2003 Transit of Mercury

angkor writes "It is happening today (all day in Asia)! NASA's SOHO page, Fred Espenak's 'Transit of Mercury' site, and live webcasts of the transit. You'll want to use the webcast, in spite of advice from our hometown paper, the Bangkok Post, which reported 'those interested in viewing it directly were advised to watch through black tinted glasses.'"

Already finished

The transit is already over. Here [eso.org] is a direct link to the ESO site about it (with pictures). There's a Venus transit coming up next year, however, which is much rarer.

Re:Already finished

Agreed... Astronomical events like these should be pre-programmed instead of posted from the hip. I hope too that the slashdot editors learn a lesson from this...

It might be a novel idea to Taco and friends to post these stories _in advance_ of the actual event, not when it's already gone. *sigh*

Re:Already finished

it might also be a novel idea if people who are interested in such phenomina would actually go to sites that specialize in these events and look at there calender.

I use the term loosly, but /. is a news site, and by definition, news has already happened.

Re:Already finished

No! The transit is not over. It is still ongoing. The media outlets of the infideals claim it is over, but it is not. Mercury is still fighting to stay in front of the sun. In fact, the Sun is losing the battle, and will soon leave the area. We will drive the infidels back and Mercury will once again regain its place in front of the Sun.

Planetary Information Minister Mohammed al-Sahhaf

Watch through black glasses

which reported 'those interested in viewing it directly were advised to watch through black tinted glasses.'"

Yeah, and then they don't need black glasses no more. Or any glasses, for that matter. Or even light.

Sunglasses

During one of the more recent solar eclipses in Canada, some teacher went out and bought 30 $1 sunglasses so that her class could watch the eclipse. Half of them ended up in hospital a few hours later.

It only takes a couple of stupid incidents like this to strike fear in parents and teachers everywhere. Now many schools close the blinds and go through what ammounts to a 'duck and cover' bomb drill whenever there's an eclipse.

Re:Sunglasses

Actually the teachers are correct. The sun is more dangerous during an eclipse because the sun is dark enough so as not to initiate our natural blink reflexes or aversion to bright lights; however, there is still significant blue to ultraviolet light being emitted from the corona. It is the exposure to this radiation that causes eye damage. A nice explanation can be found here [optometry.co.uk].

Whether or not you are more likely to want to stare at an eclipse is irrelevant. It is the fact that you can comfortably stare at an eclipse long enough to cause retinal damage whereas you cannot easily do this otherwise with the sun.

Re:Sunglasses

It isn't just the UV that causes problems. It is the blue (and green) light as well (they don't necessarily burn tissue,they mess up the chemistry in the retinal cones).

To quote the aforementioned link:

Until 30 years ago, it was thought that the damage caused by the sun to eyes were the result of infrared (heat) injury to the retina alone. Then research on animals showed that ocular tissue rose in temperature by only a few degrees. We now believe that photochemical damage from visible blue light plays a major role in causing injury, especially when exposures are for more than a few seconds. If exposure is limited, some recovery of the nerve cells in the retina, is possible over a period of months.

Re:Sunglasses

I recall my first eclipse experience when I was in 3rd grade. All the windows were covered over, the curtains were drawn, and nobody was allowed outside. The school was sealed up tight. Observation areas were set up at some windows with a piece of welder's glass so students could take a peek at the eclipse.

We were of course warned that we shouldn't look at the sun during the eclipse, but the overall impression that most of my fellow students were left with was that being outside during an eclipse was dangerous, like somehow the sun had changed and the light would cause people to go blind or something.

Better to be safe than sorry I suppose, but I recall a few friends getting nervous during the next eclipse several years later.

Re:Sunglasses

For those intending to use welder's glass for phototaking/viewing of such events, please get the proper grade of welder's glass, grade #14 and above is good enough.

Reference: -1- [utoledo.edu]
-2- [skyandtelescope.com]

If it's anything like my transit...

It'll have to idle in traffic waiting for it's turn to merge onto the highway.

Don't do it, kids!

This [eso.org] is what your eyes will look like if you watch the event through dark tinted glasses.

Black tinted glasses?

No way. That's not nearly safe enough, project it onto a piece of white paper with a pinhole camera. Then you won't get the dark glasses obscuring your view, either. A little ingenuity often prevails over a little consumerism. ;)

Not the end of world?

And no cult proclaiming the end of the world? How odd..

why not more often?

Hopefully someone can answer this litle question of mine.
Since Mercury orbits the sun in only 88 days, why can we see transists more often than about 13 times a century (according to space.com)?
Same thing with Venus, since it's in a orbit inside ours it must *at least* pass earth on the 'inside track' once a year. Is it because the orbits a slightly inclined or sometihng?

Re:why not more often?

Yes, you answered your own question - it's because all of the planets orbits are at different inclinations, and therefore even when another planet is directly between earth and sun (or the sun is between the earth and planet) it isn't necesarily directly in between.

It's the same way that you don't get an eclipse during every full and new moon.

Oh, that's easy...

fredrik70 asked:

Hopefully someone can answer this litle question of mine. Since Mercury orbits the sun in only 88 days, why can we see transists more often than about 13 times a century (according to space.com)?

I'm no expert in these matters, but maybe the transits occur primarily at night when the sun is switched off. This would make sense because Mercury would probably catch on fire if it were to pass so close to the sun while it were hot.

Just slightly too late

Nice images, but it would have been fun to see them while it was happening. by 9:00AM EST, it's already 1PM in England (just past the "transit at sunrise" area) and the sun has already set in India, smack dab in the middle of the "full transit visible" area. So it looks like we missed the whole thing by about five hours. I know the pictures are the same, but there's something nice about seeing the pictures when it's really happening.

But then again, the slashdot crowd would have pummeled the webcams. I'd rather let the people who are really interested in this stuff get to the site for the live webcasts. Those people certainly don't want a large group of mildly interested people drowning the servers.

Don't forget the total lunar eclipse in a week!

Don't forget about the total lunar eclipse [nasa.gov] coming in less than a week. [May 16]. Very romantic! Have fun.

Bangkok Post also says...

If you ever need to enter a burning house, wrap yourself in newspaper.

Worth watching?

Really, is this worth a webcast? Comets are beautiful. Meteor showers are beautiful. Solar eclipses are awe inspiring. But this? It's just a black dot travelling across the sun. I don't doubt that this has enormous scientific value for astronomers and planetary scientists with the right instruments, but the average punter could achieve the same effect using a torch.

Rare Event?

I guess I just don't quite understand something. The article *seems* to state that this event hasn't happened in 100 years. That doesn't make sense to me. As Mercury revolves around the sun in I believe 88 days, this should happen 4.x times during the Earths 365 day orbit. Maybe they were implying it just hadn't happened during the daytime in Bangkok in 100 years?

Re:Rare Event?

I would assume this is not the case. This means that this event only happens when the Earth and Mercury are approximately at the point of intersection of the two orbital planes at the correct time.

Correct. Mercury's orbit is inclined at 7 degrees to that of the earth. This makes the chances that mercury will cross the solar disk (roughly half a degree apparent diameter) at the exact moment rrequired for a transit pretty slim...

Total Lunar Eclipse: May 15-16, 2003

for the record, this is posted on /. before the event. See this [nasa.gov] link over at NASA.

Summary: Atlantic Ocean, eastern half of the US, eastern third of Canada see the whole thing. People in Europe and Africa see it at moonset, while those in the rest of US and Canada see it at moonrise.

Bah

Don;t listen to thesr poeple, I spent hours as a kid starring at teh sun, adn my visoin is fine! ;]

Venus Transit next year, June 2004

No living person has witnessed a Venus transit. The next one occurs June 8, 2004. If all goes well, on that day I'll be on a beach at a resort in Mauritius, with a video camera and a telescope, and I might actually succeed in capturing a DV stream. The weather prospects in Mauritius are not the best, but considering that the best prospects for clear skies are in Iran and Turkey, I'll take my chances in Mauritius.

A Slashdotting wouldn't have helped...

Hours before, and all during the transit all of the live sites, especially NASA's were incredibly slow, I though they must have been slashdotted, but I even checked to see if it was advertized onk /. but I guess not until this morning. But the videos are pretty sweet, go watch them!

Open source software to simulate and make images

For those of you who are interested, Celestia [shatters.net] is an Open Source application that can simulate the movements of the planets in 3d and generate some really cool pictures. It's available for Linux, Win32, and MacOSX.

One particularly good gallery is the Celestial Phenomina [shatters.net] one by "Calculus." An example of a cool image is Saturn transit of the Sun as seen from Uranus in 2669 [shatters.net].

binoculars

I think using binoculars to project an image onto a piece of paper gives a better picture than a pinhole camera, but it is the same idea.

Projected images are so much safer than looking through anything, plus more than one person can look at a projected image at the same time.

As Sting said :)

There's a little black spot on the sun today.... :)

Re:What if we are in transit?

This has very little significance.
a) It is not possible for 5 planets to transit the Sun, since only two planets are closer to the sun than Earth.
b) It has never happened before. (see a)
c) Alignments of several planets in a row do happen, if very rarely. The combined gravitational effect of the planets is still tiny when compared to that of the Sun which makes up the VAST majority of the mass of the solar system.

Re:What if we are in transit?

Oh sweet Christ. Not this again.

Look, all nine planets were aligned in 2000 or 2001. NOTHING HAPPENED. NOTHING WILL HAPPEN. The gravity of the first five planets is not significant enough to act on one another to that degree. Jupiter may be huge, but it's gravity is barely noticeable on Earth...I'd be surprised if it affected the tides more that .00001 inches.

Regardless of where the planets are in regards to each other, there's always gravitational interaction...but it's not enough where you're going to see anything like you described.

*sigh* I'll be you're a product of the American public schools. (Not that I'm not, but I'm just trying to take a dig at the science taught in public schools here.)

Re:black tinted glasses

The reason you have to wear them, is that Mercury emits certain poisonous gases which traverse through the earth's atmosphere and might be dangerous. This can lead to loss of eyesight, decrease and breathing capacity and irritablity.

The poisonous gas is probably vaporized mercury, so you'll probably get heavy metal poisoning.

JUPITER ONLY HAS ONE MOON?!!?

Wait a sec? Jupiter only has one moon?!? I guess it must've eaten the other 59 moons. Was it Io? Lousy fuck. Or maybe Ganymede? I bet it was Europa.. or maybe Callisto. I doubt it was Metis or Adrastea. Thebe's too weak to do anything like that. Maybe it was Themisto, I always knew he had it out for Leda, Himalia, Lysithea, and Elara. S/2000 is just strange. Iocaste might do something like that, if someone suicidal like Praxidike or Harpalke decided they were sick of looking at the likes of Ananke, Isonoe, Erinome, or Taygete. Wait.. no, I know, it was probably Chaldene, working together with Carme and Pasiphae. They've always hated the likes of Kalyke, Megaclite, Sinope, and Callirrhoe. Could it possibly have been those piece of shit S/2001's. Maybe they had a gang war with the S/2003's. NO! I'VE GOT IT! It was that worthless no good S/2002 asshole who dunnit. Those small fucks always have short fuses....

What was I talking about?