This is an ‘html-only’ version of Scribblings with no database behind it. This means it is not possible to search it. I am working on a new version with which I am hoping to eventually put back into the main site. The new version is here but please note that there is no link directly back to the main site.
Tuesday, 8th June 2004
Little dot on the Sun
I set my alarm for a quarter to six this morning so that I could try to catch the start of the Transit of Venus across the Sun. I’d fastened my binoculars to my camera tripod, with string and tape, before I went to bed so all I had to do was take it out to the balcony and watch.
Of course I didn’t watch directly. Didn’t want to end up blinded for the rest of my life. I projected the image onto a piece of card which I’d stuck to another tripod. I ended up with an image just over a centimetre across. Not large but it would have to do. I also tried to get an image with nothing more than a pinhole in a card but, while I could get a much larger image, it was too dim to see anything.
I didn’t really expect to see anything very much but at around 6:30 it was pretty obvious that there was a little dot on the edge of the image. Now, over an hour later, it’s moved across by a millimetre or so. Once I get to work I hope to set up a telescope to try to get a larger image. It’ll have to be another string and tape job but, hey, these things happen so rarely that I just have to give it a go don’t I?
An apology
Since moving the site to a new server Scribblings is not as easy to find your way around as it used to be. It used to depend on a script and a database on the server but is currently served as ‘flat html’.
I have some ideas about how to make it a bit easier but they depend on writing another script. I hope to get around to it ‘eventually’.
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