Venus passed between Earth and Sun earlier today, a circumstance known as inferior conjunction. When this happens in late October, Venus is well to the south of the Sun, in today's case 6°30' south of it.  This rather sig- nificant angle gives us the opportunity to observe and image Venus provid- ed we can block the Sun out with some sort of obstruction such as a build- ing. I used the top of my front porch, carefully positioning my telescope such that as the Sun culminated, its light would be blocked from entering the telescope while Venus, which was below the Sun, could still be imaged and observed.  This prevented any stray reflections from getting into the field of view.

The equipment I used for imaging Venus included a 1970's Celestron C8, my old Nikon D40 APS-C sensor camera, and a tele-extender.  First, I focused the camera on the Sun before it climbed out of view. Cumulus clouds drift- ed through the field of view for much of the time I was snapping pictures which made for somewhat more interesting compositions.

The exact moment of inferior conjunction was 0400 UT, and since my obser- vation of Venus was made at 1300 EDT, or 1200 EST, or 1700 UT, that makes it 13 hours after inferior conjunction. Venus' altitude at the time of my images was 35°20' above the southern horizon, whereas the Sun was at alti- tude 41°12'.  The sky was clear and transparent, rendering it a nice deep blue color.

Venus was at nearly its maximum possible size, 61.14" in diameter, with a phase angle of 0.6% when I took the pictures. Its magnitude when at infer- ior conjunction is less than when at greatest illuminated extent, however still greater than when it is more distant than the Sun. The magnitude of Venus today was -4.03.

In order to obtain the view with the magnification resulting from my setup of today, I would have had to couple my camera to a telescope of 2,700 mm focal length (the C8 has a focal length of 2,032 mm).