2004 Venus Transit

On 8 June 2004 students and staff of the RHUL Physics Department carried out observations of the transit of Venus across the face of the sun. Timing measurements for ingress and egress were made with two telescope/CCD systems; students will be busy for some time analysing the data -- watch this space! Some more photos and information on the equipment we used can be found here.

Internal contact at ingress: 5:39:40 UT.	Venus transit at 9:00:48 UT from the roof of the Wilson Physics Laboratory, RHUL.	Internal contact at egress: 11:04:13 UT.

Local time (BST) is UT + 1 hour. The contact times are rough estimates from the video. A more careful analysis is underway. The temperature at egress had gotten up to 30 degrees C, and the degraded seeing and famous "black drop" effect are clearly visible.

Some photos below from the observatory and rooftop of the Wilson Lab (click on thumbnail for larger version). And here is a nice collection of pictures by Aya.



The jet -- 6:44:58 UT (story in the Guardian).

Some more photos and information on the equipment we used can be found here.