Category Archives: Astronomy & Stargazing

Transit of Venus video

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I don’t have my promised Flickr gallery of the Transit of Venus online just yet, but here’s a 3-minute video of portions of the transit. The first 2 minutes of footage are sped up between 4x and 20x and set to pertinent music; the final minute is normal speed, with chit-chat and a round of applause as Venus and the… Read more »

More Venus pics & videos coming soon

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Yesterday was I day I’d been literally counting down to for 6 1/2 years, or 2,935 days — and it totally lived up to the hype. My first and last viewing of a Transit of Venus was simply awesome, and well worth the drive to Carbondale. (Now, only 1,902 days until the next big event! Heh.) Anyway, after returning home… Read more »

Go west, young man

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The Transit of Venus is just hours away (it starts at 4:05 PM MDT and goes until sunset, which is around 8pm), and while I didn’t take that flight to Tucson, I have decided to drive three hours west, into the Rocky Mountains, to find a better viewing location. Actually, I’ve already found it: a field near St. Vincent’s Church… Read more »

Venus to transit the Sun tomorrow, then not again for 105 years

Above: Video of the Transit of Venus taken by my dad in Connecticut in 2004. Long-time readers might vaguely recall that, eight years ago, I considered flying from Phoenix (where I was living at the time) to Chicago, for just a single day, to view the Transit of Venus. I ultimately decided against it — instead shipping my video camera,… Read more »

Eclipse!

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Wow! The solar eclipse over Denver was awesome! Above, a photo that Becky took of me holding 10-month-old Loyabelle in one arm and, in the other, raised above my head, a 13-year-old piece of welder’s glass that made it possible to show the Sun in otherwise normally-exposed pictures. It worked amazingly well. (See also here, here, here and here.) Below,… Read more »

My other solar eclipse

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I wrote last night that the only solar eclipse I’ve ever seen was on May 10, 1994, when I caught a brief, unsafe, naked-eye glimpse of the partially eclipsed sun, perhaps 40% or 50% covered, looking out a bus window in Virginia during a school trip. But I belatedly realized that’s not right: I also saw, from the road in… Read more »

Recalling my one brief (unsafe) glimpse of a solar eclipse, 18 years ago

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Tomorrow, America will experience its first annular eclipse since May 10, 1994. Weather permitting, I’ll get to see it as an 85% partial eclipse in Denver — the second solar eclipse I’ve ever witnessed, and the first since (again) May 10, 1994. It will also be the first solar eclipse I’m witnessed safely, with proper eye protection. On May 10,… Read more »

Annular solar eclipse on Sunday!

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Get your eclipse glasses, pinhole viewers, or Shade 14 welder’s glass out, and your “penumbras and emanations” jokes ready, because there’s a solar eclipse a-comin’ on Sunday evening! The photo above (by Kevin Baird) shows roughly what the eclipse will look like along the central “line of annularity,” which stretches from parts of China and Japan, across the Pacific, to… Read more »

Incredible video of aurora from ISS

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A true must-see: NASA: “Video of the Aurora Australis taken by the crew of Expedition 29 on board the International Space Station. This sequence of shots was taken September 17, 2011 from 17:22:27 to 17:45:12 GMT, on an ascending pass from south of Madagascar to just north of Australia over the Indian Ocean.” Dr. Jeff Masters: “The rippling green curtains… Read more »