Venus Transit & Cicadas recorded at Springs, Penn.
Other successful efforts, on the Blue Ridge in VA,
Laurel, and Greenbelt, MD are also described.
Updated: 2004 June 15
Sandy Bumgarner from Rohnert Park, Calif.; Becky Sydney
from Maui; her friend Alicia from New Jersey; Danny Falla from
San Diego, Calif., and I drove to Grantsville, MD (about 160
miles west of Washington, DC), where we got 2.5 hours of sleep
at the Casselmann Inn before joining Jared Zitwer, an observer
who lives across the street from the inn. We drove north about
3 miles to Springs, Pennsylvania (just over the Mason-Dixon line)
where we found a spot on the side of a road at 2600 ft.
elevation with a great view to the next mountain ridge to the
east (we could see several wind turbines generating electricity
on that ridge some 15 miles away). The Sun rose in haze and
thin cirrus low in the east, providing a natural filter for
direct observation for several minutes before the Sun rose into
the otherwise clear sky. I had two C-5's, one for visual
observation and the other for video observation with a PC-23C
camera, the same telescope that I use for solar eclipses. I
recorded the PC-23C output with a 9-in. TV/VCR combo unit. I
also had a camcorder which allowed me to record the combo unit
showing the Venus transit along with some cicadas crawling on
top of it; 797 AD was the last time that a Venus transit
occurred when the 17-year cicadas were out. Twice while we were
observing an Amish horse-drawn buggy trotted by, juxtaposing the
technology of the last Venus transit in the 19th century with
the 21st century. Sandy also recorded the transit with a 3"
Questar and a vide camera that he assembled feeding the images
directly into a laptop computer. Becky took lots of images of
us, and through the visual scope, with a digital camera.
Sometime next week I'll try to post some images on my Web site.
Not as good as the images from the Swedish 1-m telescope in the
Canary Islands, but a very interesting experience none-the-less.
After the transit ended, we returned to the Casselmann Inn where
we had breakfast, then slept for a couple more hours before
heading back to the DC area.
Roger Venable drove to Maryland to get out of the cloud
cover over the s.e. USA, and followed my advice in an earlier
message that Sideling Hill west of Hancock, about 50 miles east
of our location, had a great view to the east. He and a few
others who came there from the DC area had a good view, at
about 1260 ft. elevation. Some observers in the lower parts of
Maryland and Virginia were clouded out, but my wife, Joan, and
son, William, were able to observe the transit through hazy
skies at a park near our home in Greenbelt, MD.
Sandy Bumgarner sent me six photoes shown here:
Becky Sydney & Sun soon after sunrise
D. Dunham's telescopes soon after sunrise; David is
still setting up the video equipment. From left to right:
Becky Sydney, D. Dunham, D. Falla, Alicia, and Jared Zitwer.
Sandy Bumgarner's equipment with a cicada on his laptop.
D. Dunham video taping Sandy's setup.
D. Falla is observing in back of him.
1882 & 2004 transportation.
D. Dunham vide tapes a passing Amish horse-drawn buggy.
3rd contact from the Questar on Sandy's laptop.
David Dunham, 2004 June 14
______________________
Ray Sterner II photographed the thin crescent Venus on June 1, one
week before the transit near his home in Woodbine, MD. He observed
the transit from 3595 ft. elevation in Shenandoah National Forest in
Madison County, Virginia. Several pictures of Venus on June 1, the
transit, and the setups for the transit are on his Web page.
______________________
Steve Edberg, who works at JPL in California, flew to Dulles
Airport to observe the transit from the DC area. He writes:
Thanks for all the e-mail updates. I don't have a cell phone so
contacting you was not easy. Jordan (my younger son) and I were
watching the weather, obviously, and things looked good and our
busy schedule also interfered with contacting you.
We picked a site near a big parking lot near the intersection of
highways 25 (I think) and 55, [I think he means VA28 & US50 -
David] near the southeast corner of the IAD property. At 0515
in Fairfax the weather was clear. Twenty minutes later, at the
site, the low clouds allowed the Moon to be visible but not much
else. After pondering the situation for a while we headed west
on I-66 to gain some (little) altitude, to near the base of
Skyline Drive. I had pretty much given up on seeing the Sun
when I looked up a nearby hill and saw what looked like sunlight
on a building up there and then the Moon was visible too. A
quick drive to slightly higher altitudes got us up above the
clouds and fog and I was set up by 0645 for viewing through
contact IV, including sharing the view with a family a house
down from where we were parked.
This was a lot closer to missing the event than I anticipated (I
figured we'd see it or not, but I didn't anticipate trying to
outrun fog and low clouds). It was a bit frustrating hearing
the NPR report about observers watching it at the Univ. of MD,
clear around the Beltway from where we were staying.
Thanks again for the weather and site messages. I hope you were
successful.
Steve Edberg
______________________
David Rust wrote:
We were lucky in that the haze cleared enough between 6:15 and
7:15 for us to see the transit pretty well with my little 3-inch
solar telescope in the Montpelier 2 parking lot of the Johns Hopkins
University's Applied Physics Laboratory in northwestern Laurel, MD.
Bob Jensen sent the following report.
> From: Robert Jensen
> Date: Wed Jun 9, 2004 8:55:38 AM US/Eastern
> Subject: Transit of Venus
>
> I put a few of the pictures that I took yesterday morning on a web page.
> Only one picture of the transit itself was good, but that one is clear.
>
> The page is here.
>
> Bob
> ----------------------------------------------------
> Bob Jensen
> The Johns Hopkins University
> Applied Physics Laboratory
> Laurel, Maryland
>
David Rust
Flare Genesis Project
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
Applied Physics Laboratory,
11100 Johns Hopkins Rd., Laurel, MD 20723