Just wait i should send her up my hall of fame in the local paper its totally opposite to hers I think the words spectacular and awsome were in my article
Just wait i should send her up my hall of fame in the local paper its totally opposite to hers I think the words spectacular and awsome were in my article
Unlike most of the things we're looking at through our scopes and imagers, this was something we're definitely not going to see again.
The pretty galaxies and nebulae will sit and wait around forever until we're in the mood to take a look at them. And if we liked what we saw we can look again. And again. For the rest of our lives.
I'm glad I made the trip to Cootamundra, my only regret is that I could only convince one of my sons to come along.
As interested in all things space and astonomy as I am, it bored the heck out of me too. I was working indoors throughout the entire transit, but I didn't really feel like making the time in my day to go outside and have a look. Deep space objects? Beautiful. One body crossing in front of another....zzzzzzzzz. Sorry, there are aspects of astronomy that I don't have much interest in. Having said that, I can't wait for the total solar eclipse in November, as the corona will be photographically spectacular.
C'mon, jump to 1:25 or 1:45 in tho video and tell me there isn't some beauty and grandeur to be had.
I imagine I could do much the same by writing an article about, say, AFL football. And somewhere in the aether, on a sports website populated by people I care nothing for, whose opinion I care nothing about, I'd be derided in much the same way.
How true Brian, but the analogy falls down when you compare our pathetic trivial attachments to cultural artifices with the real world and our place in the Universe.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Poita
C'mon, jump to 1:25 or 1:45 in tho video and tell me there isn't some beauty and grandeur to be had.
Personally, I was transfixed by the event. Rarity was the least of it although you couldn't help but think of those who live long and fruitful lives and yet never have an opportunity to view a Venus transit. The history gets me, the very first time we got a reasonable handle on the actual scale of the solar system from the 1769 transit. I've stood at Venus Point in Tahiti and imagined Cook and his crew on that day in 1769. And Horrocks projecting the disk of the Sun onto a piece of paper in 1639. As I imagined again in my backyard on 6 June!
But there was also the chance to share the event with my partner, kids & grandkids - the local school did nothing so my kids gave the older grandies a day off in protest. Man, where do you get parents like that? The littlies, both 2-yo, were a bit young but the older ones, 5 & 6, had a great time. They were going backwards & forwards from eclipse glasses to the telescope, and taking photos with my camera. And the questions, phew! The older one stayed with it for hours, couldn't get enough of it. His only disappointment was that I couldn't print his photos out straight away because of a badly-timed power outage.
Amazing who was interested too. My brother is a surveyor and he rang me from Yeppoon on the day saying that all the firm's surveyors were gathered excitedly in the carpark watching the transit through a theodilite and a Sun filter (has a particular name in surveying but can't remember what he called it). These are people who didn't have a particular astronomical interest as we know it but whose training involved a grounding in shooting the Sun & stars.
There's beauty too, but of course it's in the eye of the beholder. Things don't have to be spectacular to be beautiful or interesting do they? What got me at the eyepiece, and that I had to constantly remind myself of, was that the black silhouette I was watching wasn't a mark on the Sun or a shadow, it was a planet that was much closer to the Earth than the Sun, in rough terms only about a quarter of the distance from Earth to the Sun.
As for the article, well it's just part of the dumbing-down, the same response that sees morning show hosts snigger whenever there's an item with a slightly scientific bent unless it's to do with diet or living forever.
Well that certainly blew a draft up her nickers! It's a wonder she managed to keep a train of thought in her head long enough to read all the messages to the end. What a clever girly to hide her droll message so skillfully that we missed it. Now that's reporting skills well above her column. Can't wait to hear her views on the discovery of penicillin or the development of the bionic ear, that should be up there with her shopping list.
It's all relative but you do what you can to educate people a bit too. I'm glad I took time out to check it out, but must admit conjunctions of moon/planets don't usually do it for me, and I guess you can argue it's all celestial clockwork.
A friend of my wife came over during the transit and spent 30mins like a little kid playing with the eclipse glasses and ooo'ing over pics I was taking. Then later said to my wife "did he take the day off just for that?!"
Surely it's not the sentiment, but the expression that sparked the debate.
It's important to science and unless there is a social or economic effect most people just forget. Venus shall transit again and be forgotten, except by those to which it matters.
There are bigger issues afoot in this world. That's what gets people's attention. Including that of youth. They will choose what matters to them irrespective of what matters to science.
I think that most of you have missed her point. It's an opinion column, not news. It's her opinion, and whilst it may not agree with the bulk of ours, are you all saying that she's not allowed it? Hmmm...
But Chris, you are then missing your own point!
We can ALSO have an opinion and are just as free to express it!
Not sure where you think I stated that you could not? Are you inferring that by me saying that she should be allowed her opinion, it is to be at the expense of yours? Don't think so..... but you're still vilifying her for having a different one. Funny old world, eh?
W.T.F. 
What a big sour puss 
i should send her up my hall of fame in the local paper its totally opposite to hers 
I think the words spectacular and awsome were in my article 
Sell your scopes everyone, we've been rumbled...
