Ray Warrens' Venus Transit in Aruba June 8, 2004

Cock-a-doodle-dooooo,....
Karen nudges Ray the rest of the way to reality.  "The rooster is crowing.  Is it time to get up?"
Ray checks his watch - 3:30 something.  "That rooster is out of it's mind!"
"No - wait!  That's Colorado time.  Add two hours and hmm, I guess that rooster's not so dumb after all."

Our hotel room is on the ground floor right at the edge of the property.  There are several private residents on the
other side of the fence and they all have chickens.  No need for alarm clocks here.

Ray threw on some cloths and moved the telescope to the third floor landing. Ray had checked
out this location last week.  He first tried the California lighthouse on the North tip of Aruba,
thinking that the ball of the sun could be observed rising from the ocean.

This turned out to be a bad choice for two reasons.
1) The wind blows nonstop on Aruba.  Both day and night there is a 15-20 knot wind out of the North East.
The Divi-divi trees look the wind blown Limber Pines at timber line in Colorado.
Even on the leeward side of the lighthouse, the telescope was being buffeted.

2) The air is thick with moisture.  The haze doesn't start to thin until about 5 degrees
above the horizon.  Then the low altitude clouds start in.

Ray took out his Thousand Oaks solar filter and it immediately fogged over.  In fact, everything was covered
with dew - the eye piece, the camera lens and worst of all the primary mirror.

Terry Frazier from the Longmont Astronomical Society had lent Ray his compact 4.5 inch Tasco reflector.
Ray had disassembled it and transported it in pieces.  The tripod legs were packed in the box with the sail
for the knee surfer, the mount was wrapped and packed in the bag with the snorkeling gear, the eyepiece
tray was in Ray's suitcase and Ray carefully shlepped the tube trough the airports as carry-on luggage.

Ray should have known.  His glasses had instantly fogged that first day when he stepped out of the over
air-conditioned airport terminal into Aruba.  It continued to happening ever time morning upon leaving the
hotel room - even after adjusting the air-conditioning.  It was a good thing we were up with the roosters.
It took a good 15 - 20 minutes for the primary to clear.  Ray then installed and taped the solar filter in
place (don't want it to come off).  In the mean time the sun was up a bit more.

And a few minutes later, we got a clear glimpse through the clouds.

And there it was! Just like they said!  Just like the Earth Centered Universe and Starry Night software
had predicted!  A little black dot on the sun.  ...And we were seeing it with our own eyes!

Karen went back down to the room for the second time to convince 15 year old Lindsey to get out of bed.
"Alright, alight!  This better be worth it."  Sleep is a tough thing for a teenager to give up.

Ray knew that from Aruba, the transit would have already been in progress.  In fact, of the total 5 hour
event, only the last hour would be possible to observe from Aruba - if the sky was clear.

Ray swapped out the 20mm eyepiece for the 9.5mm.
The sun got a little higher.                                                                                        HOME