Re: transit of Venus

[Daryl L Taylor <Daryl@DARYLSCIENCE.COM>]

I had a retired Honest-ta-Goodness astronomer come in this morning to enhance my
meager astronomical knowledge and show my kids the transit. Along with my tiny
Celestron 8", he brought a Celestron 18" (SHOW OFF...) and a Meade 12". 22 kids
and I watched the transit from start to finish. It was better than I had
expected! Cool thing for my Physics kids to figure out and experience!

I took some still pictures that I'm placing on my site tonight and the
astronomer actually had a video feed into his laptop and recorded the event.
Some of that video will also be on my site within a few days. Help yourself to
them.

www.DarylScience.com

Daryl L Taylor, Fizzix Guy
Williamstown HS & Engineering Academy Rowan University, NJ
PAEMST '96
International Internet Educator of the Year '03
NJSTA Executive Board
6093309571


Quoting Mark Sylvester <msylvest@XNET.IT>:

> Yep, it's the right black dot, now much closer to the edge of the disk as
> the show nears its end.
>
> Mark.
>
> At 10:46 08/06/04 +0200, Mark Sylvester wrote:
> > Well, the sun rose round the flank of the mountain at about 09:30 European
> > Daylight Saving Time, and I unscrewed the eyepiece from one side of my
> > birdwatching binoculars and spent a while trying to project an image of
> the
> > sun's disk on a pad of paper. The normal focus range was not sufficient to
> > get the eyepiece far enough from the objective focus.  At first there were
> > many black spots, which rotated when I rotated the eye lens. These went
> > away when I cleaned the lens. Finally I got it. A sharp image of the face
> > of the sun a few cm across, with a beautiful fat black spot near the edge
> > that stayed put when the optics moved slightly. After 15 minutes the
> > position seems to have changed. I'll check again later to confirm, but for
> > the moment I believe that I've seen it.
> >
> > Mark
> >
> >
> >
> > Mark Sylvester
> > UWCAd
> > Duino Trieste Italy
>
> Mark Sylvester
> UWCAd
> Duino Trieste Italy


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