If any of you have a chance and the opportunity to view Venus passing across the sun tonight, I highly recommend it. A local astronomy club has set up various telescopes and other safe viewing aids for the community. We saw Venus just as it started to cross the sun. Now the clouds came out and you can't see the sun at all. But it was good while it lasted!

By a near-miracle, I was able to view it, as the sun came out this evening after being hidden all day. I used binoculars to shine the sun's image onto a white sheet of paper.

Glad you got to see it Pat! Our local club had all sorts of different ways set up to see it so it was great fun going from one station to the other. Nice community event, except for those clouds that kept rolling down from Canada!
Did you turn the binoculars backwards, or how exactly did you do that?

The viewing end toward the sun. You don't get a really crisp image this way but it's safe and I was able to see the little Venus dot. I went out and checked it several times as it moved across the sun.

Great idea - I never thought of that! I wish I'd taken a photo of the projections from some of the big telescopes people had last night. I thought I'd get to go back to the park and get photos after Venus was closer to the middle. I drove back to the park after an hour or so and the clouds had crossed the sun just before I got there and remained covering the sun into sunset. Oh well, it was fun to have seen it at all. Glad you got to see it too.

The geology department here gave out safe-viewing "glasses" and one of my students brought a couple pair to our research group meeting. So we all ran outside and passed the devices around and went "ooh!" at the sight. Others were following the transit with pinhole devices, and one person was sharing a telescope set up for safe viewing.

Did you know that Captain James Cook's 3-year voyage to the South Pacific on the Endeavor starting in 1768 was motivated by a rare chance to observe a transit of Venus from that location? Not only did his crew observe the transit from Tahiti, but they also became the first Europeans to land on the east coast of Australia. Serendipity!

Interesting, Laurel!