Extreme observing

On the recent David Levy radio show, Steve O'Meara tells of how he
literally stood at the edge of a mountaintop whilst almost burning his eye
out attempting to observe the transit of Venus:

http://www.letstalkstars.com/20040817.ram

Can you say, "dedicated"?

Linus Bjornsson wrote:

On the recent David Levy radio show, Steve O'Meara tells of how he
literally stood at the edge of a mountaintop whilst almost burning his eye
out attempting to observe the transit of Venus:

http://www.letstalkstars.com/20040817.ram

Can you say, "dedicated"?

None of us should ever do this! Ever! But it is nevertheless an
excellent story for all amateur astronomers and astronomy students.

References
http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclips...it/TV2004.html
http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclips...2004-Map1a.GIF

In the book History of the Telescope, a must read I say, solar observing is
talked about
and an account of J.Greaves is given:

'insomuch that for some days after, to the eye, with which I observed, there
appeared,
as it it were, a company of crows flying together in the air at a good distance'

John Greaves 1612

Galileo and Fabricius also observed this way

Not reccomended..kids don't try this at home !

always filtered and in the shade with lemonade

Dan

Sam Wormley wrote:

Linus Bjornsson wrote:

On the recent David Levy radio show, Steve O'Meara tells of how he
literally stood at the edge of a mountaintop whilst almost burning his eye
out attempting to observe the transit of Venus:

http://www.letstalkstars.com/20040817.ram

Can you say, "dedicated"?

None of us should ever do this! Ever! But it is nevertheless an
excellent story for all amateur astronomers and astronomy students.

References
http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclips...it/TV2004.html
http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclips...2004-Map1a.GIF

On Thu, 26 Aug 2004 21:04:41 +0100, Linus Bjornsson
wrote:


On the recent David Levy radio show, Steve O'Meara tells of how he
literally stood at the edge of a mountaintop whilst almost burning his eye
out attempting to observe the transit of Venus:

http://www.letstalkstars.com/20040817.ram

Can you say, "dedicated"?


Stupid is more like it. Of course this is the same guy that produced
that Messier book with the most "fanciful" pictures of the Messier
group I can remember. It made the old Mallas and Kreimer drawings
look accurate by comparison.
-Rich

On the recent David Levy radio show, Steve O'Meara tells of how he
literally stood at the edge of a mountaintop whilst almost burning his eye
out attempting to observe the transit of Venus:


With no disrespect meant to Steve, who has been a friend of mine for more than
3 decades, neither he nor David seems to have fully grasped the necessary
brevity of the brilliant ring phase of Venus that occurs at Contact I and
Contact IV of a transit. In my opinion, Steve never had any chance of seeing
the least sign of this phenomenon from his location.

JBortle

Richard wrote in
On Thu, 26 Aug 2004 21:04:41 +0100, Linus Bjornsson
wrote:

On the recent David Levy radio show, Steve O'Meara tells of how he
literally stood at the edge of a mountaintop whilst almost burning his
eye out attempting to observe the transit of Venus:

http://www.letstalkstars.com/20040817.ram

Can you say, "dedicated"?

Stupid is more like it. Of course this is the same guy that produced
that Messier book with the most "fanciful" pictures of the Messier
group I can remember. It made the old Mallas and Kreimer drawings
look accurate by comparison.
-Rich

Except that Stephen O'Meara is likely the most gifted observer of our
generation (if not ever). Remember he saw and described spokes in Saturn's
rings before the ground based observatories saw them. So it's most likely
that what he sees at the eyepiece is not what you and I see.

Linus Bjornsson wrote in message k...
On the recent David Levy radio show, Steve O'Meara tells of how he
literally stood at the edge of a mountaintop whilst almost burning his eye
out attempting to observe the transit of Venus:

http://www.letstalkstars.com/20040817.ram

Can you say, "dedicated"?

could almost say "blinded for life!"

The notion of "Extreme observing" is kinda amusing though.

Anyone up for a 360 japan air on the ski jump, with 6" reflector trained on Saturn?