More Solar Action

The last Transit of Venus in anybody's lifetime is coming up tomorrow so I thought I'd check out my ETX-70 and make sure all was ready.  I quickly zeroed in on Sol and saw what I thought looked like a small sunspot.  I grabbed my Cybershot and snapped an image through the 25mm ep.  Imagine my surprise when I saw not one but three groups of sunspots when I enhanced the contrast a bit. 1493 and its companions to the left (hard to see in this photo) have been in the news lately for casting off M-class solar flares.  These are the things that cause all sorts of phenomena on earth such as auroras and damage to electric power grids.  At any rate, things are still working so it looks like all systems are 'go' for tomorrow's big show.  I've decided to try watching from MST's stone henge replica on campus.  There is a good view to the west in between buildings and nice flat stone blocks to set up on.  Who knows, I might even get some company to help watch!  The last such event in 2004 I watched alone from home as the transit occured in the morning.  At that time I used my little 60mm Tasco and projected the image onto a piece of paper and took a picture with my digital camera.  It's nothing special but it did record what I saw and when I saw it.  This must have been right after second contact as the dot of Venus is just inside the edge of the sun in the center of the picture.  You can see the dark shadow of the OTA and scope mount with a brighter image of the sun to the right.  There is a small, out-of-focus black dot (with a small black arrow) in the center.  That's Venus.  Big deal, huh?  It was for me! 
I won't be able to take another shot like this one after tomorrow as the next transit will be over a 100 years from now.  I will (hopefully) get a chance to see similar events though, like the transits of Mercury which are more common, or a transit of the ISS, which are common enough but VERY fleeting!