Post by Lolua on Jun 9, 2004 16:05:43 GMT -5
Big Brother and I did something pretty cool yesterday morning. We left home around 4am and went down to the planetarium, where the kind planetarium staff had a bunch of big telescopes set up with mylar filters so that we, the telescope-less public, could see the transit of Venus.
This event occurs when the planet Venus passes between the earth and the sun, casting a round shadow on the face of the much-larger sun. It hasn't happened since 1882, and won't happen again until 2012.
When we first arrived, the sun was still rising and was very red. Martin claims it didn't hurt his eyes to look at it at first, and that he could see the tiny dark speck of Venus on the sun without a telescope. After waiting in line for telescopes I had no hope of being tall enough to look through, I finally got my first view of the phenomenon. It was quite cool, like discovering a secret that nobody else knew about the sun we all take for granted (even if there were a hundred people gathered on the lakefront, Martin was spouting facts in my ear, and all the local news media had come to cover it).
In addition to the telescopes, the planetarium staff also had a projector screen set up to show the live internet telecast of telescope images from Norway, which was really cool, and in some ways much better than glimpsing it for 15 seconds at a time through the public telescopes.
If you're interested in the history of the phenomenon, Adler has a look at their collection of related documents:
www.adlerplanetarium.org/history/transit-of-venus/index.shtml
Sorry if I'm treating this like a blog, but I thought it was cool.
This event occurs when the planet Venus passes between the earth and the sun, casting a round shadow on the face of the much-larger sun. It hasn't happened since 1882, and won't happen again until 2012.
When we first arrived, the sun was still rising and was very red. Martin claims it didn't hurt his eyes to look at it at first, and that he could see the tiny dark speck of Venus on the sun without a telescope. After waiting in line for telescopes I had no hope of being tall enough to look through, I finally got my first view of the phenomenon. It was quite cool, like discovering a secret that nobody else knew about the sun we all take for granted (even if there were a hundred people gathered on the lakefront, Martin was spouting facts in my ear, and all the local news media had come to cover it).
In addition to the telescopes, the planetarium staff also had a projector screen set up to show the live internet telecast of telescope images from Norway, which was really cool, and in some ways much better than glimpsing it for 15 seconds at a time through the public telescopes.
If you're interested in the history of the phenomenon, Adler has a look at their collection of related documents:
www.adlerplanetarium.org/history/transit-of-venus/index.shtml
Sorry if I'm treating this like a blog, but I thought it was cool.