Eclipse of the sun and venus!

i just thought i'd bring this occasion to your attention,it only happens once every 100 years or so......we should be able to see it in uk,and most of europe too.....any ideas for safe viewing of eclipses?

I don't think there is really any way safe way to view an eclipse. I think i also heard that this eclipse is more likely to make you go blind than a normal eclipse, but i am not 100% sure.

it could well be true cos venus is only gonna be a tini black blob travelling across the sun,leaving a large part of the sun exposed,unlike lunar eclipses.

if you create a pinhole in your camera, then view a webcast, you will witness the transit

Use a welding hood with a shade 11 or a shade 12 . You can look directly at the sun and stare at it all day long with no ill effects other than a neck cramp.

I know you can get special glasses - At the Outback eclipse festival they had in South Australia a few years ago now, they made up special disposable glasses to watch the eclipse with... not sure what the material they had in the glasses was tho? If you could find out, you could make your own glasses, or just hold up a sheet of it. Hmmmm... i'll see if i can find out for you

Do not use 'special' glasses to look at the sun!
For eclipses people do sell very dense filters, but the advice is still to only look briefly and just before the eclipse when most of the sun is covered.

To view it read this

if you wnat to catch it on a camera, use an slr with a telephoto lens, line i up and expose for about 100th of a sec and you should get quiet a nice shot!

When's it happening?

It's just finished - I was a bit dissapointed, it really was a little speck on the sun - using pin-hole projectionc, or reverse binoculars made the sun about 1-2cm, so Venus was about the size of a .

Some nice webcasts though

it looked lovely on the tv this morning

My eyes heart from looking at that, *rubs them*....

Is it normal to have black dots in the centre of your vision?

This link is good to see it if u missed it. http://home.freeuk.net/dgstrange/transit.venus.2004/
and
http://www.vt-2004.org/central/

Just for fun, here's some photos my dad took with a novelty telescope (it's the blue thing that looks a bit like a penguin in the first photo )

Damn, That penguin rocks.... where can I get one?

Thanks for all the feedback!As it was,i didn't actually see it till i followed all the cool links here!

were you there? at the eclipse in south australia? I was in ceduna at the time (which was supposed to be the best place to see it, and probably would have been if it hadn't been for the (rude word) cloud that got in the way)

was still an amazing atmosphere though, i think i met more people in that one night than in the rest of my gap year (but then i was exceptionally pissed and don't reammy remember any of them).

I can personally vouch that the eclipse glasses didn't work. Why? cus when you have an astronomical viewing in a psytrance festival, everything under the sky is....distracting.
but for $15AU, did i expect platinum rimmed telescope niceness

http://www.barrelfullofmonkeys.org/eclipse.html
(the third gallery is from a guy called bender)