Venus transit!

A fairly routine morning at the office, except that during the odd moments when I wasn't trying to figure out how to find a network connection from my machine to Olga's or working on one of the six documents I was given to translate, I idly considered how I might catch a glimpse of Venus against the backdrop of the sun's disk.

I knew better than to try to look at the sun. Besides not being a real good idea (it's dangerous), it doesn't work; the sun is too bright. One idea that occurred to me (in the absence of any hardware, including a magnifying glass) was the technique of the camera obscura.

On a sunny day, if you are in a dark room and open a small hole to the outside, an image will form on the wall opposite the hole. The smaller the hole, the sharper (and fainter) the image. The darker the room, the easier the image is to see. (What a lens does on a camera is allow the hole to be big, relatively speaking, and on more advanced models allows the user to change the focus.)

Anyway, as I waited for the van at the полтинник this morning, I experimented with some scraps that were lying around (the cover to a discarded three-ring binder and the page holder for same), but came up short: The hole in the page holder was too big, and the image on the cover was too faint.

When I got back to the Fili, I saw the беседка near the entrace gate (a беседка is a sort of gazebo that has a roof and "walls" comprised of growing grape vines) and thought it might make a good impromptu camera obscura if there were any holes in its roof.

There were.

I stuck the page holder in the roof to reduce the size of the hole and arranged the cover to catch the projected image of the sun. Then I arranged my computer case and some other items to try to cut down on light being reflected from the surroundings onto the cover. This photo shows my first try at a solar observatory:


After lunch, I returned to the беседка with my carry-on bag, which afforded a somewhat darker environment by creating a "well" in the bag after stiffening the sides with the binder cover and partially zipping up the main opening. I also obtained better reflectivity when I put a piece of white paper in the bottom of the bag. Here's Rev. 2 of my low-tech observatory:


While the dot that was Venus was clearly visible to the human eye, capturing it on my Canon Powershot A-20 was something of a challenge. I eventually realized I could get much better results using the camera's B&W setting.

The progress of Venus across the sun's disk is fairly slow. My best image is below. The photo should be fairly self-explanatory.


The Proton lift is imminent. The rollout to the Breeze-M fueling station is scheduled for 6 pm. I'm on call this evening, but I may just go by the полтинник to capture any photo opportunities.

Cheers...

Leaving Hall 111...

As I expected, I missed the lifting operation where the complete launch vehicle is hoisted and mounted onto the transport railcar. That's no big deal, as I've seen this done during the campaign last year, albeit in a different building.

At 6 pm or so, folks converged on Hall 111 in the Proton Processing Facility (the formal name for the полтинник) to watch the railcar with the launch vehicle and the attached air conditioning car get hauled out of the building and then pushed backinto a siding that leads to a propellant loading area run by the Russian Space Forces (космические войска).

Here's what the launch vehicle looks like in daylight, with a thermal insulating blanket installed around the payload fairing:



Along the track, people positioned themselves strategically to take pictures of this giant device that will hurl 6 tons of mass completely clear of our planet in just a few days time. They also placed 5-ruble coins on the track, which were duly flattened by the passing consist, for luck. (I cannot imagine something like this happening at KSC, for example.) One of the hands in this photo, by the way, belongs to the general designer at the facility:



While everyone appeared to be having a good time, at least one person was hard at work making sure the train moved, albeit not too quickly: the engineer, who looked in my direction long enough for me to snap this picture:



It's been a long day. I left for dinner with the rollout nearly complete, only to return 45 minutes later prepared to support another battery charging session. At around 9:30 pm, it became apparent that the battery folks had started their work and that my services would not be required unless something went haywire, so I was released back to the hotel.

Tomorrow's schedule is supposed to start at 1 pm for me, but so was Raphael's today, and he was 'activated' shortly after 9 am, so anything can happen. After two days spent loading oxidizer and fuel, the launch vehicle will be ready for a 4-hour rollout to the pad. Rumor has it that the pad rollout will start at some unwelcome hour, but I've learned not to rely on (or care about) such whisperings. It's not as if I have anyplace else to be, y'know.

Cheers...