Greetings fellow asrtrophiles,
UPDATES WILL FOLLOW. STAY TUNED!
I am pleased to announce that the SAS is collaborating with the MOST (Museum of Science and Technology, www.most.org) and is hosting the outside observing session for the Transit of Venus/SUN-EARTH DAY: SHADOWS OF THE SUN Session this June 5th!
The indoor MOST session is scheduled for 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. and includes a live NASA Feed of the transit from Hawaii (which will be our fall-back location if the Syracuse skies do not permit observing). The SAS scopes will be set up until sunset (or until buildings obscure our view of the Sun. The location near Walt, “The Loch West Monster” along the Creekwalk provides an excellent low horizon near the MOST) on the corner of East Fayette St. and the Onondaga Creekwalk (map image and street view below. For directions, see google maps HERE).
For those attending and interested in bringing their own solar-safe scopes, the setup time will be 5:00 p.m., giving us ample opportunity to observe sunspots and coordinate our group observing endeavor.
SAS members at the 2004 Transit.
“Ingress Exterior” (the first “touch” between Venus and the Sun) begins at 6:09 p.m. and “Ingress Interior” (when Venus is fully “within” the Sun) occurs at 6:27 p.m. After that, we observe as long as we can.
More details will follow as plans are finalized. Until then, we hope you can join us for an event that wont happen again until December of 2117!
NOTE ON SUN SAFETY:
To make sure the point is addressed, unfiltered telescopes and binoculars are FAR, FAR more damaging to your eyes than staring at the Sun without any optics. DO NOT ATTEMPT OBSERVING THE TRANSIT WITHOUT PROTECTION! Scopes at our session contain either internal Sun-safe filters or filters made from Baader film (pronounced “B-ah-der”). If you want to use binoculars for observing and do not have filters, DO NOT ATTEMPT OBSERVING THE TRANSIT WITHOUT PROJECTION! Details on how this is done can be found at spaceweather.com/sunspots/doityourself.html.
The SAS Solar Observing brochure can be downloaded HERE.