brainwagon

Well, this rare event has concluded, I’ll try to add links to sites with images throughout the day as my browsing uncovers them. Check back later for more…

• Live Images of the Transit of Venus 2004
• Article from Sky & Telescope
• Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Institute for Solar Physics has some close up H-α images.
• Space.com has some images and animations.

My browsing also uncovered the following poem, written by the first individual ever to observe a transit of Venus.

Oh! then farewell, thou beauteous queen!
Thy sway may soften natures yet untamed,
Whose breasts, bereft of the native fury,
Then shall learn the milder virtues.
We, with anxious mind, follow thy latest footsteps here,
And far as thought can carry us;
My labours now bedeck the monument for future times
Which thou at parting left us. Thy return
Posterity shall witness; years must roll away,
But then at length the splendid sight
Again shall greet our distant children’s eyes.

— Jeremiah Horrocks (1618-1641)