Good to hear from you again. Hope the new teaching position is working out okay.
The process, as far as I can tell, is to get two full-sun photos from two
distant locations, at exactly the time that one of the observers sees Mercury
at Contact IV. That's when the planet is first completely outside the solar
disk. We could coordinate this over a cell phone call with a simple 3-2-1-now.
Later, the two photo sizes are adjusted to precisely superimpose on one
another. Then the distance between the centers of the two planet positions (one
will still be at least partly inside the solar disk) can be measured to provide
the necessary datum for the calculations that follow. Several of the distances
(Mercury-to-Sun, e.g.) are provided by NASA data, and no one expects these
calculations to be very close to the actual AU value of 93 million miles. “Just
send me what you get,” is the coordinator’s comment.
I am no astrophotographer, but I have a setup that I used to get several shots
of the Venus transit a few years back. It’s not that difficult to get a
full-sun photo through a properly filtered telescope with a digital camera, or
even an iPhone, for that matter, and I just picked up a bracket to do that.
I’ll run some tests.
Let me re-read all the details, make sure I’ve got the process right, and think
about this. I’ll get back to you. Thanks, Bob!
Alex
On Apr 3, 2016, at 4:54 PM, Robert Ewing <rrewing9@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi everyone! Wow that would be tough..... ..only 0.0347 arcseconds parallax
is difficult.....how about Portland to Phoenix.....100 times farther apart,
parallax of 3.47 arcseconds much more do-able......???
:-)
Of course it has to be CLEAR and SUNNY up here!!! Ha ha. Well, I'll try
and get some decent images if it is.....what camera/scale/magnification were
you thinking of, Alex??
Would be fun to team up with you guys!
Cheers!
Bob E
On Apr 3, 2016 12:53 PM, "Alex Vrenios" <axv@xxxxxxx <mailto:axv@xxxxxxx>>
wrote:
The Astronomical League is offering an award (pin and certificate) for
meeting the requirements as stated on their website http://astroleague.org ;
<http://astroleague.org/>. Scroll down to “Mercury Transit Special Award is
now here” and click on the word “here” at the end of that paragraph. This
page has all the requirements you must meet in order to receive the award.
All members of PAS are automatically PAS club affiliates of the AL so your
first requirement is already met.
The next set of requirements are not for the faint at heart. They involve the
cooperation of two observers at some distance apart (PVCC to BMC should be
enough) and a lot of trigonometry. You and your partner will be using the
separate observations to calculate “1 AU” the distance from the Earth to the
Sun.
I need to look at the details more carefully first, but I’d like to propose a
short talk about this at an upcoming meeting if there is any interest.
Alex
