Continued from previous message.

the breakout point steadily brightened. Then up he came, crescent in 
luminance, dazzling the eyes. 
    The congregation roared! We astronomers cranked up our scopes with 
visitors clinging to our coattails. 
    We then had our first look thru the filtered scopes. Still a weak 
orange (in most filters, anyway) ball. Visitors huddled under the 
flyers or other handheld items to inspect the image. There was Venus, 
the utterly round black dot creeping toward the edge. 
    The Sun never was in fully clear sky; there was always a veil of 
haze over him. The image in the scopes was dim, but quite pleasing. 
About all the alteration we needed in our plans was a slower shutter 
speed for photography. 
    Folk were mixed up by the orientation of image in the various 
scopes or binoculars. Venus was on one side in one, on the other in 
other, or rotated around in still others. In my apparatus, the image 
was mirror reversed because i used the SLR camera body and focuser as 
the eyepiece.

The grand march 
 -------------
    From 06h EDST onward, we had the leisurely view of Venus slowly 
plodding along the solar disc. There was no rush or crowding. People 
waited their turn, took time to study the image, asked questions, took 
flyers, then circulated to the other scopes. 
    There was time to munch a bagel, sip coffee, tend to babies, 
exercise dogs, read newspapers. Some of us passed around handheld 
filters to see the Sun directly. Yep, there's Venus, ever so much 
closer to the edge. 
    The air warmed up quickly once the Sun break out of the haze. The 
humidity magnified the warmth, as did the total lack of breeze. The 
river was calm, except for the wakes of passing ships. 
    The mouse pads worked perfectly. The rising tide of traffic for 
the morning rushhour under our feet induced vibration in some of our 
scopes. No one near me complained about the shimmy, altho i did see it 
when I made the rounds of other scopes. In mine, the image stayed put 
and moved only when the entire deck quivered as some extra heavy 
vehicle passed under it. 

 On the edge 
 --------- 
    At 07:04 and some seconds, Venus quite touched the Sun's limb. Was 
there an ink-drop? Some said no; some said yes. Some digital pictures 
showed it; others did not. I did not see anything of it. To me Venus 
pressed cleanly against the Sun's edge. 
    I did see, I THINK i saw, right at the intersection points of the 
two discs, short dartlike luminous extensions of the solar disc around 
the rim of Venus's disc. This happened when Venus was well along in 
her egress, like 1/3 diameter out. These were like very short solar 
prominences and lasted for many seconds. 
    Did we see sunlight diffusing thru the Venus atmosphere? 
    After a breather break, I looked again. They were gone. From 1/2 
diameter egress to the parting of the discs, there was for me no other 
anomaly in the image.
    Soonest Venus quit the Sun, the whole host of of us clapped and 
cheered. Lots of hugs and handshakes, even among strangers. 

Calling it a day
 --------------
    We hung around, looking at the plain, unobstructed, Sun thru the 
filtered scopes. There were a few tiny tiny sunspots near the middle 
of the disc, no way resembling Venus. After a while, we starting 
packing it in. By 07:45 astronomers and visitors were streaming out of 
the Park. 
    Alice Barner, Rik Davis, Joe Fedrick, Tom McIntyre, Rich 
Rosenberg, and I stopped in a local coffee shop for a hearty 
breakfast. We reviewed digital pictures, debated the atmospheric 
effect at third contact, compared this transit to those of Mercury. 
    From there we split off on our ways for home or work. The Sun was 
well up in hazy blue sky, beaming his summer heat on us as if nothing 
special ever happened only two hours ago. 

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