Adumbration

Fascinating to see the 2012 venus transit in the different wavelengths (The sound track is a bit overdone).  Local conditions in Seattle were not ideal for a direct experience.  

This reminds me of a few science fiction stories about engineering around the sun:

David Brin wrote a collection called Uplift, including Nebula Award winner Startide Rising (1983).  This    story describes how a spaceship could enter the sun by making the spacecraft a refrigerator.  It also describes a future where humanity has raised the chimpanzees and dolphins into personhood.

This one by Robert Forward (Starquake, 1989) imagines a civilization living on a neutron star.   There is a scene where the participants in a large assembly are able to communicate sub rosa through a IM-like channel in their network.  The prequel novel, Dragon's Egg, he described as "a textbook on neutron star physics disguised as a novel.".  

I am currently re-reading the Golden Age series by John C Wright (2002-3).  This one imagines an Earth civilization developed enough to attempt controlling the energy of the sun so as to avoid the communications and other disruptions caused by solar dynamics.    The images from the SDO shown at the first link above made me see more clearly how much variation there is to Sol.