The Transit of Venus

I finished grading finals and Rebecca had a doctor's appointment so I came home today after lunch.  Amazingly the skies cleared so I thought I'd try to see the transit of Venus.  The next time this will happen is well over 100 years from now.  I found a site that shows how to view the sun with just a small mirror and a dark room.  Here are the times for viewing the transit based upon our location.

Here is my mirror with a blacked out 5mm square.  I used some of the kid's playdough to keep it steady on a block of wood.

I went out and set it on the fence in our back yard.

Then I opened our back door and aimed the mirror so the reflection hit our dining room wall.  You can see the white dot above the chairs.

Here is the sun reflected on a sheet of paper.  You can see my fingers for a size comparison.  It is actually pretty big.

Here is an enhanced image of what you can see before the transit.  Those black dots are sunspots!  I had no idea that you would actually be able to see that much detail. 

Here is the NASA image of the current sunspots.  You can see how the match up.  I flipped the picture below because pinhole cameras flip the image of what you are looking at.

Below you can see Venus in the lower right.

It took 6 hours for Venus to transit the sun.  Here is the position a couple hours later. 

Here is Benjamin showing where we placed the camera.

Emma and Benjamin