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Spelndid day here in Leicetser- although intially very cloudy, the skies cleared in time. Pete Lawrence and myself were able to view the entire transit, starting before 1st contact and finishing with 3rd and 4th contact (although these last two were observed through the trees!) Pete got lots of images/videos and I got quite a few sketches both in white light and H-alpha.
A splendid day!
-Paul
A nice set of observations Nick!
The changes in magnitude are really quite spectacular. I have to confess I can’t immediately explain these large changes in luminosity. Of course, accretion disks are very dynamical and complex processes occur within them. Now in the case of variable quasars, it has been recently suggested that if the accretion disk is not homogeneous and there are large local temperature changes, then this can result in the light being somewhat bluer when the qusar brightens and one would expect spectral variablility. I am not certain whether this mechanism could explain the osbervations in a binary system, but it would certainly be my first course of investigation!
The paper on large temperature fluctations in Quasar disks can be found here arXiv:1401.1211
Best wishes,
-Paul
What a coincidence- I only watched ‘Windbag the Sailor’ the other day! Let’s hope they mention his discovery of the white oval on Satun…
Well I thought this was an excellent production. I was actually in two minds whether to listen to it, as I didn’t want to here some bad impersonation of Patrick in some sort of far-fetched drama, but in fact it was nothing of the sort. It’s quite clear that much of the dialogue has been inspired from Martin’s book, and the whole thing is well written, funny and rather poignant in places. It brought back a few memories for me when the chap playing Patrick calls his producer Paul Johnstone and bellows down the phone ‘Hello Paul, Patrick Here!!!!!’- that was exactly how he was when he called me.
I never met Patrick’s monther, but the lady playing her gives an excellent performance. A good job all around I think and a very accurate description of Patrick’s early years.
-Paul
