November 2019 - Utah-Astronomy - mailman.xmission.com

Mercury Transit viewing
by John M. Craig 23 Nov '19

23 Nov '19

Great article, Joe, and very fun pictures. I didn't get any photos that showed Mercury (my attempt using a cell phone, even with a holder didn't result in anything usable). I set up my 80mm Ha scope outside the office where I work and perhaps a couple of dozen people stopped and had a look. Everyone who bothered to stop was amazed at the tiny dot of Mercury. One of my coworkers was particularly interested and stayed for more than just a brief look. We watched as the disk of Mercury approached the limb and slid off. Interestingly enough, the "fringe" you can see at the limb in an Ha scope also showed the transiting disk and even had a clear partial circle as the transit was ending. Just amazing! I really enjoyed watching the Venus transit some years back (via projection only), but with the Ha scope, the transit was quite spectacular. As noted, it might have been more interesting with some sunspots to add contrast, but even with just the faint markings visible in the chromosphere, it was pretty amazing. While looking at Joe's article on the transit, I clicked on the link to his blog post "Where is everybody? Part 2" and enjoyed reading that. Last Wednesday, I did a demonstration of the scale of the solar system with Boy Scout aged kids. With a basketball-sized sun, the earth is about the size of a sewing pin with a large plastic head (just under 3/32")--85 feet and change away. With a 100' tape measure laid out in a long hallway, I had the boys guess where Mercury, Venus, and the Earth would sit. For Venus, another plastic-headed pin works and for Mercury, I used a regular pin (not quite right, but illustrative, nonetheless). I stuck the pins in little pasteboard boxes so we could set them on the floor along the tape measure and finally had them guess, by pushing in another plain-headed pin into the box with the "Earth" to guess where the Moon would be (2.6 inches away from the Earth pinhead). In demonstration of Joe's comment about the so-called Fermi Paradox (which Joe, IMO, appropriately calls "the Fermi Misunderstanding"), at the scale of the basketball-sized sun, Proxima Centauri is something like 18,211 miles away. Follow Joe's example and quote our late space-oriented comic, Mr. Douglas Adams, "Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is." Indeed. BTW, if anyone would like the spreadsheet I came up with giving relative distances in feet and inches--sorry, didn't have a 100 meter tape measure, so went with feet & inches :-` -- from the basketball sun (or you just want to check my arithmetic), let me know and I can share the Google Sheets link with you. Wishing you all more time to observe the mind-bogglingly big (observable) universe--with fewer near-distance groupings of condensed H2O in the way, John

2 1

That glorious transit
by Joe Bauman 22 Nov '19

22 Nov '19

Hi Friends, Please take a look at my latestblog, Number 95, https://the-nightly-news.com/blog/celebrating-the-transit -- it has the best photo I've come across of the Nov. 11 transit of Mercury, a view by Ryan Cowley and his son Addison, of Layton. Best wishes, Joe

1 0

Joke Of The Day
by Chuck Hards 03 Nov '19

03 Nov '19

You know Orion's belt? Waist of space. I know, not a very good joke. Three stars.

2 1

Mercury Transit
by Jamie Bradley 03 Nov '19

03 Nov '19

Any one have plans for the Transit. Or recommend a viewing site? It's in transit at sunrise, so I was thinking mountain top or west side of a valley. Jamie B _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Send messages to the list to Utah-Astronomy(a)mailman.xmission.com The Utah-Astronomy mailing list is not affiliated with any astronomy club. To unsubscribe go to: http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Then enter your email address in the space provided and click on "Unsubscribe or edit options".

3 2

Thought Of The Day
by Chuck Hards 01 Nov '19

01 Nov '19

If you boil a funny bone, you get laughing stock.

1 0