Transit of Venus

This is what yesterday's Transit of Venus looked like. Essentially what we saw was a black dot (Venus) slowly going across the disc of the sun (big white circle - filtered). The transit took about 6 hours to complete. It started shortly after 12 noon Hawaii time and finished sometime after 6 pm right before sunset. I managed to get a few pictures of this once in a lifetime event. You see two of them here, and links to photos elsewhere.



The next Transit of Venus occurs in the year 2117. I definitely won't be around to see that!

 Transit of Venus 

 Flickr Photos Transit of Venus


Video Clips (from various sources)



KITV 4 News June 5, 2012.



NASA SDO's Ultra-high Definition View of 2012 Venus Transit



From the BBC: Why is the Transit of Venus such a rare event?

LCROSS - No Lunar Impact Cloud

Early this morning at 1:30 AM, NASA crashed the LCROSS space probe and Centuar rocket booster into the moon. The goal is to confirm whether or not there is water at the polar regions of the moon.

Upon impact the LCROSS booster was supposed to kick up a huge cloud of lunar stuff into the barren air. The smaller LCROSS space probe loaded with sensitive instruments and cameras was supposed to record the impact for 3 to 4 minutes on the way to its own impact with the lunar surface.

There was a lot of media and NASA hype building up this event. The public was told that the stuff kicked up by the vehicle impact would be visible to anyone with a good telescope and certainly to those large ground based scopes and the live TV coming from the LCROSS.

I watched NASA TV early this morning. Sad to report at impact time I saw nothing of the fact. There was no impact cloud of stuff strewn into the air. NASA did get confirmation that both vehicles did impact the moon.

NASA TV was broadcast online as well as on Olelo Channel 56 in Honolulu.

With all the build-up of this event, I was expecting a spectacular explosion like the one that happened a few years ago when a space probe was sent crashing into a comet or when comet fragments impacted Jupiter many years ago.

Regardless, it is hoped that NASA did get some kind of data from this $79 million experiment and that results and photos be released to the public later.

Photo: The moon as photographed by LCROSS, courtesy of NASA.

Total Lunar Eclipse

Conditions were nearly perfect last night in Honolulu for viewing and capturing these images of this total lunar eclipse. The rare celestial event was the first total lunar eclipse visible from Hawaii in 4 years. As usual this eclipse was spectacular as they always are. And what made me happy was that I got some decent (though not perfect) photos of the phenomena.

Larger version of this photo.

Apollo 11 - July 20, 1969

Top: Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin E. Aldrin. Bottom: Historic photo of astonaut Aldrin on the moon at "Tranquility Base", July 20, 1969. Photos from NASA.

July 20, 1969 -- I remember the day was like no other. We all gathered around our small black and white TV set to catch a glimpse of the first images of Neil Armstrong stepping off "the LEM" and onto the surface of the moon and into the history books.

The first lunar landing and moonwalk by Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin E. Aldrin went off without a hitch on that distant Sunday in 1969. I still remember a lot of it and I was only a kid. A true space cadet for sure, I kept track of the progress of every flight in the Apollo program. Just the sight of that blurry TV image coming to us from more than 200,000 miles away in space was enough to get me excited about our future in space.

The moonwalk was shown on live TV all around the world. Millions of people watched it. It was one of America's most finest moments. It was a time to truly be proud to be an American. We had won the "space race" and our guys were walking on the moon. And while my vision of personally going to space was never realized, I support the continued success of the United States man in space program.

Yes, our space program is floundering given all the problems with the Space Shuttle and even the space station. Yet, in the spirit of advancing space exploration, the United States and its partners should continue to move forward to take us back to the moon and beyond and create new opportunities and technologies for everyone on earth.

Space is the final frontier. We need to continue to go "where no man has gone before".