General Chat

well it was a none starter with cloud obscuring everything but other counties had a smashing show..,,,,,,went and had a little dig which wasnt too productive.........the faires must have stolen it all,,,,,,,, :-| :-| :-|

Know the feeling. Mind, got a second charles II guinea out of the field where i got the last one a year ago, just a week ago. But apart from that its been slim pickings lately.

Too cloudy here. *sigh*

Cloudy here, too, but there were some good photos on BBC this morning.

got up early(ish).... got on to sites of various universities... clicked on the links to see the transit.......... and got nothing but those stupid little circles going round and round and round and round. Not one of them downloaded. Gave up. Saw some photographs earlier this evening. Thrilled.


Eldrick - what do you think of the "Brotherhood of the Snake" theory? (which has absolutely nothing to do with the transit of Venus)

Not that I know a great deal about them, but seems to me to belong to the same genre as hogwarts, atlantis, scientology and santa claus.

A fairly typical sort of cult that picks obsucre texts and weaves a fictitious story around 'facts' from these texts and claims them to be true. A bit like all religions, really. I take it you are referring to the Egyptian based cultish thingy? Seems to me that anything that isn't immediately explainable is given a ritualistic meaning, or some great significance is manufactured to show deep mystical knowledge now lost to makind in general but still retained by a select few guardians who keep it secret, for if the secrets were revealed there would be an apocalyptic event.

Which is a long winded way of saying what a load of old pants.

:-D :-D :-D

Just a load of cloud here,,,but we did see the Lancaster and the other planes as they flew back from the palace yesterday.

The best picture I've seen so far - a high res shot by the japanese Hinode satellite

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/657111main_1-SOT_120606_venus_ca_nc_yellow_001_color_full.jpg

Ooooh that's a good one.....thanks for putting the link.

I had a form at work years ago from a fortune teller. Where it asked her to anticipate what her earnings would be for the next 12 months she put that she didn't know. :-S Made me chuckle at the time.

lolol Eldrick :-D That's what I thought

Saw a History Channel thing.......... nothing on it was history! Some loony reckons the Snake Brothers have been around since Adam & Eve. I rarely watch tv, found it on YouT*be when looking for something else. Was good for a giggle.

hahaha Annx - just saw your post.

Many years ago (at last 30!) my cousin talked me into seeing a "fortune teller".

Made an appointment

The morning of the appointment, she 'phoned me to cancel because of "unforeseen circumstances"

I didn't make another appointment lolol

But....... I had a Tarot reading done once....... and that was scary! Too close to the truth to be a guess. (Yes, the same cousin talked me into it).

I bet I could do you just as good a reading over the phone!

http://www.ianrowland.com/index.php?p=ColdReading1

I did this chaps course and I can confidently say that I can read navel fluff up there with the best of them. BTW, navel fluff and bum dimples trump tarot cards every time, in case you didn't know.

:-D :-D :-D

Interesting stuff!

I have recently been reading a book "The Golden Bough" by James Frazer, that I downloaded free from Gutenburg.com, that goes into the history and origins of all kinds of woo-related nonsense!


xxxxx mick

I collect navel fluff. I've got some lovely miniature cushions stuffed with it. :-D

Eldrick,you know about these things and I didn't do very well at O level astronomy.

I have seen the time lapse films which don't give proper idea but how long did the transit actually take?

Just under 7 hours altogether, depending on where you were. although from the UK it was only visible from sunrise (4.30am here until 5.55am BST.

Typical, bright blue skies this morning.

There's some absolutely cracking photos turning up now, far too many to put links up. Although it pains me to say this, the Daily Mail has one of the best collections; http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2155140/Transit-Venus-2012-Spectacular-seen-time-2117.html

So it was imperceptible movement,which I suppose it would be wouldn't it?

Well you can't see the moon move can you?

Actually, you can, you just dont notice it. If you are looking at the moon through a telescope, it takes less than a minute to move out of view. If you have a reference point you can actually see it moving.

If you are interested, http://www.stellarium.org/ has a free software download that shows you the night sky in real time. You just set your location and away you go. You can speed everything up, zoom into objects and generally mess around with it. It's probably the best bit of totally free software ever created.

If you have an iphone or ipad theres loads of aps of a similar nature, but none quite as good as stellarium.

I put a short time lapse onto youtube back in march, it shows the apparent movement of the stars quite cheesily, lol.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DjEsN_MRDU&feature=relmfu

You can see why they thought everything moved round the earth in the old days. That being the case, plus they didn't know how far away the stars were or even what they were, it was only natural to attribute some influential force to them. Of course, we now know just a teensy weensy bit more about quantum mechanics, dark matter and relativity, not to mention science in general.

Some people still live in the past, though. Even though they talk about it on computers and mobile phones. Getting a horoscope on the internet......that cracks me up! :-D :-D :-D

I have a problem with star maps.I would rather see the stars of a constellation shown in a brighter or different colour than see the lines drawn between them.

Many,many moons ago, the constellations were probably different then, when I did the O level, I did know a few of the constellations and was even able to pick out Cameleopardus once, but have forgotten them now.

I think I will have a look at that site and see if I can remember them again.