1.  images through Richard Serjeantson’s  4-inch Meade telescope with solar filter, and a simple digital camera (Olympus C-220 Zoom)

 

 

         

images taken as Venus is about to leave the solar disc

 

      

 

     

images taken about 90 minutes after the start of the Transit

 

 

 

 

2.  Images using Solarscope, a commercially-available device for safe viewing of the sun

                            see  <http://www.solarscope.com/en/index.en.html>  

 

 

   
Jonathan Hunt, aged 1                               Ricardo the cat, aged 13

 

    

Ricardo                                            a good image of venus

 

Sandy Hunt aged 7, on his birthday

 

 

3.  Images using the “pinhole”

         

       

The “pinhole” is actually a small piece of mirror about 5mm square, 30m away from the screen

various people assembled viewing the pinhole image

 

The Pinhole Camera images were produced using a novel design of pinhole camera, devised by Dr Hugh Hunt. The drawback of conventional pinhole cameras is that the size of pinhole required to generate a sharp image is so small that diffraction effects destroy the clarity of the image. 

 

The method employed here is to use a large pinhole and to reflect the light through the window of a darkened room.  In fact the "pinhole" was created by blanking out with plastic tape all but a 5mm square portion of a mirror.  The pinhole is then simply a tiny mirror.

 

The system was motivated by a similar pinhole concept used previously to observe the 1999 solar eclipse, when any passer by with a mirror in their handbag was encouraged to reflect an image of the solar disk onto the wall of Great Gate. The resolution of such a projected image is limited by the size of the mirror. For instance, a 4cm square mirror will produce an image which is blurred to the order of 4cm. To decide if this is good enough, consider that the sun subtends an angle of roughly 0.5 degrees so that when projected through a pinhole to a screen at a distance of 10m the image of the solar disc will be around 10cm in diameter [subtended angle in radians x distance].  The resolution of 4cm was then OK to see the eclipse since the disc of the moon was large in relation to the disc of the sun (the same size, in fact).  Since Venus is so much smaller than the moon (about 1/32 the size as viewed during the transit), a very much smaller mirror is required to give a clear image.  But a small mirror means less light - hence the need for a darkened room.  Also, to improve resolution the projected distance was increased to 30m giving a projected solar disc diameter of around 30cm.

 

The darkened room used for this purpose was the Old College Office Meeting Room. A dark cloth was used to blackout the window where the reflected image enters.

There are some more photos of this setup at http://www-jcsu.jesus.cam.ac.uk/~dcf21/transit.html

 

 

      

   General views of the day

 

 

        

Sir Martin Rees,Master of Trinity and Astronomer Royal

      

Sir Martin Rees                                                   Hugh Hunt

 

      

 

      

Richard Serjeantson and his 90mm Meade

 

  

  

Early morning observers – around 7am