Transit of Venus

Back on June 5th we decided to "attempt" to view the Transit of Venus.  We were pleasantly surprised at how amazing it was and how we were able to actually focus in on it and see it pretty clear.  I tried to capture it through my camera to no avail and I was afraid I would fry my lens, so we tried the mirror approach instead and it was a success!

The cloud cover here in the Willamette Valley made it a bit difficult at first.

Then it cleared off and we were able to start looking.

  

We set a white sheet up on the backside of our garage and positioned a mirror so that we could focus on what we needed to see without burning our retinas out.  ha!

Looking through the homemade pin-hole binoculars we made.

After tilting and moving the mirror around we finally spotted a little dot in the upper right-hand corner.

Do you see it?  

(The small white dots around the edge on either side of the mirror were just designs on the mirror itself. ) 

It finally showed up, after an hour and a half of looking, and we were thrilled that we could show this to Skylar.  It won't come again under 2117, so this was a great thing for all three of us to see.

Later that night the moon looked like a big wheel of cheese.