By Brendan Loy

My Flickr gallery of the Transit of Venus (and of my drive up into the mountains & back) is finally online. Here are a few pictures that I haven’t posted on the blog before:

The spot in Carbondale, in the front yard of St. Vincent’s Church, where the Three Rivers Astronomy Club folks set up to watch the transit.

A view of the transit through one club member’s Hydrogen-alpha telescope. It was tough to get a good picture through that scope’s viewfinder, but if you look closely, you can see some prominences.

My video camera felt a pit puny next to all the telescopes.

A white-light view of the transit, and some sunspots, again as seen through a telescope’s viewfinder.

Warning: beer is NOT an approved solar filtration device. :) Also note (as I did in a tweet) that this was Wisconsin beer, on the night of the Walker recall.

This is an approved solar filtration device — #14 welder’s glass. Telescopes in background.

As the evening wore on, somebody bought pizza, somebody broke out the beer, and we had a fun, laid-back transit party.

Sunset, as seen on my camcorder’s screen. “Bye, Venus! See you in 105 years!” said Frank Nadell as the planet’s silhouette set behind the mountains.

Full gallery here.

Also, don’t miss my Transit of Venus video, if you haven’t already seen it.

Previous transit posts here, here, here, here and here

By Brendan Loy

Meet the latest addition to the Loy family menagerie: Bailout #PANIC Loy. "Bailey" for short. :)

Bailey is an 8-week-old yellow lab puppy from Joplin, Missouri, who we adopted yesterday through the Rocky Mountain Lab Rescue.

She joins our three cats (Toby, Sasha and Butter), four chickens (Belle, Rapunzel, Cinderella and Briar Rose) and two fish (Goldie and Romney). And of course that’s not mentioning our three daughters. All are female, with the possible exception of the fish.

By Brendan Loy

I don’t have my promised Flickr gallery of the Transit of Venus online just yet, but here’s a 3-minute video of portions of the transit. The first 2 minutes of footage are sped up between 4x and 20x and set to pertinent music; the final minute is normal speed, with chit-chat and a round of applause as Venus and the Sun set behind the mountains.

John Philip Sousa FTW.

Video taken with my Sony HDR-XR350V camcorder, with one lens from a pair of Rainbow Symphony solar viewing glasses duct-taped to the front of the camera.

By Brendan Loy

Yesterday was I day I’d been literally counting down to for 6 1/2 years, or 2,935 days — and it totally lived up to the hype. My first and last viewing of a Transit of Venus was simply awesome, and well worth the drive to Carbondale.

(Now, only 1,902 days until the next big event! Heh.)

Anyway, after returning home from the mountains at around 12:30 AM, I downloaded all of my transit photos and videos, but I haven’t had a chance to process and upload them yet. I hope to do that tonight. I’ll eventually be posting a full gallery on Flickr, and some Vimeo clips. So, stay tuned.

In the mean time, to tide you over, here’s a picture I got of the “black drop effect“:

I took that photo 13 seconds after the one that I tweeted. Both were shot through the viewfinder of a telescope. (I would eventually figure out how to reduce the exposure a bit, resulting in less overexposed pics, through the same telescope, like this one.)

Also, here’s a photo of me next to the Transit of Venus — well, next to a pinhole projection thereof, anyway.

If you look really closely, you can just barely make out Venus in the “southwest” portion of the Sun (which is upside-down due to the pinhole device’s mirror). You can see it more easily if you look at a larger version of the photo.

Here’s one where you can see Venus more clearly, but me less clearly:

Hey, last chance till 2117 — I needed photographic proof that I was there. :)

After the jump, my personal Storify timeline of the transit, chronicling — with tweets, RTs replies and @mentions — my experience, starting with my decision about where to watch from (Tucson, Denver, or the Rocky Mountains?) and then continuing with my road trip to Carbondale, Colorado, and my viewing of the transit.

Continue reading »

By Brendan Loy

What an absolutely phenomenal view and experience of the Transit of Venus in Carbondale, Colorado. It was well worth the three-hour drive. Many thanks to the members of the Three Rivers Astronomy Club, who hosted a truly awesome transit party, and let me & other members of the public use their telescopes (and take pictures like the one below). More photos & videos to come later.

By Brendan Loy

The Transit of Venus is just hours away (it starts at 4:05 PM MDT and goes until sunset, which is around 8pm), and while I didn’t take that flight to Tucson, I have decided to drive three hours west, into the Rocky Mountains, to find a better viewing location. Actually, I’ve already found it: a field near St. Vincent’s Church in Carbondale, Colorado, where the Three Rivers Astronomy Club will be setting up shop with numerous telescopes.

Why the long drive? Because of the cloud cover situation and the forecast thereof:

That’s a computer model projection of the cloud cover at 6:00 PM tonight. The plus sign on the left is Carbondale; the one on the right is Denver. It appears that Denver — and all points north, east and south — will continue to have a veil of high clouds, probably with some low/medium clouds mixed in, throughout the transit. But by going west, I can get behind the cloud line, to crystal clear skies. So I’m going west.

Continue reading »

By Brendan Loy

Above: Video of the Transit of Venus taken by my dad in Connecticut in 2004.

Long-time readers might vaguely recall that, eight years ago, I considered flying from Phoenix (where I was living at the time) to Chicago, for just a single day, to view the Transit of Venus. I ultimately decided against it — instead shipping my video camera, equipped with a makeshift solar filter, to my parents in Connecticut, and vicariously liveblogging an event I couldn’t see — because, as I wrote on the day of the transit, “There will be a re-run in eight years.”

That “re-run” is tomorrow, as you can see in my countdown timer at right. (I’ve literally been counting the days until tomorrow for the last 6 1/2 years.) And it’s visible from Denver — along with most of the rest of the world — weather-permitting.

That last word, “weather-permitting,” is key, though. Right now the forecast says “partly sunny,” revised from an earlier prediction of “mostly cloudy.” (I’ve never been clear on the difference between those two vague phrases; it sounds like a glass half-empty/half-full sort of thing.) I’ll be watching the weather obsessively tonight and perhaps into early morning tomorrow. If it looks iffy, I might end up boarding a plane after all — from Denver to Tucson, where it will be 98 degrees and sunny. I’ve got a refundable (well, re-credit-able) Southwest ticket for a flight leaving at 9:35 AM tomorrow, if I need it.

Hopefully I won’t need that ticket, and I can cancel it and use the credit for something else later in the summer. Most likely, I’ll end up staying in the Greater Denver Area, prepared to chase the sunlight for multiple hours tomorrow afternoon — to Laramie, to Pueblo, to Limon, whatever — if Denver looks like it’s clouding over. But, one way or another, come Hell or high water, I’m not missing this transit — because this time, there’s no re-run in our lifetimes. The next transit will be in 2117.

Anyway… as with an eclipse, or anytime really, DON’T LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE SUN. Safe viewing tips here. And you can find a worldwide map of transit viewing events here.

By Brendan Loy

Unless your name is Mitt Romney, this is terrifying.

The head of the World Bank yesterday warned that financial markets face a rerun of the Great Panic of 2008.

On the bleakest day for the global economy this year, Robert Zoellick said crisis-torn Europe was heading for the ‘danger zone’.

Mr Zoellick, who stands down at the end of the month after five years in charge of the watchdog, said it was ‘far from clear that eurozone leaders have steeled themselves’ for the looming catastrophe amid fears of a Greek exit from the single currency and meltdown in Spain.

The flow of money into so-called ‘safe havens’ such as UK, German and US government debt turned into a stampede yesterday.

In Berlin the two-year government bond yield fell below zero for the first time, with the bizarre result that jittery international investors are now paying – rather than being paid – for lending to Germany.

There was a raft of dismal economic news from around the world, with manufacturing output falling in Britain and Europe, unemployment jumping in the eurozone and America, and fast-emerging economies such as Brazil and China showing signs of running out of steam. …

Mr Zoellick warned that the coming months could be as bad as the collapse of US investment bank Lehman Brothers in 2008.

He said: ‘Events in Greece could trigger financial fright in Spain, Italy and across the eurozone. The summer of 2012 offers an eerie echo of 2008.

Money quote: “Eurozone leaders need to be ready. There will not be time for meetings of finance ministers to discuss the outlook and debate the politics of incrementalism. In panicked markets, investors flee to safe assets, sparking other flames.”

Anyone out there think Eurozone leaders are ready, or have any reasonable prospect of becoming ready? Or that our policymakers are, for that matter?

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

#PANIC!