I noticed an airplane at cruising altitude headed towards Venus on the evening sky today, and said to my kids, "look, it's going to cross Venus".  And sure enough, Venus blinked.  It didn't get fully obscured, but there was no doubt.  That would have been an awesome photo if I had had a telescope and camera.

Heh, I was watching Venus in binoculars about an hour ago and an Air Force helicoptor came by on a run, headed right for it.  Ended up missing by about a quarter degree though.  Hopefully next time they'll fix their targeting system and shoot that planet down properly.

The maths:  Venus' angular size was 28" (0.008°) and its altitude 22°.  An airplane altitude of 11 km seen at a 22° angle gives a distance of 29 km.  The wingspan of a 747-400 is 64m, or 0.126° at 29 km.  The fuselage width is 6.5m or 0.013°.  So the airplane could have covered Venus completely.

Have anybody idea, how to make a new topic? There's no "new post" or alike button, I am confused

Hi-Angel, if you don't see a "new topic" button, it means that there's an anti-spam forum feature applied, you need to contribute with some more messages in other existing threads in order to unlock permissions. How many more, I'm afraid I don't know.

If you have some issue with the program, I suggest you to post necessary information on the Troubleshooting and bug reports - 0980 thread.

@Mosfet okay, thanks!

I just love optical illusions.
This one above is probably my favourite, you won't believe it's a jpg and not a gif!

I still like this one.  Stare at the + in the middle, and see what happens.




Another good one.  The illusion is very strong if you stare at the center.  To dispel it, follow one of the outer corners.



Added:  And one more (best appreciated in fullscreen).  Despite appearances, the central disk remains exactly the same throughout.  This is the essence of the illusion that makes the totally eclipsed Sun look pitch black, when actually it is as bright as the surrounding sky (which glows like twilight).

I so wish this happened.

Invisible E

...And here's a triangle


Or is it...

I see three Pac-men headed for mutual destruction. :V

Watsisname, my thoughts exactly.

[hr]

Best ending to a childrens television show
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Poor dinosaurs.  Wouldn't have gone extinct if they had discovered electricity and Wallmart.  Just goes to show what superior beings we are.  We've been around for like thousands of years and everything's okay!

I like the dialogue and stuff, but what I'm concerned about is only the appearance of those "dinosaurs", I mean... they're are a little creepy, aren't they? 
Anyway, if we think about the number of species that disappeared (and will disappear) since we started to climb the food chain, I think we can already consider this period a massive extinction event with no problems, the only two things that prevents to make this event as destructive as previous ones are safeguard projects and our ethics, I guess!

[youtube]j-xxis7hDOE[/youtube]