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The Venus Transit 2004
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?"
Of course we do. What did you think we would be doing, going on dates with women?
Okay, everybody stare directly at the Sun.
Ahhh, My EYES! The goggles do nothing! (Damn you /.)!
"giving us the chance to see a small black spot going accross the disk"
"If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments." Earl Wilson
...accurate and public measurement of an extraterrestrial distance.
Maybe it's just me, but somehow those two words don't seem to quite go together.
Nothing disturbs me more than blind loyalism towards some unrealistic and over-idealistic notion of one's nationality.
What equipment and observing method are you going to use? Will you project an image of the Sun on a screen? Will you use a camera? Is it already available or will you have to build (buy) it?
I plan on buying a 12" Celestron and doing my observations *with my naked eye*, like a MAN! What kind of wuss would use a screen or a camera? Astronomers seem to have lost the direct feel of things these days, with all them modern equipments...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
sounds like the name of a public transportation company...
Apaprently, the next Venus transit after this one will be in 2012, but the next two after that won't be until 2117 and 2125. Looks like a once in a lifetime deal. (source: http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/transit/venu s0412.html)
Homer: It's like you're from Venus... ...and you're from Mars.
Marge:
Homer: Oh, sure, give me the one with all the monsters.
Nyo nyo, the Neko Boy has spoken.
It was in a situation like that that Venus athmosphere (its clounds) was discovered, when Venus was against the sun an astromer saw a fog over the planet. A lot of light passed trough where previously was thoug to be solid.
This is what i found in Wikipedia on Venus Transits:
"Transits of Venus, when the planet crosses directly between the Earth and the Sun' visible disc, are important astronomical events. The first such transit was observed on December 4, 1639 by Jeremiah Horrocks and William Crabtree. A transit in 1761 observed by Mikhail Lomonosov provided the first evidence that Venus had an atmosphere, and the 19th century observations of parallax during its transits allowed the distance between the Earth and Sun to be accurately calculated for the first time. The previous set of transits of Venus occurred within the interval of 1874 - 1882, and the next set of transits will occur in the period of 2004 - 2012."
"Anyone who quotes me in their
can't see it from north america!
Most astronomical events seem to not be visible from or get clouded out in my area.
no big sig
What's proabaly better is a projection scope. A prpoer one is very expensive, but you can just hold any convex lense or piece of shirt cardboard with a really tiny hole in it above a piece of white paper. You'll need very good resolution to see this though, so you should probably calculate that ahead of time.
Sig:Why copyright isn't a fundamental human right
------------
Create a WAP server
Keep your eyes to the sky.
you should go here
I have no developed opinion on the bararity of foo. -homeobocks, Gentoo Forums
How long should I stare at it ?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
According to that website, this will be visible in parts of Europe, Africa, and Asia. It is pretty light on detail, but according to this site parts of it will be visible from Australia and the eastern parts of North and South America.
W00t !!!
June 8th is my 21st birthday! Finally, a good excuse to have a birthday completely alone, without that damned interference from friends or family. "Sorry, can't have dinner with you, I'll be "making observations" until sunset!"
Benmore Peak Observatory (http://www.observatory.org.nz) in New Zealand's South Island will be hosting a bunch of visitors for this one. Not only is the view of Venus going to be good, so is the view of the lakes and snow-clad mountain peaks around it. I was there in 2000 and it's just absolutely outstanding (and they always have lots of icy cold beer)! Thoroughly recommended.
Despite warnings every year people get blinded because they wanted to see a partial eclipse or some other solar event directly.
Use a telescope or binoculars and project the image onto a piece of white cardboard or paper.
Even just a few seconds can ruin your eyesight so be careful. It's no joke.
I suspected that. Silly people, wonder what they aim to accomplish by blocking PNGs ...
Hope the other tip helped.
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
I'm personally looking forward to being gouged for price-hiked solar filters, just like I was gouged for a price-hiked barlow lens during the last close encounter with Mars. :o)
Does anyone have more specific info on how long it'll take for the full transit? Are we talking just a few hours, like an eclipse?
-ZOD-
Why is it this reminds me of "Day of the Triffids?"
There's a little black spot on the sun today...
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
I have a compact dick :-)
...
On a serious note: you do not know what a troll is. Or maybe you do
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
From 1882? I don't think so.
Think again. We do have photos of it. A movie has even been made.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
I saw it the last time round. Wasn't much to speak of.
The other kind of sun filter fits over your eyepiece or inside your eyepiece. I once had a 2.4 inch refracting telescope that came with this piece of welder's glass that fit over the eyepiece. I never used it because I was warned not to.
The advantage of the objective sun filter (the ones I have seen advertised are aluminized mylar) is that 1) it blocks out intense sunlight before it even gets to your telescope, and 2) it is exposed to no more than normal sun intensity because it hasn't been concentrated by the telescope.
The wee bit of welder's glass at the telescope eyepiece is unsafe because it is getting the full focus of sunlight from the telescope and the thing and crack from the heat and then your eyeball is in peril.
The other safe method is projection through the telescope on to a piece of paper. Safe for one's eyes -- I ruined my beginner's refractor doing that because the heat cooked a cheap plastic element in the one eyepiece it came with.
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.
...cause drought
...have been mistaken for mere clouds
...are part of a worldwide forced immunization program Or maybe surplu population reduction. (warning...annoying audio)
...is a geoengineering project headed by the Illuminati.
My GOD! They've even invaded the Post Office
Hell..I can't keep up with these fools either. The only solution I fear, is the #4 loon mallet. Yes...I said the #4. This is a serious case.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Damn the anti-American universe. I bet it has to do with the United Nations somehow, those hippie-commie bastards.
It's the French. I have it on reliable authority that Venus has Letters of Transit signed by General deGaulle himself. They cannot be rescinded. Not even questioned.
When all you have is an axe, everything looks like a grindstone.
"There's a little black spot in the sun today..."
Goals for 2011: 1. Stop plate tectonics. 2. Prevent animal predation. 3. End supernovae now. 4. Rid the world of evil.
do not look directly at the sun with your remaining eye!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Err, except that no. /-n&, -"nä/; or -nons
Etymology: Late Latin phaenomenon, from Greek phainomenon, from neuter of phainomenos, present participle of phainesthai to appear, middle voice of phainein to show -- more at FANCY
1 plural phenomena : an observable fact or event
From Meriiam Webster:
Main Entry: phenomenon Pronunciation: fi-'nä-m&-"nän, -n&n Inflected Form(s): plural phenomena
||:|::
the last time an eclipse was viewable in my area, i used a couple of polarizers to look at it and it worked pretty well
you adjust the light that gets through easily by just turning them with respect to each other.
might even work in front of a telescope
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!
"In just 47 days our friendly neighbour planet Venus"
Why "friendly?" Because they don't try to invade us as often as Mars does?
But wait till I start my braille keyboard selling business...
To do list for Windows
Spare telescope, yes.
Spare set of measuring/viewing equipment that will let me use cet telescope without blinding myself while pointing it at the sun and looking through the 300x magnifying lense; no!
I think I'll leave this to the people who either don't value there eyesight, or have very good tinted googles.
-Millions of Monkeys, Millions of typewriters, 6 hours of sorting through faeces encrusted pages to find: This post
Buñuel tried this before.
To do list for Windows
Can't wait to do it again.
Or did you forget Alaska was on the west coast of America, you insensitive clod!
Truly it was a most exquisite and memorable sight. The sun was already beginning to put on the ruddy hues of sunset, and there, far in on its face, was the sharp, round, black disc of Venus. It was then easy to sympathise with the supreme joy of Horrocks when, in 1639, he for the first time witnessed this spectacle. The intrinsic beauty of the phenomenon, its rarity, the fulfilment of the prediction, the noble problem which the transit of Venus enables us to solve, are all present to our thoughts when we look at this pleasing picture, the like of which will not occur again until the flowers are blooming in the June of A.D. 2004.
Robert Stawell Ball, The Story of the Heavens (1885)
Don't forget the Lunar eclipse on 4th of May!
Not quite as special but definitly more dramatic!
Not only do I get to see amazing astronomical events, while I am there I travel around and see wonderful and interesting parts of our own planet!
To pay for my vacations to these selected events, I have established travel investment funds (setup many years in advance) for:
I also keep an emergency fund that allows me go anywhere in the world at a moments notice to see a Supernova bright enough seen with the naked eye. I had such a fund in place which allowed me to rush from California to Australia some 21 hours after the discovery of 1987A (24 Feb 1987).
Maybe next naked eye supernova viewable in my hemisphere. But if not, I have another supernova fund ready ...
I first learned about the Transit of Venus, in the early summer of 1970, during a Morrison Planetarium program of the California Academy of Science. At the age of 9 I decided that I wanted to see next transit.
I have waiting patiently for 34 years to make my transit observations. It is now only a few dozen days away!!!
chongo (was here)
...accurate and public measurement of an extraterrestrial distance.
... determine these orbits far more accurately (by one or two orders of magnitude) than do the optical data." The report for the current latest general ephemeris on public release DE405, here, says much the same.
I doubt that the public project related to the 2004 transit is intended to obtain more accurate measurements than already exist, for the distances and timings associated with Venus.
For all of the inner planets, even the best professional optical telescope measurements are already so much less accurate than modern non-optical measurements, such as radar-ranging and spacecraft measurements, that optical data (except for the outer planets) did not contribute at all to the final data-sets that went to make up the current best professional ephemerides. This JPL report, about the latest-but-one of the professional solar-system ephemerides, DE403, says that "all of the optical observations for the Sun, Mercury, Venus and Mars were omitted from the least-squares adjustments leading to DE403. Newer and more accurate data-types
The project for measuring the timing of the June Venus transit looks like mainly an exercise in public awareness and education. Maybe there is also an aim of historical reconstruction, for doing something like re-assessing the performance of the old astronomers who measured previous transits, in an age when optical telescopes still did provide the only serious measurements available.
-wb-
... from the UK the transit starts at approx 6:19am. Who's getting up at that time?
I'd love to do this!
Let's see... convert UTC to my time... carry the one....
YAY! I won't be needing all those protective glasses/filters for my observations; the sun doesn't hurt the eyes as much AT MIDNIGHT.
Damn.
The GONG is used to watch the Sun oscillate, or "ring," which provides mighty useful data on the solar interior. Helioseismology, in other words. See http://gong.nso.edu for details.
Credit Line: The GONG is operated by the National Solar Observatory which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation, for the benefit of the astronomical community.
Wow, that's a neat plan!
:( Might have to aim for Easter Island in 2010.
I agree about coordinating travel with astronomical events. I went to Venezuela for the eclipse of 1998 (did you see that one?) and had a blast traveling around the country, seeing things such as Angel Falls and a Llanos safari.
You can find great stuff to do in nearly any country on earth.
Currently I live in Ecuador and won't be able to get to Europe for this.
OTOH, I can't immagine how hard or expensive it will be to get there. LanChile is the only airline that flies to the place, only has two flights a week to Santiago and to Tahiti, and they cost like $800. Unless they plan special runs (and I bet they will), you'll probably want to book a year in advance!
Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon describes the 1761 transit of Venus, written in period-ish language: "The girls have also been observers of the Transit, having cajol'd a Sailor of their Acquaintance into lending them a nautickal Spy-Glass, and smoak'd with Sheep-tallow Candles their own Darkening-Lenses,-- taking turns at the Glass, even allowing their Parents a Peep now and then,-- Jet breathing, "She's really there," Greet adding, "Right on time, too!" and Els,-- hum,-- we may imagine what Els was up to, and what transpir's just as the last of the Black Filament, holding the Planet to the Inner Limb of the Sun, gave way, and she dropp'd, at last, full onto that mottl'd bright Disk, dimm'd by the Lenses to a fierce Moon, that Eyes might bear." Who says telescopes won't get you laid? The book was much published, but seldom sold; it can be had remaindered for $5. Or you could spare yourself the 750+ pages and just stare at the sun for wisdom. Good fun all the same.
Damn! And I thought *I* was a major astro-geek. I'm going to be on the island of Mauritius for the transit. I reserved my spot with one of the eclipse tour companies almost two years ago. This is my first astronomical "expedition" abroad. I will try to capture the transit in digital video straight to hard disk. I've done it for Mars and Saturn before, it works really good for that.
Edith Keeler Must Die
Does anyone know of a good telescope (something that can see the rings around Saturn) and have the ability to transfer video in real-time through Firewire or USB 1.1 or USB 2.0 ? I'm also wondering whether it would be cheaper to attach a DV cam or webcam and would this method still have similar (quality) results?
> (did you see that one?)
1998 was a wonderful eclipse.
I do not see every Eclipse. I'm trading the 08 Apr 2005 Solar Hybrid for the 8 June 2004 Venus transit for example.
Since you live in Ecuador, I would encourage/urge you to travel to the coast and see the Hybrid eclipse (part Annular / part Total). My calculations show that it will be very close to total along the center line in South America. It is worth while to see the Sun in annular mode once in a while.
chongo (was here)
Have you ever actually tried to show a woman stuff through a telescope? THAT, my friends, is a chick magnet. Atleast it was the last few times I tried it ;)
Until she realizes that it isn't actually that big....
Where did you see the 1998 eclipse? Yes, indeed it was a truly perfect day in Maracaibo. There are two photos of it on my page ... click my URL and scroll down to the Photos section.
Cool, I forgot about that eclipse. Looks like it will be 60% or so in Ecuador, but looks like the path goes through Cartagena, Colombia just before sunset. There's a reasonably good chance I could go up there for that. I wonder if it will be total or annular there -- it's a little hard to tell from the map. Maybe Panama would be better - looks like it goes straight through Panama City, and it's earlier in the path. More expensive to fly to though.
When it is this close to totality, one's thumb (or other opaque object) may be used to block out the solar disk and view the corona. Using a ball on a stick and sighting the Sun behind it will give one multiple seconds of corona viewing. I've used this technique to extend "totality effects" as much as 15 second beyond the official end of the eclipse. I have been told that using a green filter will further enhance the contrast of the corona and allow you to extend the corona viewing even longer.
Also when it is this close to total, you should be able to view the shadow bands. It is best to view then afterwards as the excitement of what the sun/moon are doing will occupy your attention. :-)
One cannot look for the shadow bands and extend the corona viewing time. Given the choice, I'd contentrate on the zone around the solar disk. Unlike long totality eclipses, short totality and near total annular eclipses give one a MUCH better view of photosphere / action near the edge of the solar disk. That alone would suggest skipping the shadow bands this time.
I would try and go as far west as possible so that the sun is as high above the horizon as possible. Of course one would want to be close to the center line ... which becomes critical on
short annular events like this one.
Of course, a ''the deep annular-like conditions'' of the Venus transit do not permit one to do this. :-)
chongo (was here)
Considering they calculated the diameter of the earth, the distance to the moon and sun, and the reason for total solar eclipses (the sun and moon having the same apparent diameter, but the sun being much larger and further away), I think that they should count.
They also knew the world was round. Columbus didn't sail to prove the world was round. They already knew that, and that's why Isabella was willing to finance him - it wasn't a really risky proposition.