Summary: NEWS
A&G · February 2005 · Vol. 46 1.7
The"blackdrop"phenomenon
observedduringplanetarytran-
sitscouldhavethesameexplana-
tionasasimilareffectseenon
Saturn,sayMEBailey,DStewart
andMStronge.
Recent transits of Mercury (15 Nov-
ember 19 9 9 ) and V enus (8 June 2004 )
have led to new interest in the origin
and ex planation of the famous " black
drop" phenomenon (e.g. Schaefer
2001, Schneider, P asachoff and
Golub 2004 , Sheehan and W estfall
2004 , and references therein).
It appears that the effect is an
optical phenomenon produced by
convolution of the instrumental
point-spread function, including

Source: Armagh Observatory

Collections: Physics