It's an old image but I was recently reminded of this so thought I'd post it.

On June 8, 2008, Venus transited the face of the Sun. It wasn't visible from the west coast but I did want to see Venus to as close a point to that transit as possible.

On the evening of June 3 at 2030hrs (June 4 0430 UT) I managed to snap this image of the thin crescent of the planet. This is taken at almost exactly 4 days before first contact of the transit.

I was using a simple Canon digital Powershot S50, shooting afocal through a 12mm eyepiece and an f/8 6 inch dob. The image is only cropped, with no other processing.

If you look closely, you might notice how the arc of the crescent extends beyond the 180 degree bisection of the disc. This is caused by Sun light refracting through the atmosphere of Venus.

It was both a difficult, yet easy observation to make. I located the Sun in the scope with a solar filter attached, then as soon as the Sun had drifted out of the FOV I removed the solar filter. Within seconds, the thin crescent of Venus had drifted into the FOV. The difficult part was maintaining Venus in the eyepiece without overshooting and catching up with the Sun.

Unfortunately after that observation, there were no more chances, as the skies clouded over until after the transit .