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2003 Transit of Mercury
angkor writes "It is happening today (all day in Asia)!
NASA's SOHO page, Fred Espenak's 'Transit of Mercury' site, and live webcasts of the transit. You'll want to use the webcast, in spite of advice from our hometown paper, the Bangkok Post, which reported 'those interested in viewing it directly were advised to watch through black tinted glasses.'"
The transit is already over. Here is a direct link to the ESO site about it (with pictures). There's a Venus transit coming up next year, however, which is much rarer.
which reported 'those interested in viewing it directly were advised to watch through black tinted glasses.'"
Yeah, and then they don't need black glasses no more. Or any glasses, for that matter. Or even light.
It only takes a couple of stupid incidents like this to strike fear in parents and teachers everywhere. Now many schools close the blinds and go through what ammounts to a 'duck and cover' bomb drill whenever there's an eclipse.
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It'll have to idle in traffic waiting for it's turn to merge onto the highway.
"I only speak the truth"
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This is what your eyes will look like if you watch the event through dark tinted glasses.
No way. That's not nearly safe enough, project it onto a piece of white paper with a pinhole camera. Then you won't get the dark glasses obscuring your view, either. A little ingenuity often prevails over a little consumerism. ;)
And no cult proclaiming the end of the world? How odd..
Hopefully someone can answer this litle question of mine.
Since Mercury orbits the sun in only 88 days, why can we see transists more often than about 13 times a century (according to space.com)?
Same thing with Venus, since it's in a orbit inside ours it must *at least* pass earth on the 'inside track' once a year. Is it because the orbits a slightly inclined or sometihng?
if (!signature) { throw std::runtime_error("No sig!"); }
Don't forget about the total lunar eclipse coming in less than a week. [May 16]. Very romantic! Have fun.
---
the pen is mightier than the sword, the sword is mightier than the court, the court is mightier than the pen.
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I'm no expert in these matters, but maybe the transits occur primarily at night when the sun is switched off. This would make sense because Mercury would probably catch on fire if it were to pass so close to the sun while it were hot.
--- Jason Olshefsky
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for the record, this is posted on /. before the event. See this link over at NASA.
Summary: Atlantic Ocean, eastern half of the US, eastern third of Canada see the whole thing. People in Europe and Africa see it at moonset, while those in the rest of US and Canada see it at moonrise.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
I would assume this is not the case. This means that this event only happens when the Earth and Mercury are approximately at the point of intersection of the two orbital planes at the correct time.
Correct. Mercury's orbit is inclined at 7 degrees to that of the earth. This makes the chances that mercury will cross the solar disk (roughly half a degree apparent diameter) at the exact moment rrequired for a transit pretty slim...
-- "Sponges grow in the ocean. I wonder how much deeper the ocean would be if that didn't happen."
Don;t listen to thesr poeple, I spent hours as a kid starring at teh sun, adn my visoin is fine! ;]
The future isn't what it used to be.
No living person has witnessed a Venus transit. The next one occurs June 8, 2004. If all goes well, on that day I'll be on a beach at a resort in Mauritius, with a video camera and a telescope, and I might actually succeed in capturing a DV stream. The weather prospects in Mauritius are not the best, but considering that the best prospects for clear skies are in Iran and Turkey, I'll take my chances in Mauritius.
Edith Keeler Must Die
For those of you who are interested, Celestia is an Open Source application that can simulate the movements of the planets in 3d and generate some really cool pictures. It's available for Linux, Win32, and MacOSX.
One particularly good gallery is the Celestial Phenomina one by "Calculus." An example of a cool image is Saturn transit of the Sun as seen from Uranus in 2669.
- AlanH