Grand Traverse Astronomical Society’s Transit of Venus Watch – What a Time!
This was a fantastic event at Traverse City’s Open Space on the bay front. The clouds that threatened all day parted and dissolved to reveal a perfect sky. Hundreds of people turned out. Here are some crowd shots I made with my Android phone, plus one of the transit.
Most of a huge line to see the transit with the GTAS’ 25″ Dobsonian telescope.
Transit Crowds near the telescopes.
More of the Transit Crowd an Bill Renis manning our Lunt Hydrogen Alpha Solar Telescope.
A look at the crowd and our GTAS Banner.
Venus against the sun taken at 8:49 p.m. through the Lunt solar telescope and a Droid Bionic phone.
Update (06/22/2012)
I received photographs from Gary and Eileen Carlisle and put them on the gtastro.org website. Here are theirs below. Eileen took the crowd shots, while Gary took the transit shot just before sunset as the crowds thinned. Gary’s crowd estimate was 500 folks.
More information: The transit started at 6:04 p.m. EDT. I spotted first contact through the Lunt. It took another minute or so to spot it in the white light telescopes. The Lunt showed the sun’s chromosphere that extends some 6,000 miles above the sun’s photosphere. The transit ended fro us as the sun set into the hills of Leelanau County across the west arm of Grand Traverse Bay.
The location we viewed from was the Open Space Park on the bay front in Traverse City, Michigan US. It is also used as the main venue of the National Cherry festival in early July and free outdoors screenings of movies at the Traverse City Film Festival in late July or early August.
Bill Renis (yellow shirt, white hat and sunglasses) helping a person view the transit using the Lunt Solar Telescope. This was also the society’s 30th anniversary. Bill and I were the only two charter members attending.
We brought out our Obsession 25″ telescope, stopped down to 8 inches with a solar filter. It gave excellent images. I saw second contact without the annoying teardrop effect.
Our “Meteorite Man” Joe Brooks brings out his meteorite collection for our events.
Member Ron Uthe brought his 8″ telescope to the event.
This is GTAS president Rich Kuschell’s 4″ refractor.
A little impromptu musical accompaniment.
The sun’s getting low now. That’s me in the blue cap.
The small kids got a chance to create moon craters in pans of flour covered by chocolate drink powder.
Gary Carlisle shielding the sun for a young man viewing through his 8″ telescope.
Gary’s photo of the transit.
Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog 
Great shot of the sun with venus in front