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The Venus Transit 2004

Posted by timothy on from the romantic-encounter dept.

Walkiry writes "In just 47 days our friendly neighbour planet Venus will be passing right in between Earth and good ol' Sun, giving us the chance to see a small black spot going accross the disk (last one was in 1882). This is called the Venus Transit. The interesting thing is that there is a project asking for volunteers to perform their own measurements of the phenomena and submit their own results, in what will be the first accurate and public measurement of an extraterrestrial distance. Do you have a spare telescope and some free time on June 8th?"

4 of 199 comments (clear)

  1. A very cool book about the Transit by ChiralSoftware · · Score: 5, Interesting
    If you would like to read a book that is a brilliant mix of great writing, science, philosophy, conspiracies and the Transit of Venus, as witnessed in Africa, I highly recommend "Mason & Dixon" by Thomas Pynchon. It does take a while to get through it and you need to have Google and a dictionary handy to understand some of the more obscure references in it, but it is both funny and sad and very worth reading. Basically, Mason and Dixon, the two cartographers behind the Mason Dixon Line, are dispatched to various places in the world to make various observations, and the most interesting is their assignment to South Africa to observe the Transit.

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    Create a WAP server

  2. Projecting with cups by Bushcat · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I've had good luck projecting solar images using paper cups, though I don't know how big the image would have to be to see Venus in this instance.

    Find the biggest paper cup or popcorn bucket possible, tape thin paper over the top and poke a hole in the base. Point at sun, view image on paper. It's easy enough to teach the kids in the neighborhood when the parents wonder what the strange guy with the paper cup is doing.

    If the image isn't large enough, simply pull the paper off and project in the usual way. The paper cup is easy enough for kids to hold. For some reason, flat sheets turn into crumpled useless things when exposed to kids.

  3. An interesting quote from 1882 by AndroidCat · · Score: 5, Interesting
    "There will be no other [transit of Venus] till the twenty-first century of our era has dawned upon the earth, and the June flowers are blooming in 2004.

    What will be the state of science when the next transit season arrives God only knows."

    1882 - William Harkness, USNO

    (Dunno about God, but I used Google to find that quote.)
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    One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
  4. Celestia Video by eingram · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I made a quick video using Celestia of the Venus transit. It requires Divx and it's about 330KB in size and runs for 18 seconds.

    Here is the link. Ugh, be gentle. :)

    This also just gave me an idea. Being in North America, I might use Celestia to watch this happen in real time on June 8!