By Richard Taylor

Friday afternoon, just North of Atlanta, an “ISS Solar Transit” will be visible – This occurs when the ISS travels between the Sun and your location on Earth. It is very common and also occurs between the Moon and Earth, which is called an “ISS Lunar Transit”. Anyone can go to www.transit-finder.com and see when the next solar or lunar transit will occur for your area. Adel has a good one coming up April 7th

The problem is they only last about a second or two and if you want to catch a solar transit, you will need a good solar filter for your camera or telescope. Anyone with a good zoom camera can video a lunar transit without a filter.

Go to YouTube and search “Solar Transit” and “Lunar Transit”.

In preparation to video it, I set up my telly-scope and camera yesterday to make sure everything works and get an idea of how to set my camera. Here is one of the better pictures of the Sun.

While looking at this, remember that our Sun’s diameter is almost twice that of the Moon’s orbit around the Earth (864,938 miles) and it is 93,000,000 miles from us. It is basically a continuous nuclear explosion held together in perfect balance with gravity. The energy released is caused by fusion where 600 million tons of Hydrogen is converted in to 596 million tons of Helium every second – It lose 4 million tons of mass every second. This gives you an idea of how big it is – and ours is a small star. The energy released in this reaction is staggering – About 386000000000000000000000000 Watts and only about 0.00024% of it hits the Earth.

It’s a little to perfect to be one big accident.