On 2004 June 8, I observed the latter part of the transit of Venus across the face of the sun. Once the sun and planet rose above the horizon haze, Venus was much more obvious than I anticipated. I was able to see the planet touch the edge of the sun's disk at the beginning of its egress. This is the first transit of Venus since 1882.
I projected the sun's image through a 2 inch (50 mm) telescope onto a sheet of white paper taped to cardboard. I propped the objective end of the telescope on a wooden fence and held the other end in my hand. The image moved about as my hand moved. The telescope is an old, brass-tubed Victorian refractor designed for terrestial viewing that I inherited from my father.
My first observation, at 5:45 EDT or 9:45 UTC showed me nothing. At this time, the sun was a red ball in fog and cloud, and only a few degrees above the actual horizon. I could project its image, but did not see Venus. According to an ephemeris, the sun rose above the geometric horizon at 5:18 EDT or 9:18 UTC. Because of the hill to the east, it rose a bit later at my site.
At 6:00 EDT or 10:00 UTC, I made my second observation. This time I could see Venus with no trouble at all! Indeed, it was bigger and more visible than I expected -- still small, but a very definite and obvious black circle on the sun's face.
At 6:40 EDT or 10:40 UTC, I made my third observation. Venus was perhaps a planetary width away from the edge of the sun's disk. By eye, I estimated that Venus was one-twentieth or one-thirtieth the diameter of the sun, but it was very hard to make such an estimate. According to the U.S. Naval Observatory, Venus is 58 arcseconds across and the sun is 31.5 arcminutes across. So an estimate of 1/30th is not bad. The sun's face is otherwise clear. It has no sun spots on it that I can see. (According to http://www.spaceweather.com, at the moment the sun has one small, double sunspot on it near the center of its disk. I never saw it.)
Starting at 7:00 EDT or 11:00 UTC, I observed Venus move close to and then touch the edge of the sun. By my estimate, Venus first touched the edge of the sun at 11:05:50 UTC, although that estimate might be off by 15 or 30 seconds. I did not see the `black drop' effect; my images were too small and jiggled.
According to the U.S. Naval Observatory, for my location, the projected time was 11:05:47.6 UTC, so my estimate was not bad.My final observation started at 7:24 EDT or 11:24 UTC. I looked for Venus in order to observe it leaving the sun's face but saw nothing. The sun's face looked clear.
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