Transit of something dark (that does not glow itself) in front of something shiny bright.
a lokomotive in front of a spherical lamp
building the rails for the solar system model with an electric train
whether we want to use two rail-orbits or three or only one: we could build as many as wanted. Putting the lamp on a rotatable cake plate makes the simulation of Doppler wobble possible.instead of the sophisticated version of a model making plate we could also use a cheap “Railcar Starter Set” for roughly 30 Euros. The plastic rails can be placed on a table or on the ground of a living room and they can be put together as a simple circle instead of a Kepler ellipse: for our purpose of photometric measurements of transits it makes almost no difference.the plastic locomotive from the starter set is much larger than the sophisticated electric models, it is battery driven (i.e. the speed can be reduced only by attaching more wagons). Instead of a spherical lamp, one can of course also use a normal desktop light as long as the photometre is used only at one specific position and the lamp can be directed towards it. The effect of the transit (of the dark train in front of the bright lamp) is the same.
