North Central Kansas Astronomical Society

North Central Kansas Astronomical Society

The famous Black Drop effect of a Venus Transit

The black drop effect is an optical phenomenon visible during a transit of Venus and, to a lesser extent, a transit of Mercury. Just after second contact, and again just before third contact during the transit, a small black "teardrop" appears to connect Venus' disk to the limb of the Sun, making it impossible to accurately time the exact moment of second or third contact. This led to the failure of the attempts during the 18th century transits of Venus to establish a truly precise value for the astronomical unit. The Venus Transit of 2012 should be a once in a lifetime event that everyone should try to witness. Click here for a PowerPoint® presentation by Dr. Chris Sorensen of KSU on this event. (Note: Never look at the Sun without a proper solar filter or an indirect method)

NCKAS Messier Marathon - Collaborative Messier Marathon with NCKAS, New Mexico Tech - Estcom Observatory, Outhouse Observatory, SETEC Observatory and Birdhouse Observatory..
NCKAS Membership Forms - (HTML), (Adobe Acrobat pdf) and (MS Word Document) Join NCKAS! Great things are afoot in the heavens and here too! Be a part of it all.
NCKAS Scheduled Viewing Events - NCKAS latest updates on viewing sessions for 2005.
NCKAS Projects - This link highlights our current NCKAS Project List.
NCKAS Members Portal to our NCKAS Members only site of discussions, images, logs, etc...
NCKAS Image site - Members imaging and capturing data of special events. This page will hold all our processed images and data. The images on this page can be quite large.
NCKAS Weather Page - Current Weather and Sky information for viewing.
NCKAS Viewing Locations and Equipment - Listing of our current viewing locations and equipment in use.
Boy Scouts of America: Astronomy Merit Badge Program - Our Boy Scouts Merit Badge Program information.
NCKAS Legal - NCKAS Constitution and Bylaws, 501(c)3 Status and Exemption, etc...
KSU Student Images

Great Links:

Photopic Sky Survey - One of the most incredible sites on the Internet! The Photopic Sky Survey is a 5,000 megapixel photograph of the entire night sky stitched together from 37,440 exposures.
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) - The best resource on variable stars.
The STScI Digital Sky Survey
SIMBAD - Astronomical Database
Clear Sky Clock to help determine if the conditions will be favorable for the area.
Meteor Observing Calendar - Gary W. Kronk's Comet Meteor Showers site

Cloudy Nights - Great site for equipment un-biased reviews
New Mexico Skies - An incredible dark sky guest observatory in southern New Mexico.
Skyhound.com - A site by Greg Crinklaw, the author of PC-Sky and SkyTools, is an accomplished astronomer, educator, and programmer.
Light Pollution guide for the North Central Kansas Region and Kansas.
Hawaiian Starlight aims at showing to the public astronomical images obtained with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT).
Super Image Map of all 110 Messier Objects from The Arcturus Observatory web site by Cometman.
Listing and links of all 110 Messier Objects from APOD (Astonomy Picture of the Day).
The Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD).
Our local Community Network ISP NCKCN.
Search NCKAS
Dan's Astronomy Software Collection
International Dark Sky Association
Astronomy Clubs - A resource of Astronomy Clubs World-wide.
Stars - Wonderful resource site on stars. Created by Jim Kaler, Prof. Emeritus of Astronomy, University of Illinois
Astronomy for Kids - Astonomy for children, students, and kids of all ages. KidsAstronomy.com, part of the KidsKnowIt Network, is the absolutely free astronomy resource designed to teach children about the exciting world of outer space.
New Scientist - Great site for science news.

*Unless otherwise noted all images are from the STScI Digitized Sky Survey.

This page updated: 05/09/12 10:03:11 AM