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The transit of Mercury starts at 7:35 am ET and will last for 5.5 hours

solarsystem.nasa.gov

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Re: The transit of Mercury starts at 7:35 am ET and will last for 5.5 hours

#61

Post by Aperocky »

asudosandwich wrote: post #45
lisper wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember a world without the internet, without personal computers, without ATM machines. I am a member of the last generation (until the apocalypse) who will know what life was like without these things. Traveling was more of an adventure back then because you were pretty much cut off from home. Nowadays, being away is not so different from being at home. We may be living on the moon in 2049. Whether that represent…

I remember being bored. Fondly in hindsight.

Maybe it's worth it to do a experiment, by leaving a day and doing precisely nothing -- not allowing phone/internet at all. I'm not sure if I'll think fondly of that years down the line but I may be wrong.

Re: The transit of Mercury starts at 7:35 am ET and will last for 5.5 hours

#62

Post by makerofspoons »

nexuist wrote: post #14

Interesting to think about where we'll be when this happens again in 2049. It's a difference of only 30 years. 30 years ago was 1989. Yet life today compared to then is simply alien - technology has impacted the way everyone and every thing exists. The first self-powered flight was in 1903. Man landed on the Moon just 66 years later. In one lifetime you went from being perpetually constrained to the surface to litera…

30 years from now we could be looking back at 2019 fondly. By 2048 it is estimated at the current consumption levels salt water fish could be nearly extinct, for example. We could also be dealing with twenty days of lethal heat per year and one billion people displaced due to climate change.

Re: The transit of Mercury starts at 7:35 am ET and will last for 5.5 hours

#63

Post by nogridbag »

lisper wrote: post #15
nexuist wrote: post #14

Interesting to think about where we'll be when this happens again in 2049. It's a difference of only 30 years. 30 years ago was 1989. Yet life today compared to then is simply alien - technology has impacted the way everyone and every thing exists. The first self-powered flight was in 1903. Man landed on the Moon just 66 years later. In one lifetime you went from being perpetually constrained to the surface to litera…

I remember a world without the internet, without personal computers, without ATM machines. I am a member of the last generation (until the apocalypse) who will know what life was like without these things. Traveling was more of an adventure back then because you were pretty much cut off from home. Nowadays, being away is not so different from being at home. We may be living on the moon in 2049. Whether that represent…

Traveling with a smartphone can also have the opposite effect. It makes us overconfident. On my honeymoon a few years back, we used Google Maps to take a scenic route [1]. Google Maps gave an ETA of 2 hours and a sign said it required a 4x4 vehicle but wasn't too worried because I had a Jeep 4x4 rental car. Long story short - it took 5.5 hours, required rock climbing and driving through mud pits deeper than the vehicle all without cell service and no humans in sight.

[1] https://www.dangerousroads.org/north-america/usa/7300-mana-r...

Re: The transit of Mercury starts at 7:35 am ET and will last for 5.5 hours

#65

Post by tinix »

newnewpdro wrote: post #13
tinix wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you need a high shade, at least 14. just get a stack of neutral density filters, and some IR/UV block filters, and use a camera... you'll need magnification anyway.

You're reminding me of reports that people had returned very expensive rented telephoto lenses destroyed by sunlight after the last total lunar eclipse.

Those people suck, frankly. I own very expensive lenses, and equipment.

I speak from experience. I was a professional photographer many years ago, though it's only a hobby these days.

I filmed the crescendo of the 2017 solar eclipse and took photos throughout with a stack of IR/UV/ND filters: https://photos.app.goo.gl/CV9Ju3TkMtJKNL566

I had to remove most of the ND filters during totality because it was simply blocking too much light, so much so that clouds and stars are visible in some photos. I had >99% IR/UV cut and over 26 stops of wide-band light reduction in front of my lens. My equipment is fine, I assure you.

Due diligence isn't hard; I looked up the spec sheets for every filter I purchased, and did the actual math, so much so that I had to remove a filter or two during totality to get the exposure that I wanted, because I was overly conservative to protect my equipment.

But... yeah... though there were many people who destroyed equipment during the 2017 eclipse, that doesn't mean it can't be done safely and properly.

Re: The transit of Mercury starts at 7:35 am ET and will last for 5.5 hours

#66

Post by matwood »

lisper wrote: post #56
matwood wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On my first trip to Europe I drove from Paris to Nice, stopping over in Epinal. We didn't have a GPS device and our phones didn't work. We did have some printed out directions from MapQuest IIRC. We still talk about that adventure today, "after the 13th roundabout take the second exit". Was this 12 or 13?

> directions from MapQuest Heh. When I was traveling in Europe in the mid-80s we had to use actual maps . :-)

Great point. We also had a map, which ended up being crucial.

Contrast my experience with those of younger friends I have traveled with who will spent an hour on TripAdvisor prior to walking inside a restaurant :(

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