Amazing interest

I think it's almost laughable at how people can get so charged up over
a large dot moving in front of the sun. I can just imagine the many
who spend hours looking at the Venus dot. I spent about 10 minutes on
the internet and it was the same old dot no matter where in the world
it was seen.

skypilot wrote:
I think it's almost laughable at how people can get so charged up over
trolling.

Fixed it for you. No charge.

Brian Tung
The Astronomy Corner at http://astro.isi.edu/
Unofficial C5+ Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/c5plus/
The PleiadAtlas Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/pleiadatlas/
My Own Personal FAQ (SAA) at http://astro.isi.edu/reference/faq.txt

skypilot:
I think it's almost laughable at how people can get so charged up over
a large dot moving in front of the sun. I can just imagine the many
who spend hours looking at the Venus dot. I spent about 10 minutes on
the internet and it was the same old dot no matter where in the world
it was seen.

*****

If you don't get it you don't get it, and the fact that you find it
"almost laughable" that others do get it shows that you don't get it.
(What would it have taken to remove the "almost;" i.e., what would it
have taken to make it laughable?) I don't mean to imply that there's
anything wrong with not getting it, though; the wonders of astronomy
aren't for everyone.

Davoud

--
usenet *at* davidillig dawt com

imagine the many
who spend hours looking at the Venus dot. I spent about 10 minutes on
the internet and it was the same old dot no matter where in the world
it was seen.


I found this site in CZ to be one of the better ones

http://www.astrohk.cz/live/

this site from France too showing Venus and it's thick atmosphere silouetted
against
the sun http://astrosurf.com/lepine/venus2004english.html

You get a feel for how thick it's atmosphere really is

this site from France too showing Venus and it's thick atmosphere silouetted
against
the sun http://astrosurf.com/lepine/venus2004english.html


To my eye I see a strong astigmatism and spherical aberration due to the glass
solar filter, not due to a thick atmosphere. There are high resolution images
of Venus taken at Pic du Midi that show a very sharp round planet sillouetted
against the sun, with no fuzzy edges:

http://bass2000.bagn.obs-mip.fr/vt2004/menutour.htm

Roland Christen

To my eye I see a strong astigmatism and spherical aberration due to the
glass
solar filter, not due to a thick atmosphere. There are high resolution
images
of Venus taken at Pic du Midi that show a very sharp round planet
sillouetted
against the sun, with no fuzzy edges:

http://bass2000.bagn.obs-mip.fr/vt2004/menutour.htm

Roland Christen

That picture indicates a fuzzy edge. It is not as sharp as you say. I would
expect that
the C-14 original I mentioned and this one that you point to are high
quality optically.
The only sharp limb I have seen are with H-alpha and not full spectrum.

the C-14 original I mentioned and this one that you point to are high
quality optically.
The only sharp limb I have seen are with H-alpha and not full spectrum.

I'm sure that the C14 is sharp, but glass solar filters are notoriously bad for
resolution. They are made from mere window glass. The images that I referred to
from Pic du Midi were taken with full spectrum in white light and show the
planet quite sharp in all but a few images.

Roland Christen

"Oncologist" wrote:

You get a feel for how thick it's atmosphere really is

Hmm... Venus has an atmospheric scale height of 15.4 km, so 99% of
the atmosphere is within 70 km of the surface. Compared to the 12,100
km diameter of Venus, that means the atmosphere is less around 1% of
the observed radius.
Every picture I've seen of the halo (including optically, by
myself, on the 8th - wonderful view!) is thicker than that.

--
Brian Davis

In article ,
Brian Davis wrote:

"Oncologist" wrote:

You get a feel for how thick it's atmosphere really is

Hmm... Venus has an atmospheric scale height of 15.4 km, so 99% of
the atmosphere is within 70 km of the surface. Compared to the 12,100
km diameter of Venus, that means the atmosphere is less around 1% of
the observed radius.
Every picture I've seen of the halo (including optically, by
myself, on the 8th - wonderful view!) is thicker than that.

....and every picture you've seen of a star (including optically, by
yourself, on any night) shows a much larger disk of the star than the
actual size of the stars' disks.

A layer 15 km thick would appear a mere 0.08 arc seconds thick at
Venus' distance at 8 June. You'd need a diffraction limited
telescope with 1.4 meter aperture, *and* you'd also need to get above
the Earth's atmosphere to actually get 0.08 arcsec resolution.

Btw seeing effects are usually worse during daytime, when the solar
radiation heats the ground, producing turbulence in the atmosphere.


In addition, the Sun isn't a point light source. Therefore it's
highly likely that several scale heights of Venus' atmosphere helps
in producing this "Luminous ring" (or part of a ring): different
layers in Venus' atmosphere refract by different amounts, bringing
sunlight from different parts of the solar disk into our line of view.

--
----------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Schlyter, Grev Turegatan 40, SE-114 38 Stockholm, SWEDEN
e-mail: pausch at stockholm dot bostream dot se
WWW: http://www.stjarnhimlen.se/
http://home.tiscali.se/pausch/

Yeah .. kinda like all the goofballs who think looking at all those odd
dots in the sky with a telescope is fun :-)

skypilot wrote:
I think it's almost laughable at how people can get so charged up over
a large dot moving in front of the sun. I can just imagine the many
who spend hours looking at the Venus dot. I spent about 10 minutes on
the internet and it was the same old dot no matter where in the world
it was seen.