Friday, June 8, 2012

Homeschool Attempt to View the Transit of Venus

Tuesday, June 5th we attempted to tape the small binoculars to the Daddy's camera tripod and see the image of Venus transiting across the sun projected on a sheet of paper.


My junior astronomers continued their studies of Astronomy a little out of schedule. We follow a Well Trained Mind Classical Education model of arranging our curriculum. That said, astronomy was part of the 1st/2nd grade year and will be part of our fall studies in 5th/6th grade.  But the transit of a near planet doesn't happen everyday.  We were able to see a faint, circular image of the sun lightened on the binocular shadow AND the dark dot of Venus on that circle.  G#2 and I then followed the proceedings after dinner on a website broadcasting the transit from Mt. Mauna Loa NASA observatory.  She was so anxious not to miss this event and stayed away from neighborhood kid time play in order to watch the experience.  She knew that it wouldn't take place again for over a hundred years and didn't want to miss it. 

We've made a request from an uncle who has welding training to gift us a welder's helmet for Christmas so we won't have to deal with the tripod anymore.

No comments:

Post a Comment