Took a little detour on our way home. Notice the moon! Absolutely gorgeous!!

Success!

Apart from being clouded out for a few hours in the morning, we have succesfully observed and recorded the Transit of Venus!! The feedback and genuine excitement from everyone at CMS and Alice Springs, Australia has been overwhelming! On behalf of Columbus State University and the Coca-Cola Space Science Center, THANK YOU for hosting us and being a part(ner) of this historic event!

Almost at 3rd contact!!!

We are live with an image!!

Sun is starting to peak out. Images soon!

Clouded out here for the moment. Clouds should be deminishing soon. Stay tuned!

We are up (barely) and ready to head to CMS for the Transit of Venus!!!! We see a few clouds out but keeping our fingers crossed that they will disapate by first contact @7:45 . hope you all will tune in in a few hours!!

It took longer than we thought to get the scopes aligned and set just right. We finally got the two scopes aligned with the sun in view. Its a lot harder than it looks. Since we can't keep the rig in place we have to store it in the school and bring it back out in the morning. Hopefully it won't take too much more tweaking in the morning. We both feel confident though. Until tomorrow, cheers!! from Australia!!

Its about 2:40 pm. We are still trying to align and setup the telescope.We expect everything to work well. The webcam is all setup and operational. We will use this to stream to NASA. Its live right now with no sound, but you can see us! (http://sunearthday.gsfc.nasa.gov/webcasts/australia/)

Rock star Michael being interviewed by ABC

Setting up for the trial run. 

Almost set up to start a dry run. 

We have picked our spot.

Just got to CMS. Looks like its going to be a beautiful day for the test run!

Transit is a go in Alice Springs

Just did a final check of the weather. All is go for practice tomorrow and the event on June 6 (June 5 for you in the USA) The staff and students at Centralian Middle School have been wonderful! Keep an eye out for some test shots as we go though out test checklist tomorrow.

Setting up for the news

Just checked weather. Its looking good! As of right now, we are a go @ CMS!

This is the front lawn of CMS were we will be observing from. Thats if the weather holds.

Back at CMS for another round of classes. We have 4 today. Tomorrow will be a test run starting around 6:30am.

We are closely watching the weather as the big day gets closer. It calls for partly cloudy skies. With the generous help from Matt at Centralian Middle School we will be scoping out "plan B" sites. If it calls for cloudy skies Wednesday morning we may be traveling to another site on Tuesday. Keep your fingers crossed!