Four Solar Transits by the ISS in Three Days!

Iowa Tom · **Posted:** Mon Jul 10, 2006 6:59 pm

I just got a CalSky e-mail alert saying that near Rowan then near Goldfield, Iowa a person with appropriate eye protection and a telescope or binoculars will be able to see four - got that? FOUR! - transits of the sun by the ISS (for sure) and the shuttle (assuming it?s still together with the ISS) over three days this week. :shock:

First, two are on Wednesday then two are on Friday! I checked it out using my planetarium program and it is going to happen. I see that snoop105 has quite a few caches in that area. I'll drop him a note.

The details for Wednesday are located <a href="http://www.calsky.com/?ISS=&tdt=2453929.230112&lon=-93.48563211&lat=42.73955783&coorSystem=WGS84&obsbuild=2"> here</a>. The details for Friday are located <a href="http://www.calsky.com/?ISS=&tdt=2453931.195432&lon=-93.84801827&lat=42.74548119&coorSystem=WGS84&obsbuild=2"> here</a>. Click on the purple word ?map? to see where to go. The path is long (obviously) but from what I can tell they only give one point. I would say that a person must be within 100 feet of the centerline to be sure to see the crossing. It takes about a second.

<a href="http://iss-transit.sourceforge.net/subscribers/RolandStalder.html"> This website</a> shows a greatly slowed down but most spectacular video of the ISS transiting the sun. Click on video above the transit picture. The width of the longest solar panels is about 70 meters (230 feet). <a href="http://science.nasa.gov/spaceweather/swpod2006/22feb06/isstransit_strip.gif">Here?s</a> the ISS zipping across part of the moon. See <a href="http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2004/images/issjupiter/Edelmann1.gif">

</a> for a coooool movie of it passing Saturn!!

Remember when Venus transited the sun not long ago? I waited at least 20 years to see that but only caught a few seconds of it seen faintly through a thin spot in clouds. One amateur astronomer in Europe managed not only to capture the transit of Venus across the Sun but caught an <a href="http://iss-transit.sourceforge.net/MissionAccomplished.html">unbelievable simultaneous transit </a> of the ISS across both!!! :!:

-it

Iowa Tom · **Posted:** Mon Jul 10, 2006 10:43 pm

About the transit, the only decent way to watch that type of one w/o a filter made for solar viewing is by using eyepiece projection of the sunlight onto something smooth and white. Binocs barely work well enough for that. A telescope would work much better but you would need to make sure that any finder-scope is covered otherwise the sun might roast the crosshairs. That's because the crosshairs are at the point of focus of the objective (front) lens. Being at that point makes them in focus while at the same time everything at infinity is in focus as well.

One neat thing about geocaching is if I want to contact somebody in a certain area, I just look to see if anybody has caches there.

Once I wrote to someone that was in the place (Texas) where the fall wave of monarch butterflies should have been passing through at that particular time. I asked them if they were seeing a large increase in them. I will probably do more of that this fall.

-it

Iowa Tom · **Posted:** Mon Jul 10, 2006 11:39 pm

I finally found the awesome video of the ISS crossing the sun. I linked it in the 3rd paragraph in my first post above.

-it

forums.IowaGeocachers.org

Four Solar Transits by the ISS in Three Days!

Who is online