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2004 Venus Transit In Pictures
oneiros27 writes "For those astronomy fans out there -- pictures are starting to come in from the 2004 Venus Transit (where Venus passes in front of the sun). Times of the transit will vary by city, but make sure you use safe techniques for viewing the sun if you want to look for yourself."
Anonymous Coward writes "Check out the transit of Venus webcast from Australia. It starts at 4.50 UTC on June 8." Update: 06/07 04:03 GMT by T : Linked webcast link updated to a URL projected to better handle the load, thanks to reader Tom Minchin.
Golden State (California) wouldn't be able to see it.
If you look at the NASA website, it's just entered the sun's corona (from Earth's perspective). It hasn't actually gone past the disc yet, but it's still visible to the SOHO telescope.
Karma: Segmentation fault (tried to dereference a null post)
The Australians will only be able to view a partial transit. According to my New Scientist, Eurasia and Africa will be able to view the entire transit, Eastern North America, South America and Western Africa will find that Venus will already be in transit at Sunrise, and Australia, Japan, Alaska and Indonesia will find the transit interrupted by sunset. New Zealand, the Western US and southern Chile will be unable to view the transit.
Perfect timing, as I will be able to see it straight after school, not to mention two hours of pure interesting and enlightening entertainment for free.
Beats TV any day.
At least we'd all get an article on Slashdot....
actually dear poster its a twice in a lifetime experience..
the next transit is due in 2012
(+1 wiseass..)
It seems there is a Canadian atmospheric research satellite that will also be making measurements of Venus. They are using a infrared Fourier transform spectrometer and cameras with the hope of improving models for extra-solar transits (think finding ET).
Ok, let's get a list of public viewings together.
Here's a list of web casts.
Anyone else have information on live viewings?
Thanks.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Yes, it is safe, if you're using #14 or darker glass.
A band called Bananarama did a cover of a song called "Venus" in the eighties (1986). It was originally done by Shocking Blue* in 1970.
Lyrics here.
It is a bit of a stretch to go from from a story on a planetary event to a forgettable eighties band, but this is /.
* That site also tells us that "Venus is the only song in the history of the Billboard charts to hit number one three times (first time on February 7, 1970, second time on June 20, 1981 by "Stars On 45"; third time on September 6, 1986 by Bananarama)." So there. Wow. And now I can't get the damn song out of my head... she's got it, yeah baby she's got itWhen they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
The BBC and Open University have a nice section on this. Its worth looking at.
You can calculate the distance of the earth from the sun.
If you're in the UK, the BBC have some programs covering this on Tuesday. There's live coverage at 9.50AM on BBC1 and another program on at 12PM on BBC1. Theres a full hour program on BBC2 at 11.20PM. All presented by Adam Hart-Davis.
Here is the map of the transit for 2004.
And here is the map of the transit for 2012.
So while I won't get to see it this year unless I hop in my car and drive east for about 20 hours without rest, I will get to see it in 2012, unless I'm in Chille or Argentina, or something.
The further north you are, the better your chances of seeing it.
If you're in Antarctica you won't see it at all.
Howdy Doodly Doo!
Anybody want some Toast?
The term eclipse is reserved for those events where the front object is large enough to significantly cover the back one.
During the transit Venus will only cover about 1/900th of the solar disk and as such this is not usually referred to as an eclipse.
What matters are the apparent sizes of the two bodies not their actual sizes, for example, the Moon is nowhere near half a million miles in diameter but when it transits the face of the Sun the event is called an eclipse. This is because, from the surface of the Earth, the apparent sizes of the Moon and the Sun are very similar and the moon is capable of blocking out a large fraction of the solar disk, sometimes even cover it completely.
Imagine you travelled to Venus during the transit - the disk of the planet would get larger and larger until around 1 million kms (630 thousand miles) from the planet it would be large enough to totally eclipse the Sun.
There are a number of places in Sydney holding events for the transit. It seems that Sydney Observatory is booked out, though you can go along in the evening to watch various webcasts of the transit as it goes on in sunnier places.
The event I'm involved with is the Macquarie University Observatory event, which is taking place on the vacant lot at the intersection of Culloden and Talavera Roads, North Ryde (out behind the uni, not at the observatory).
For a gold coin donation you'll be able to look through a telescope at Venus, see the video display from one of our ccd cameras, observe the sun through a variety of projection methods and also with eclipse shades. So, it's good value, and all proceeds go to building a new observatory and planetarium (as opposed to the Feed the Starvind Astronomers Foundation, which I think is a more noble cause).
We'll be there from 3pm, see here for more information.
In case you are in Finland (which I'm fairly sure the parent is not), you can get free safety equipment from Ursa to view the transit. Email them for further instructions.
I think there is some Ursa personnel at Tähtitorninmäki ("The observatory hill"), handing out filters.
Bot Assisted Blogging
A dot on the sun? Big deal? YES! The transit of Venus was a very important event in the history of astronomy and science. Previous transits were used by clever astronomers to calculate one of the most important measurements in all of science: the Earth-Sun distance, or 1 AU. By observing the transit of Venus from two distant locations on Earth and comparing the measurements you can determine the parallax angle. With those angles and one side of the triangle measured, simple geometry gives you the Earth-Sun distance. Once you have that number you can do all kinds of fun things; like figure out the distances to the rest of the planets, or by using the Earth orbit diameter to calculate stellar parallax and the distances to nearby stars, and on and on from there. The Venus transit is a *very* significant event.
The Transit of Venus is a phenomena witnessed very seldomly -- in fact, next Tuesday's transit will be the first witnessable from Earth since 1882. (Google News points to hundreds of stories.) The transit of a planet occurs when it passes between another and the sun, thus only transits of Mercury and Venus are possible from Earth. It will begin at 05:13 Universal Time, which is 9:13pm July 7 on the US West Coast (more info), and it will last several hours. NASA has a map that shows when and where it will be viewable (more maps here), some safety tips for properly viewing the sun, and a Sun-Earth Day 2004 web site with lots more, including where to find webcasts. This Transit of Venus FAQ should answer many of your questions, including why transits of Venus follow a regular pattern of recurrence at intervals of 8, 121.5, 8, and 105.5 years. FYI, The event won't be visible in North American sky until the sun rises, and by then it will be almost over. If you miss this one, you'll have one more chance at it on June 6, 2012, when the transit will be most visible the Pacific.
(I submitted this to Slashdot several days ago; I was rejected.)