xyzAsia

Venus transit

This is the transit of the sun by the planet Venus on 8 June 2004. This was the first time anyone alive had seen Venus transit the sun as the last time was in 1882. I took this using a 200 mm lens on my Nikon D100 through a glass window of a hotel in Shanghai, China, resting the lens on the back of a couch as I didn't have my tripod with me.  Exposure was 1/400th sec, aperature f5.6. I was extremely lucky to see the transit as the air had been very heavily polluted for a few days, and it had been impossible to see the sun.  However, an afternoon shower of rain cleared the air enough for the sun to be seen through a dirty haze (which actually helped a lot to see the transit with the naked eye).  Five minutes after I took this photo, the sky clouded over and the sun disappeared for the day. This picture was taken about an a hour and a half into the six-hour transit (Venus was moving from left to right).