Venus Transits the Sun

The skies were clear enough Tuesday evening for us to get a great look at Venus passing in front of the Sun, just before the Sun set.

If you look closely at the above image, (you might need to click on it to see the full size version) you'll see a teeny tiny dent on the top right edge of the Sun's disk.  That is Venus starting to pass in front of the Sun.  Those other black spots on the Sun's disk are Sunspots.

In this second shot, above, Venus has almost completely entered the Sun's disk

This third shot is a crop of the second one.  The black area between the round edge of Venus and the edge of the Sun is known as the teardrop effect, I think.

As the Sun got nearer the horizon, some clouds passed by, and there was a bit of haze.  The Sun was still too bright to look at without a special solar filter.

The Sun was pretty near the horizon at this point and was into the haze.  The camera auto selected ISO 5000 to get this shot, still through the solar filter.  After this, I removed the filter and shot a video of the Sun dropping to and below the horizon.  That video is uploading to YouTube as I type this.  I'll post that later tonight I hope.