Venus Transit Finished

KjetilK writes "Venus is just about to cross the solar disc. Direct from the control room in the Frogner Park in Oslo, I'm pleased to inform you that we have a great webcast, and as far as we know, it is the only webcast that still stands upright... Slashdotters, do your worst! ;-) A Venus transit is one of the most unique astronomical events in our time, in fact, no living person has witnessed it before today. And today, more people have seen it from the park where I'm sitting that in the rest of human history. Also, it had tremendous importance for the development of science, as it gave the first absolute measurements of distances in the solar system. Especially in 1769, a transit made science take huge leaps forward. And BTW, New Zealand and Australia were 'discovered' in the process" Some nice photos from the UK, photos from vt-2004.org, and if you missed it, it'll be eight short years till you can try again.

Comments

Way to go!

[FortKnox]

Venus is just about to cross the solar disc

Of course, that was the case when submitted, but the editors thought it was best to wait until its over before putting it on the frontpage.

So the way it works is... when someone asks to slashdot a webcast, wait til its over to put it on the front page, but when an anonymous poster points to an IP (not a domain), slashdot the hell outta it.

Re:pics i took

[Sir dies alot]

I just wanted to tell you that those poor man's images of the transit impressed me far more than the professional ones I saw earlier. Keep up the great work and thanks for recording it all, as I missed it myself.

Living people have indeed witnessed Venus transits

[hcg50a]

...no living person has witnessed it before today.

Well, this actually isn't true.

Plenty of living people have witnessed Venus transits before today.

What is true is that nobody now living has ever personally witnessed a Venus transit, since the last one occurred over 100 years ago, and everyone who witnessed it is now dead.

solar disc?

[werdnapk]

What's the deal with using the term "solar disc" instead of the usual "sun"? I'm not sure if using the former is supposed to make the event sound more impressive or what?

Re:Another article

[chocotof]

Another possibility might be that they only needed the elapse time. I.e. to mesure the time between these events ?

Re:unique events

[spaceyhackerlady]

It seems that over the past few years there have been a few unique astronomical events that happen very infrequently compared to a human lifespan.

I think you will find that the frequency of Really Interesting Events hasn't changed.

What has changed, however, is the amount of publicity they get. Thanks to facilities like this one, more people know about them. At one time only people who read specialist literature knew about various comets, oppositions, and so on.

...laura

8-year joke prediction

[Dirtside]

On June 6th, 2012, Slashdot will post a story about the transit of Venus, and some schmuck will complain that it's a dupe... and then link to this story.