Just wondering who will be watching the upcoming transit of Venus?

http://www.space.com/16003-ven ... -skywatching-preview.html

it wont happen again until the year 2117!

Here in the UK I will be getting up at silly o click tomorrow morning to head down to the coast to view the last hour of transit from sunrise through a special solar telescope and hopefully get some images too.

Just a word of warning...
NEVER LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE SUN AND NEVER VIEW THE SUN THROUGH BINOCULARS OR A TELESCOPE WITHOUT THE PROPER EQUIPMENT IT WILL BLIND YOU BEFORE YOU EVEN KNOW IT!


SD.

Quote from SparkyDave :

Just wondering who will be watching the upcoming transit of Venus?

http://www.space.com/16003-ven ... -skywatching-preview.html

it wont happen again until the year 2117!

Here in the UK I will be getting up at silly o click tomorrow morning to head down to the coast to view the last hour of transit from sunrise through a special solar telescope and hopefully get some images too.

Just a word of warning...
NEVER LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE SUN AND NEVER VIEW THE SUN THROUGH BINOCULARS OR A TELESCOPE WITHOUT THE PROPER EQUIPMENT IT WILL BLIND YOU BEFORE YOU EVEN KNOW IT!


SD.

I´ll catch it next time...

And also:
http://www.rssd.esa.int/index. ... SS&page=venus_transit

It'll be cloudy.

I saw it 8 years ago.


Edit: grabbed a welding mask and rushed outside just to see a bunch of clouds. Crap.

Given that I have a Space Exam tomorrow, I probably should Apparently NASA are broadcasting it from their Hawaiian base on NASA TV tonight - that's what I'm going to watch it on (probably!)

Quote from J@tko :

Given that I have a Space Exam tomorrow, I probably should Apparently NASA are broadcasting it from their Hawaiian base on NASA TV tonight - that's what I'm going to watch it on (probably!)

That's a great thing to watch a live broadcast of. Small black circle on a big white circle. Fascinating.

Well it's not like I'll be able to see it outside due to a) the inevitable cloud and b) it's at like 3am here, may be detrimental to my exam performance

More info and timings:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17745366

NASA live stream:
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/ustream.html

Just got back from my trip to the coast to see the transit.
Crashgate was right, was total wash out, the only transit I saw was my van

There are some great photos on the web and the NASA feed was good to watch.
Never mind, off to work now!

SD.

Got back home from maths exam and was 20 minutes late. Damn!

it was clear when i went to bed around the time when the sun started rising at 4am and my brother snatched my camera for this occasion to have some fun in conjunction with a telescope.. will see if he actually got anything noteworthy out of that ^^

found this pic though
http://24.media.tumblr.com/tum ... 6io4qsDN1qd2hdto1_500.jpg

It was too cloudy here, but I did catch it on NASA's stream for a few. Nothing too exciting for me really .

Just something to see.

Atleast someone from my city saw it

Article in estonian

a black dot! exiting

honestly, the solar eclipse was interesting to watch but this...(was cloudy here anyway)

Thats a great pic ImudilaSkyline

It's interesting because its so rare and can help us learn stuff
like the distance to Venus and the sun (not easy to measure with a tape measure) and more recently helps to calibrate distant planet hunter scopes like Kepler and Spitzer although I think because they are so sensitive they used the Moon to reflect the light from the solar transit.

Copyright image from here http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120607.html Credit & Copyright: Chris Hetlage



SD.

Wow!

How do they do that? It's not just a case of a very very very tinted lens and a very very big lens is it? Is it false colour? And what are the wispy clouds around the edge? I'm clued up enough to know that Sol doesn't have [water vapour] clouds!!!!

uhm its all explained under the picure?

Yes. It does.

Now, if I knew what a "rare silhouette" was, and how it differs from a normal silhouette, why an H-Alpha filter was used, and why the sun looks different in almost every photograph ever. Is the sun actually that colour? What are the clouds?

For a helpful, clever 'scientist' you aren't actually much good at being helpful or clever. Patronising, yes; but helpful? No.

Or maybe you don't know either... Hmmmmm

fo someone who tries to come off at intelligent youre disturbingly bad at reading comprehension and googling

Quote from tristancliffe :

Now, if I knew what a "rare silhouette" was, and how it differs from a normal silhouette

how about by only comming about every other century?

Quote from SparkyDave :

it wont happen again until the year 2117!

Quote :

why an H-Alpha filter was used

because it makes the sun look pretty and actually shows the hydrogen its made of without being completely drowned out by the black body radiation of it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-alpha

Quote :

and why the sun looks different in almost every photograph ever

because theres a million ways to filter the light and several ways to filter it that bring out interesting strcutures more clearly

Quote :

What are the clouds?

it looks like prominences although for whatever reason they appear much brighter than they should

Quote from Shotglass :

how about by only comming about every other century?

But that would be a rare EVENT. A rare silhouette must mean a special type of silhouette. Especially as it's a hyperlink on that page (i.e. it has a special meaning that is different to a normal silhouette).

Quote from Shotglass :

because it makes the sun look pretty and actually shows the hydrogen its made of without being completely drowned out by the black body radiation of it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-alpha

So what should the photo look like, using visible light, without trying to 'make it look pretty'?

Quote from Shotglass :

it looks like prominences although for whatever reason they appear much brighter than they should

Yes, they look like prominences, but if the photo was taken using the filters and effects, shouldn't the whole photo look similar, rather than having either massively over-exposed sections (particularly on sections that won't be as bright as the main subject).... Which leads me to the conclusion that it isn't a REAL photo at all, but an amalgamation of data and imagery with a skip load of post-processing. Which isn't (in my opinion) true photography.

Its a 12100km diameter silhouette and its just a spec on the sun, what more do you want to make it something special, blue LED's and go faster stripes? The sun is out fairly often even in the UK, you can look at it any time you want to see what colour it is, try it through binoculars and it could be permanently engraved as the last thing you ever see and as to post processing, the sun is a damn great massive ball of violent and mysterious energy and is awe inspiring enough without CGI.

Quote from tristancliffe :

But that would be a rare EVENT. A rare silhouette must mean a special type of silhouette. Especially as it's a hyperlink on that page (i.e. it has a special meaning that is different to a normal silhouette).

... the sentence specifies that seeing venus silhouetted against the sun is a rare sight and the first sentence of the artivle it links to is
"Venus will pass across the face of the sun, producing a silhouette that no one alive today will likely see again."
thats about as rare a silhouette as youll ever see

Quote :

So what should the photo look like, using visible light, without trying to 'make it look pretty'?

white

Quote :

Yes, they look like prominences, but if the photo was taken using the filters and effects, shouldn't the whole photo look similar, rather than having either massively over-exposed sections (particularly on sections that won't be as bright as the main subject)....

depends on the sadly unspecified way in which the measured brighness was translated into the image
my guess would be they toyed around a bit to make venus look like venus and not a very large sunspot

Quote :

Which leads me to the conclusion that it isn't a REAL photo at all, but an amalgamation of data and imagery with a skip load of post-processing. Which isn't (in my opinion) true photography.

lets be glad then that no one in astronomy asked your oppinion

From NASA: