The Transit of Venus and a Space Shuttle

GeekMom, the blog I helped found and co-edit, has moved to Wired.com, where things are hopping! I've been so busy that science blogging has taken a back seat. But here's a quick update on some cool science things we've been doing.

Above, I was lucky enough to be in New York City when the Space Shuttle Enterprise sailed from Long Island to New Jersey and onward to its final resting place on the Intrepid Museum in Manhattan. I wrote a bit more about the exciting event in a post on GeekMom.

And on June 5, the family pulled out the Galileoscope to view the transit of Venus across the face of the sun. Although it was cloudy most of the day, the skies did open long enough to let us project this great view of the disk of Venus against the sun. Note the sunspots as well.

I'll continue to cross-post here, but for timely news about our science goings-on, please visit GeekMom! And if you're interested in news about robotics (and my forthcoming activity book), stop by the Amazing Robotics Projects Facebook page!

More Galileoscope Viewing -- The Sun and Venus

The crescent of Venus, refracted by Earth's atmosphere. Image: Kathy Ceceri

My post on GeekMom today includes a photo of a crescent Venus. I was surprised and thrilled to see it when I peeked through the telescope!

And I failed to mention in the post that as I was setting up the telescope, I saw a good-sized meteor fall straight down! It was an amazing night for viewing.

If you're in the path of the eclipse tomorrow, go out and take a look (but safely). And next month, almost everyone will get to watch Venus make a transit across the face of the sun. Exciting!

Sunspot Update

It was another sunny, warm day today, so I took the telescope outside to look for sunspots again. This time, I used photo paper to try to get a smoother surface for the projected image. I also made a collar for the telescope out of black foamboard to make the image easier to see and photograph. Unfortunately, the telescope itself was pretty shaky today, so the only really clear photo I got was this one, which is at enough of an angle to distort the circle of the sun.

Something else I was curious to see was whether the big sunspot from yesterday had moved with the sun's rotation. I think it is, indeed, a little closer to the left edge of the sun. What do you think?

If you look closely, you can also make out two sunspots that were not visible yesterday. They are on the right side, just above and below the height of the large spot on the left, and lined up one above the other.

Considering I didn't have to leave my front porch to do this celestial viewing, I think it's pretty awesome!

Sunspots!

Last year we tried and failed to use our Galileoscope to see sunspots. There were two problems: there were no sunspots to see that day, and we had the telescope pointed the wrong way!

With news of the massive solar flares heading towards Earth this past week, I decided to give it another try. I read over the directions on spaceweather.com again and corrected our mistake with the setup. Success!

Go to my blog post on GeekMom to see how we did it.