By guiding the telescope on the Sun, many people in R22 could experience the transit in complete safety. The video output from the imager was also saved to a laptop hard disk and to an analogue video tape.

Using a solar filter in the presence of variable amounts of cloud can pose a problem. Without the filter on the telescope, the Sun would be far too bright for the imager. With it in place, too much light would be blocked, making the image too faint for the detector.

To provide an alternative method of viewing the transit, a second telescope, a 203-mm Meade LX10 Schmidt-Cassegrain, was set up to project the image of the Sun onto a piece of white card some distance from the telescope. The photograph to the left shows the projection of Venus crossing the disc of the Sun.

With the notable exception of the weather, everything and everyone was ready. Chris Davis, showing commendable foresight and a keen sense of occasion, had even remembered to bring a varied breakfast!

With exterior ingress only a minute or so away, cloud was still interfering with the view of the Sun. Steve Bell monitored the Sun through the eyepiece, ready to switch over to the imager when the cloud cleared. He was watching as Venus started to cross the limb on schedule and alerted everyone to the start of the transit. Fortunately, a few minutes later, the cloud had cleared sufficiently for the imager to be used. The live feed and the Recording started at around 6:35 (BST). The photograph to the right shows Steve Bell guiding the Meade ETX telescope during the latter half of the transit.

The internal ingress as well as the majority of the transit was recorded on disk without too many problems. As the Sun rose higher in the sky, the cloud dissipated quite quickly. As the temperatures climbed to around 27°C or so, keeping the telescope properly focused became more and more challenging.

To add a little extra excitement to the proceedings, the Meade ETX telescope ran into its end stops just before midday. Some quick thinking by Chris Davis suggested reversing the telescope. A rapid re-acquisition of the Sun was necessary to ensure the latter stages of the transit were captured for the audience gathered in the lecture theatre. Fortunately, only a few minutes of coverage were lost. The photograph on the left shows Chris Davis and Steve Bell monitoring the tracking and the focus of the Meade ETX telescope.

Many people at RAL saw the transit. Some saw it by projection on a screen in the R22 lecture theatre, some by viewing the projected image of the Sun on white card several feet from the telescope. Others saw it by using one of a variety of eclipse viewers provided for the event. The photograph to the right shows people using this type of viewer to watch the transit.

Although little new scientific information could be derived from the 2004 transit, the interest generated by the event could not be underestimated. Many, many people came to watch Venus cross the solar disc, some looking for phenomena such as the "the black drop", others to say they had seen something that no one living today had ever seen before.

Janet Haylett and Natalie Bealing arranged a visit by children from Greenmere Primary School to see the transit and to try and estimate the time of both the internal and external egress. Helen Walker gave a talk to these children on the planets and Venus in particular. They also tried out various activities including painting and making drawings linked with the transit.

Their headmaster, Richard Furniss, kindly commended RAL for the quality of the visit. The picture on left shows the some of the children pointing at Venus on a projection of the Sun.

Perhaps the memories of this event will get some of them up at sunrise on 2012 June 6^th to see the latter stages of the only other transit of Venus in the 21^st century.

For once, good weather blessed the event which stimulated a good deal of media interest from local newspapers, Six TV - The Oxford Channel and Central TV. In fact, we made the local 6 o'clock evening news on ITV.

The hot weather also encouraged some of us to bring out our more flamboyant shirts! The photograph to the right shows Pete Read aligning the Meade LX10 to project the image of the Sun.

The team involved in the transit of Venus observations were Chris Davis, Pete Read and Steve Bell. The R22 projection and analogue recording of the transit were looked after by Reg Jones. The photographs on this page were provided by Steven Kill and the video clips given below were produced by Nick Horan.

Steve Bell

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