Transit of Venus

A

Amy

New member
holymoley that was awesome...I didn't think I'd manage to get any shots of it but lo and behold I had some filters stashed away for my one lens...so I got what I could. Was anyone else a nerd like me and watch the whole thing??!  ;) It still baffles me why people don't want to fund NASA...I mean...this is just friggin' amazing how can one not be curious about space?!?!!


Transit of Venus by Sunguramy, on Flickr


Transit of Venus by Sunguramy, on Flickr


Transit of Venus by Sunguramy, on Flickr
 
Brains

Brains

Well-known member
Watched some of it on the live feeds but had to turn off the sound as the "commentary" was drivel. Well done in getting your photos - I have an idea of how difficult photographing the suns disc can be.
We (as a species) need to raise our sights a bit and look out more to the universe, if we have a future it will involve the bigger picture!
 
Alex

Alex

Well-known member
Great pictures again, Amy. I echo Brians thoughts we do need to look at the big picture because in the end the way our population is exploding, leaving this planet and colonizing and terra forming other planets is the only way we would survive in the long term.

Either that or disease, famine & war would solve the population problems in a rather nasty way.

I know which one I would prefer!
 
A

Amy

New member
I think perhaps America is more apathetic about science in general than the UK is. I mean...it seems mroe and more "the people" are becoming anti-science and anti-research. "Nasa doesn't do anything for the average person" (bullshit, the friggin' grain you grow to eat 'cause it grows anywhere with minimal resources was engineered by nasa! plus of course a ton of other things) is something I hear all the time. Not only NASA but all science...there seems to be a growing backwards trend right now...away from equal rights (wait, my birth control won't be covered anymore but you'll cover boner pills still, because women shouldn't have sex before marriage??! wtf?!?! not to mention lgbtq rights), away from science (because God said the earth was made in 6 days so we don't need science!), etc. I dont know how much of US news gets over there or how it's potrayed but it kinda sucks right now. People are just so.... /stupid/. I totally understand why Americans are viewed as stupid and lazy...the majority are. Ok I should get off my soapbox now and go crawl into a cave where life is good!
 
graham

graham

New member
Hi Amy

Those of us who have visited your country know that you are not all anti-science lunatics by any means, but we do get somewhat alarmed by some of the things that we hear. See for example, this story. We (some of us, anyway) also worry about the stress - quite remarkable in a theoretically secular society - placed on the religious beliefs of your politicians; we are aware that Mitt Romney is a Mormon yet I would guess that fewer of us know - and even fewer care - that our own Deputy Prime Minister is actually an atheist.
 
A

Amy

New member
Society wise both times I've been to the UK I have felt I have fit in so much better than I do here in the US, because you don't have the bible and stupid idiotic beliefs to contend with every day. It gets tiring! The only reason my friends knew about the transit of venus was because they were my friends....I don't pick stupid friends LOL. But I'm quite sure the vast majority of Americans didn't even realize it was happening, and of the ones that did, even fewer cared, and of those, only a tiny percent bothered to see it. I think the NASA feed got like 13,000 "likes". I know not every has fb and sure not everyone who liked it "liked" it, but still, considering how many people are in the us alone (and that's the internet, so it's international) that seems like a pretty tiny number to me of folks who cared. :/ I think the total number of views was like 2.5 million. Which is like .03% of people in the world who cared to tune in for even a second. (I guess that's not corrected for all the people who dont' have internet access, but still)
 
Bratchley

Bratchley

New member
If I'd had the time and was elsewhere in the world I'd have certainly checked it out! Space is one of our final frontiers of exploration (as with caves and the bottom of our oceans), admittedly we can regularly see what's going on in space without having to be there but there will never be a way of seeing everything.

The impossibility of seeing everything is what frustrates me more than anything in this world and the thought that many people are happy living in a small part of it with no care as to the viewing or exploration of the outside world baffles me to no end.

I was chatting to someone today who didn't even know what Venus was, let alone after a few minutes of conversing knew that there was anything outside of our atmosphere. They became entirely fascinated when I began explaining the Solar System and our Local Group etc. Perhaps it's not always down to pure ignorance and perhaps a perceived lack of awareness.

Either way, more on topic, seeing those pictures again Amy in a larger format is wonderful! They're fantastic!
 
I

ianball11

Active member
how can one not be curious about space?!?!

Most people dont like being reminded that we are an insignificance when measured against space.

Awesome photos.

 
Brains

Brains

Well-known member
Amy, in this country many people who prefer blind belief to reason stick a fish symbol on their cars to show their faith to other road users (as a warning?), and as a response the Darwinian fish logo has, ahem, evolved as a response - a fish with legs no-less. Do you have such things that side of the pond, and if so are they treated with tolerance?
 
A

Amy

New member
Brains said:
Amy, in this country many people who prefer blind belief to reason stick a fish symbol on their cars to show their faith to other road users (as a warning?), and as a response the Darwinian fish logo has, ahem, evolved as a response - a fish with legs no-less. Do you have such things that side of the pond, and if so are they treated with tolerance?
Click to expand...
Yeah lots of people put th efish on their cars, and some put the ones with legs I've seen those. Treated with tolerance? not sure what you mean. Although my new favourite version of it is the FSM...
fsm_200.jpg
can get it many places. Tempted to put one on my car haha.
 
Brains

Brains

Well-known member
But did the flying spaghetti monster evolve from a fish, or was it created? How does Pastafarianism fit in with the bible belt fundamentalists?
As for the tolerance, I was wondering if the evoloutionary fish with legs would be attacked / defaced by the devout bigots, or if they would see the funny side of it?
 
graham

graham

New member
Brains said:
But did the flying spaghetti monster evolve from a fish, or was it created? How does Pastafarianism fit in with the bible belt fundamentalists?
As for the tolerance, I was wondering if the evoloutionary fish with legs would be attacked / defaced by the devout bigots, or if they would see the funny side of it?
Click to expand...

Brains, apparently it is possible to buy stick-on  legs that convert an icthys into a darwin fish. I've never done so but I have to admit that the temptation is strong.
My own personal darwin fish has continued to evolve by dint of one of the tail fins being lost. I don't believe that was a miracle.
 
kay

kay

Well-known member
graham said:
Hi Amy

Those of us who have visited your country know that you are not all anti-science lunatics by any means, but we do get somewhat alarmed by some of the things that we hear. See for example, this story. We (some of us, anyway) also worry about the stress - quite remarkable in a theoretically secular society - placed on the religious beliefs of your politicians; we are aware that Mitt Romney is a Mormon yet I would guess that fewer of us know - and even fewer care - that our own Deputy Prime Minister is actually an atheist.
Click to expand...

One of the comments to the story Graham cites is that a creationist could become US President, but a "confessed" atheist could not. By contrast, Tony Blair was remarkably coy about his political beliefs until he left office.
 
graham

graham

New member
kay said:
One of the comments to the story Graham cites is that a creationist could become US President, but a "confessed" atheist could not. By contrast, Tony Blair was remarkably coy about his political beliefs until he left office.
Click to expand...

Remember Alistair Campbell's comment that "We don't 'do' religion." Is it better to mistrustful of the religious or the a-religious?
 
F

Fulk

Well-known member
kay quote:

By contrast, Tony Blair was remarkably coy about his political beliefs until he left office.
Click to expand...

Was he really? I understood him to be a Catholic years ago . . . was he quoted (or misquoted) as saying that by going to war with Iran he was doing God's work? (Which rather begs the question ? is God such a lazy bastard that he leaves us to do his work?)

Mind you, it's a long tradition, isn't it? Wasn't Bloody Mary 'doing God's work' when she ruthlessly put hundreds of people to death by the peculiarly hideous method of burning them alive (just because they disagreed with her over some arcane passage in the bible)?
 
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