The big day is very close now, so here are some notes to help you witness this once in a lifetime event on Tuesday morning. Hopefully you took our advice and booked at least the morning off work. Thanks to all of you who ordered from our online Shop we were all kept very busy packing AstroSolar, Eclipse Shades, Patrick Moore issue of our magazine, and binoculars over the past few days. You should have received your order by now. Our Shop is still open until 5:30pm today and noon til 6pm tomorrow, Saturday. After that we're closed for the Bank Holiday weekend and we won't re-open until 2pm on Tuesday as we'll all be out in the Phoenix Park running the Transit Watch on Tuesday morning from 6am! You can still order Binoculars, magazines, AstroSolar(for regular sunspot watch) at the online secure website: http://www.astronomy.ie/VTshopcart.html (just click "buy"). For Ireland, the Venus Transit begins at 6:19am with the Sun just 9 degrees above the horizon from Dublin (8 degrees at Galway, Limerick & Waterford, and 7 degrees at Cork). The "black drop effect" (see June 'Patrick Moore' issue of our magazine) is something to watch out for at this time. Venus will take about 20 minutes to move fully on to the Sun's disk. Then we have 6 hours of Venus transiting the Sun's disk. Will there be sunspots for Venus to pass near or in front of? Will sunspots look grey and Venus' disk look jet black? These are the things to watch out for if you have a telescope or binoculars equipped with AstroSolar filter. Then at 12:04pm Venus starts to move off the Sun's disk and by 20 minutes later at 12:24pm the Transit will be over, but not before we get one last chance to see the "black drop effect" from Ireland for 243 years. Although there will be another Venus Transit in 2012 it will end just as the Sun rises as seen from here. The next full transit we get to see from Ireland won't be for 243 years. (Ignore the times on the diagram on our website by the way as they are 'geocentric', the times I give here are exact for Ireland and differ by a few minutes as we are not at the 'centre of the Earth'.) NEVER LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE SUN, AND NEVER USE BINOCULARS OR TELESCOPES TO VIEW IT UNLESS FITTED WITH APPROVED FILTERS (like AstroSolar from Astronomy Ireland). This is truly an historic event that those of us in the hobby for a long time have been awaiting for decades. Make sure you don't miss it and get to your nearest Astronomy Ireland Venus Transit Watch or get your AstroSolar filter from our shop for your binoculars today or tomorrow. Here is a list of our Transit Watches (see www.astronomy.ie and click on the Transit link) with contact numbers for directions. Bring along a few euro to support Astronomy Ireland by buying a copy of our magazine for just 4 euro at each event. Remember each member is volunteering their time and equipment for you to use: Boyle: The Horseman Viewing Point Boyle to Ballinafad Road. Betty Meyler (086)8341218 Carlow: IT College Carlow. Gerry Moloney (087)9184000 Castlebar: Ashwood Estate turning circle. Paul Gannon (087)2595400 Clare: Kilmihil, Ennis. Angus Sealy (065)9050883 Cork: University College Cork. JJ Keating (086)8131286 (021)4902912 Downpatrick: Greenacres, Downpatrick. Michael McAleenan (028)44614455 Dublin: Papal Cross Car Park, Phoenix Park. Tom Finnegan (086)8105155 Dundalk: Millennium Statue Blackrock. Derek Watters (086)0806908 Letterkenny: Graveyard, Kilpeak, Glenswilly, Letterkenny. Seamus Byron (087) 2203312 Waterford: Liam Walsh (087)2329130 You can also project an image through a small telescope or even binoculars and on to a white or grey card (see article in magazine) but NEVER look in to them when doing this and be extremely careful to supervise the binoculars at all times if others are with you, especially children who rush to look in(!) in our experience when running Sun shows in the past. Far better to have a pair of binoculars fitted with AstroSolar filters (secured in place with lots of tape when doing group viewing) where NO intense light ever gets in to the instrument in the first place. Tripod mount binoculars if you can and inspect the filter regularly. That's enough information for the time being. After the event you can look at all the lovely pictures on TV, the net, and our magazine for Irish images. Let's hope for at least partially clear skies and remember weather forecasts are only an estimate of what might happen (the solar eclipse in 1999 had perfectly clear skies WHILE the radio was announcing it was cloudy!). There will be a lot of coverage in the media. RTE and SKY NEWS have said they will come to our Phoenix Park event in particular (probably others too) and a number of radio stations will be calling in to us for updates. I will be on the Marian Finucane show on Bank Holiday Monday morning (9-11am, with my piece probably after 9:30am) on RTE Radio 1 and we have already done about 10 interviews as the pace heats up towards Transit day. Do email us your comments and any photos you take(same warning applies to looking through cameras as telescopes!) to observe@astronomy.ie Do read the articles by Sir Patrick Moore and Emmet Mordaunt in our magazine and above all have fun! Clear skies, David Moore. Astronomy Ireland, P.O.Box 2888, Dublin 5. Astronomy Shop, Artane, Dublin 5. Tel (01) 847 0777 www.astronomy.ie info@astronomy.ie