Casiello Family Weblog

(via s-t)

Somtimes clothing tags don’t say the same thing in every language.

Well, Joanne, Gabe and I got up and saw a piece of the Venus transit this morning. Even after Sousa’s ‘Transit of Venus March’, Damon didn’t wake up! Oh, well, he can catch it in eight years.

I tried taking some photos and a video through a welder’s glass, but the cameras just didn’t have the zoom or resolution to show anything worthwhile, so all we have are our memories (and a few mosquito bites!)

Here are some pictures of the transit from all over the world, and a link to some videos.

Or you might have to wait 113 years!

For us East Coasters, the transit will be in progress by the time we can see the sun – it’ll be starting at 1:13 AM our time, and ending at 7:25 AM. Sunrise in Worcester is 5:11 AM.

West Coasters won’t see this one at all, but don’t worry, they’ll have a better view of the 2012 transit, and they won’t have to get up early – that one’s in the evening.

DON’T LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE SUN! Use #14 welding glass, or an indirect method.

Here’s NASA’s page about the transit.

Another good site.

The Ecotarium is having a SkyWatch sleepover!

The last one was 122 years ago, before movies were invented. Here’s a movie of the last transit. (How? Massachusetts (yay!) astronomer David Todd made 147 photographs of the last transit on glass plates. In 2003, some astronomers at the Lick Observatory turned those plates into a QuickTime movie.)