enough away. Then I taped up the pinhole you see on the left (drilled in a flattened box of Puffs tissues). I had to raise it twice (using our small kitchen stepladder) as the sun fell lower, and I also had to widen the hole (with my small power drill). And I finally got a good screen for the image with a piece of white mat board at the bottom of the small cardboard box you see on the right (over 30 feet--10 meters--from the pinhole, with the box providing some shade).

Viewed large you should be able to see Venus as a faint blurry spot near the bottom of the sun's disc (it's only 1/30th as wide as the sun). I was tempted to darken it a bit in Photoshop, but I did not. As an experimental physicist my father was a genius working with scientific apparatus, and on days like this I think I may have inherited a modest bit of that talent.