better than nothing
I'm not too fussed about breaks in the feeds am just happy to be able to see anything - it looks like the weather in Coventry will be shite in the morning.
To Reg readers hoping for a quick peek of today's transit of Venus from Sydney, where the whole thing was visible for hours, we're sorry to disappoint, on two counts. One is our utterly unprepared state for the event: Sydney sold out of solar filters for cameras and telescopes about a week ago. Even tatty cardboard glasses …
Hi -- suitable welding goggles are prefectly safe -- for example, the glass used for arc/MIG welding or plasma cutting (welding glass 14) will completely block the UV and IR components, and will suitably attentuate visible light.
You might be thinking about the kind of glass used for standard oxy-acetylene welding: that wouldn't be safe, as that kind of welding doesn't produce much UV.
really can't see the big deal in all of this ...it's just a planet going round the sun .. it happens every day ..
but it just so happens that this time we are aligned so we can see it ..
it's not going to change any thing ,you arnt going to get super powers ...
but hey if ya get your kicks ..good luck to ya
Hello!
I no longer live in Worcester Park - where I used to send you photos from :) Hopefully you would like to use this somewhere
The online / hires version is on Flickr at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/billius/7343376464/
I just shot this in my backyard in Carlsbad, California, USA
Please feel free to use it for anything!
Was shot with Imaging Source DMK51 - short AVI video, stacked in AutoStakkert and processed in Photoshop/Lightroom
Cheers
Bill Pinnell
It was a beautiful spectacle. The glorious planet did look like a mole or a speck on the binocular through the welder's glass. Thanks to ElReg and a few other journals for the timely tip. Should've prepared better and found filters for both of my camera and a small refractor.
Well, next time in 2117 (or 2125) I will do just that :)
I rigged up a camera obscura in the kitchen for the eclipse the other day, so we could watch it as we prepped supper. Pinhole in a bit of over exposed film, taped over a hole in a piece of cardboard placed in an appropriate window. 112 inches away, a sheet of matte white cardboard to project the image on. Provides an image of the Sun about an inch in diameter ... Used the same setup this evening. The transit was clearly visible, when our natural air conditioning[1] wasn't in the way.
The wife is fascinated. She's never seen this kind of thing ... and is surprised that she can actually see the perceived movement of the Sun! Next time Solar Flairs are "going hot", I'll increase the length so she can view those ... After all these years, the woman still surprises me in what I can interest her in :-)
I wonder if I can convince her to allow me to grind a 20" mirror ...
[1] Fog.
"I wonder if I can convince her to allow me to grind a 20" mirror ..."
Only one way to find out, mate!
I recently built a D=102mm F=1525mm refractor from a surplus objective achromat I bought online. When I got it finished, I called my wife out to see Saturn and its rings. She later said to me, "I can't believe you built a telescope that let me see Saturn's rings!"
Sometimes being a nerd is fun.
This morning, I drove down to Palo Alto to get the 8" reflector that Dad & I built nearly 40 years ago. I discovered to my bemusement that my youngest brother had added a motor drive to it about 10 years later ... We'll haul it up to our place outside Fort Bragg (CA version), away from most human generated light this coming weekend :-)
I always wanted to grind a 20" ... we'll see.
I was up at 4:15 (after watching first contact on a web cam before going to bed - good work Hawaii, not so impressed by the guys from the continental US who were filming each other and not the actual sun), ready to go out and meet the sunrise. But I saw the weather and stayed in bed.
Then I got up around 4:45 just in case, and watched some more live streaming from Oz and from Hawaii. And it stayed cloudy, but with the occasional thinner bit.
About 5:45, after Hawaii had reported third contact and while Norway were showing parallax, I realised the sun might actually hit the house. So I ran upstairs, ignoring all the exciting telescope stuff I had with me, and pointed a (stopped down) lens right at the sun. Lo, the sun had a tiny bite out of it (I was slightly nearer third contact than fourth), and I have photographic evidence (and hopefully not a knackered camera) proving I was looking. It turns out that clouds work as an extremely dangerous alternative to a solar filter. Of course, if it had been sunny, I would have had more time to project an image onto paper.
I've heard the "refractors good. reflectors bad" argument before, but I'm very confused as to why. I'd have thought (enclosed) refractors are more likely to overheat than an open reflector (incidentally, *all* Dobsonians are reflectors, by definition). The only reasoning I can think of is that reflectors tend to be faster (shorter focal length per aperture), but that's not strictly a reflector vs refractor difference. Anyone care to educate me?