2004 Venus Transit In Pictures

oneiros27 writes "For those astronomy fans out there -- pictures are starting to come in from the 2004 Venus Transit (where Venus passes in front of the sun). Times of the transit will vary by city, but make sure you use safe techniques for viewing the sun if you want to look for yourself." Anonymous Coward writes "Check out the transit of Venus webcast from Australia. It starts at 4.50 UTC on June 8." Update: 06/07 04:03 GMT by T : Linked webcast link updated to a URL projected to better handle the load, thanks to reader Tom Minchin.

Let the Bananarama jokes

[foidulus]

commence!

OH DEAR GOD

[Anonymous Coward]

I'M BLIND!!!!

I tried to look at Venus, and I burned out my eyes! Damn you Slashdot, damn you Sun! (The Sun, not Sun the Java people!)

Re:OH DEAR GOD

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I already used speech to text software because a bear ate my hands.

Terraforming

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be interesting if someday human could live in Venus (w/ the little help from terraforming), and experience the transit directly from there.

They Linked to Pictures?

[FlipmodePlaya]

NASA.gov is in for the Slashdotting of its life!

Re:Terraforming

[Exiler]

I think they'd call it "Night" or "DEAR GOD! THE GOOGLES! THEY DO NOTHING!"

Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.

Re:OH DEAR GOD

[pilot1]

He typed, of course.
Any good geek can launch Firefox, navigate to Slashdot, find a story, and post a comment without looking at the screen.

Re:Terraforming

[cynic10508]

Yeah, those Google people do seem to be stalling quite a bit on the IPO. But that's no reason to take the Lord's name in vain like that! Sheesh...

Cover for UFO

[Hao Wu]

It's not Venus, it's SWAMP GAS.

This is a big desert, you could really get hurt out here. Now go away.... remember that you saw nothing.

Projecting

[NIK282000]

It says that you can project an image of the sun with binoculars, Im hoping that a telescope will work as well, if not, watch the news for "Wild fire obliterates southern ontario, /.er in questioning"

Eureka!

[EvanED]

From the article on safe viewing:
"More recently, solar observers have used floppy disks and compact disks (both CDs and CD-ROMs) as protective filters by covering the central openings and looking through the disk media."

My Dear Watson, I have discovered another use for AOL CDs! Grab the one from under that cup over there; we're going to watch Venus!

Applaud NASA

[Anonymous Coward]

Their servers are keepin it up good. They were prepared for the huge amount of attention from the mars landings so they have some amazing infrastructure.

Thank god they didn't link to one of the 150,000kb RAW TIFFs. Nightmare for your connection and theirs =)

Re:OH DEAR GOD

[Boglin]

Any good geek can launch Firefox, navigate to Slashdot, find a story, and post a comment without looking at the screen.

Except, being blind, he wouldn't be able to read the article before posting.... Wait a sec! Just how man blind people do we have here?

Poster must have a time machine...

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the post "- pictures are starting to come in". According to my calculations the transit doesn't start for 26 hours from now.

Re:Sir?

[InfiniteWisdom]

I'm going to die in 2011, you insensitive clod!

Re:Question...

[Anonymous Coward]

it would have to be around a half million miles in diameter.

Nonsense. Have you seen the sun lately? It's about the size of a quarter, max.

Astonishing Scientific Breakthrough!!!!

[sakusha]

..pictures are starting to come in from the 2004 Venus Transit..

The photographic record of a Venus transit is nothing surprising. What astonishes me is that photographs are coming in from an event that is going to happen 2 days in the future.

Re:OH DEAR GOD

[theyre watching you]

Just how man blind people do we have here?

well, according to the uid's... about 780,000.

Voice Controlled Software

[aussie_a]

He would have posted the comment sooner but he had a cold.

Re: Bananarama jokes? OK you asked for it ...

[Ralconte]

Hey, I heard the Monkeys got arrested ... it appears they got drunk and tried to peel Bananarama. *shudder* '80's humor, I'm embarassed that I actually wrote this down. Mod me way down, if you value our civilization.

Re:Question...

[martinX]

No, you see Venus would have to be bigger to cause an eclipse. At least the size of the moon, maybe a little bigger.

But since it's only the size of a Transit Van, it's passage across the face of the sun will only be The Transit of Venus.

Reply

[Bombcar]

Watson: "My dear Holmes, I've been using AOL CDs to watch Uranus for years!"

Bah!

[MachineShedFred]

West coast gets hosed again!

We never get to see end-of-the-world omens here on the left coast!

Re:Don't worry 'bout it

[CyanDisaster]

...I'm tempted to make a Soviet Russia joke about them Slashdotting us...

What, like how in Soviet Russia, Nasa slashdots you?

Hope be with ye,
Cyan

Bob the Angry Flower

[troon]

Don't follow Bob's example [angryflower.com]...

Re:Terraforming

[sentientbeing]

that reminds me. I know a lot of the solar system has already been explored one way or an other by man- but it came to my attention that nobody has actually landed on the Sun yet...?

Now I know youre all going to say 'duh. thats stupid its way too hot'

true. but only if you go in the daytime