This evening will be the solstice, when the sun appears at its farthest north in the sky. For the northern hemisphere, it’s the longest day of the year. (And for the southern hemisphere, it’s the longest night of the year.) Cielos La Palma will be holding an activity on Wednesday 20th in El Paso, at the archeological site “El Verde”, which many believe was created to enable Awara observers to…
I’m glad I woke up early today. These were taken from my balcony in Breña Baja at 6:30 am. For the top one I used a compact camera (Canan SX220) and tripod. For the bottom one, a Pentax DSLR (K 10D) and tripod. On La Palma, you can get results like this with very modest equipment and skill.
Thierry Legault is a Frenchman who travelled to Queensland, Australia for the Venus transit. He captured both Venus and the Hubble Space Telescope as they passed in front of the sun. This is a composite photograph – 9 exposures taken in under a second, during which the HST zipped in front of the sun. I’m not going to steal his photo. You can see it at: http://legault.perso.sfr.fr/venus_hst_transit.html I’m jealous.
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded this video in ultraviolet ( a wavelength of 171 angstroms.) It shows Venus passing in front of the sun, and also very large coronal loops, which are found around sunspots and in active regions. These structures are associated with the closed magnetic field lines that connect magnetic regions on the solar surface. Many coronal loops last for days or weeks but most change quite rapidly….
If you live somewhere where you can see part or all of the transit, -I hope the clouds stay away for you. REMEMBER NOT TO LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE SUN. If you’re on the wrong part of the planet (like me) or unlucky with the weather, here’s some places to watch it live on the Internet for free. Slooh.com will be broadcasting ten feeds of the Venus transit live from…
The William Herschel Telescope is 25 years old today – first light was the 1st June 1987. For many years the Herschel was the biggest optical and infrared telescope in Europe, until Gran Telescopio Canarias opened in 2009. It’s main mirror is 4.2 m or 165? across which was huge when it opened, although that’s medium-sized these days. The telescope has so many different instruments that it’s been compared…