Transit of Venus from St Werburghs Hill, Bristol!

After seeing Paige‘s post about witnessing the transit of Venus, I thought I’d share my pictures from my slightly less glamorous location!

When the planet Venus passes between the Earth and the Sun, this is known as a transit. Rather than an eclipse where the moon can completely obscure the sun, you can see Venus as a small dot passing over the sun (in the above photo Venus is on the edge of the sun at 1 o’clock, if the sun were a clockface). Venus transits occur in regular repeating patterns of 243 years, with gaps of 121.5 years, 8 years, 105.5 years and 8 years. It was 8 years since the last transit, so we’re in for a long wait until the next one!

I awoke from a vivid dream about watching the transit at 4.45am, fell out of bed and into some clothes, and wandered bleary eyed to St Werburghs hill in North Bristol.

The moon was visible, but there was a lot of cloud cover in the direction of the sun!

Gradually it cleared, and my boyfriend revealed he’d brought a thermos of tea up the hill – things were looking up!

Finally, the cloud cleared enough to catch these images! The telescope belonged to one of the 3 other people who’d ventured out at that early hour!