Blog Archives

Transit of Venus

So the lesson I’m learning here is that if I send a picture to the blog from my phone, I only get one and I can’t say anything about it except in the title. Wonder if I can tweak how the blog treats MMS messages somehow.

Anyway, let’s get the other, slightly better picture up here.

 

I made these using a cheap little pocket spyglass to project the image onto a sheet of paper, and my cheap little cell phone. Technology is awesome.

I’d have liked to get a better image, but I had no way to lock down the little scope and couldn’t hold it still enough for good photography. I had an awful time focusing because this managed to happen on a rare windy day and my paper kept trying to fly away. Still, that I could do it at all is pretty cool, especially since I could send it to the blog from outside. We live in fascinating times!

Happy Perihelion!

That’s right, tonight we’re as close to the Sun as we get. Tomorrow we start the long six month slog back to Aphelion, three million miles above us and a hundred and eighty-five million miles below us. It’s statements like these that make it clear that English was not developed with orbital mechanics in mind.

What’s the appropriate way to celebrate perihelion?