There are some wonderful images from the Transit of Venus across the Sun on Tuesday. Obviously I wanted to observe this myself in the best possible way. On Monday I read an article in Astronomy magazine that said I need a solar filter. OK, where do I get one of those for my camcorder at short notice in North Norfolk? Well there’s a place called Cley Spy (in a village quite close to Cley-next-the-sea) which sells a massive range of binoculars and telescopes. Why should such a good shop exist in such a remote location? Becaue North Norfolk is bird watching country (Sidebar: “Twitchers” are something entirely different to your average bird watcher. Don’t confuse the two). Anyhow, they didn’t have a filter.
Step two was to design some kind of tripod to hold a pair of binoculars. Sadly, without either a full workshop to build such a contraption, or indeed the skills to make it, I had to forget about this idea. Next up was to make my own filter after watching a bit of Adam Hart-Davis on the BBC’s coverage of the transit. You have to filter out 95% of sunlight or so. I can now reveal that three blue-tinted freezer bags folded back on themselves many times, and secured around the lens of a camcorder does not work.
Finally it was a pair of binoculars with one lens covered up projecting the image onto white card. This worked fine, but required two hands so I couldn’t get any photos of it.
Now roll on the Cassini probe.