We went up to Mount Hamilton yesterday afternoon, and, as was the case for everyone who saw the transit, it was a unique conjunction of time, place, and circumstance.
The Lick Observatory staff deployed the historic 36-inch refractor to extraordinary advantage. Rather than project the image, which has the effect of divorcing the instrument from the event, they removed the eyepiece and stretched a cloth across the focal plane. The resulting effect, somehow, was to seamlessly integrate the transit into its surroundings and its historical context, 1639, 1761, 1769, 1874, 1882, 2004, 2012…
