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.

Unfortunately...

[Anonymous Coward]

Golden State (California) wouldn't be able to see it.

Re:Question...

[complete loony]

Gee, um it couldn't possibly be that at this distanct venus is just a dot and can't obscure the sun?

Re:If it hasn't started yet...

[sploo22]

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.

Australia?

[Jeremy Erwin]

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.

I can see ...

[acceber]

...the first contact tomorrow at 3:07 PM here in Sydney. The second contact at 3:26 PM and then the sun will set just before 5 PM.

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.

Re:Question...

[Phurd Phlegm]

Why do they call it Transit of Venus? Shouldn't they call it Eclipse of Venus or something like that?

Well, if Venus were larger it would be an eclipse of the sun. But, as another poster already noted, it isn't. Good thing, too, since it would have to be around a half million miles in diameter and would probably have already hurled us and Mercury into the Sun or out into interstellar space.

At least we'd all get an article on Slashdot....

Re:Sir?

[Anonymous Coward]

actually dear poster its a twice in a lifetime [pipex.com] experience..

the next transit is due in 2012
(+1 wiseass..)

Re:Unfortunately...

[NIK282000]

transists come in pairs with venus, there shoud be another one in a few years then it will be a long time till the next pair.

Re:Sir?

[Anonymous Coward]

When you say once in a lifetime, you mean twice in a lifetime? Venus will transit the Sun again in 2012, approx 8 years from now.

Re:Terraforming

[Anonymous Coward]

> It would be interesting if someday human could live in Venus (w/ the little help from terraforming), and experience the transit directly from there.

While in priciple those are interesting ideas, I see two potential obstacles:
1) Even with terraforming, Venus' proximity to the Sun would make average surface temperatures too warm for comfort. Maybe even too warm for life. Shielded surface habitats or underground structures might be the only options.

2) If you're on the planet and it's making a transit of the Sun, you can't see it. Think about it, at any given moment the Earth is making a similar transit, and somebody (something?) watching us from a certain point in the outer solar system would have a similar effect.

Canadian SCISAT-1 Spectra

[GraWil]

It seems there is a Canadian atmospheric research satellite [uwaterloo.ca] that will also be making measurements of Venus. [uwaterloo.ca] They are using a infrared Fourier transform spectrometer and cameras with the hope of improving models for extra-solar transits (think finding ET).

List of live viewing gatherings?

[orthogonal]

Ok, let's get a list of public viewings together.

Here's a list of web casts. [skyandtelescope.com]

Anyone else have information on live viewings?

Thanks.

Re:eye safety

[jdhutchins]

Yes, it is safe, if you're using #14 or darker glass.

Re:Let the Bananarama jokes

[martinX]

A band called Bananarama did a cover of a song called "Venus" in the eighties (1986). It was originally done by Shocking Blue* [geocities.com] in 1970.

Lyrics here [afn.org].

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 it ...

BBC Coverage

[amembleton]

The BBC and Open University have a nice section on this [open2.net]. Its worth looking at.
You can calculate the distance [open2.net] 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.

The U.S.A. will get a much better look in 2012

[Talking Toaster]

Here is the map of the transit for 2004. [nasa.gov]
And here is the map of the transit for 2012. [nasa.gov]

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.

Confusing apparent size with real size

[frizzbit]

A transit is a more precise term and it refers to any event where two objects appear close enough in the sky that their disks overlap.

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.

Re:Question...

[mt v2.7]

If you RTFA (I know, I'm new here) it says that venus will appear as 1/33 the width of the sun.

Re:The U.S.A. will get a much better look in 2012

[Anonymous Coward]

The further north you are, the better your chances of seeing it.
If you're in Antarctica you won't see it at all.

I am not in Antarctica.

Viewing Venus in Sydney

[Sailor Coruscant]

There are a number of places in Sydney holding events for the transit. It seems that Sydney Observatory [sydneyobservatory.com.au] 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 [mq.edu.au] 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 [mq.edu.au] for more information.

8 years

[G27 Radio]

I was listening to Day to Day/Science Friday in the car the other day and I believe they said the next one is in 8 years.

Re:Astonishing Scientific Breakthrough!!!!

[barakn]

The transit from SOHOs point of view will merely be a transit across the solar corona. Since Venus is already visible in the Lasco C3 image [nasa.gov], the transit of the corona has essentially already started.

1882 transit photographs

[Anonymous Coward]

The US Naval Observatory has 11 photographic plates from the last transit of venus in 1882. As well, there are photographs from the various expeditions it sent out to take measurements for the purpose of calculating the AU, the distance of earth from the sun. These can be found here [transitofvenus.org]. There's also more fun to be had [navy.mil].

Re:If it hasn't started yet...

[barakn]

it's just entered the sun's corona (from Earth's perspective)

SOHO is in a halo orbit around the L1 Lagrange point, and so is not on the Sun-Earth line. As such, Earth's perespective is not the same as SOHOs.

Transit at University of Maryland, College Park

[TheSync]

Web page for University of Maryland, College Park, venus transit [umd.edu]

"Witness the first Transit of Venus in 122 years
Join the Department of Astronomy
Tuesday, June 8
from 5:30 - 7:30 AM
5th Floor Balcony, Plant Sciences Building
Park (free) on Level 3 in the Regent's Drive Parking Garage (entrance on Stadium Dr.).
Walk across the bridge (near section 3-4) in the southwestern corner of the garage.
Enter the building and take the elevator (you will be on the 2nd floor) to the 5th floor.
Walk out onto the balcony.
In case of cloudy weather, join us in the Computer and Space Science Building (on Stadium Drive), in the Computer Lab, Room 1220. We will view the transit using the computers."

Re:Safety, Remember Safety

[Fizzl]

In case you are in Finland (which I'm fairly sure the parent is not), you can get free safety equipment from Ursa [www.ursa.fi] to view the transit. Email them for further instructions.
I think there is some Ursa personnel at Tähtitorninmäki ("The observatory hill"), handing out filters.

Re:Astonishing Scientific Breakthrough!!!!

[barakn]

I teach physics and astronomy at a university, and I know how to read the image. In case you weren't paying attention, SOHO won't see a transit across the solar disk. It will, however, see a transit across the solar corona, which extends well beyond 5 solar radii (why do you think Lasco C3 has such a wide field of view?). A transit occurs when an object crosses in front of a larger object, not limited to the disk of a star, planet, or moon. Did you hear about the transit of Titan across the Crab Nebula [harvard.edu] as seen in x-rays? The Crab has no well-defined edge, and yet we still speak of it being transited. The solar corona can be transited, and it is right now.

Re:Safety, Remember Safety

[jamoross]

Okay, looks like the flatness of the mirror is
more important than I thought at first. And I
guess not everyone is likely to have optical
grade mirrors lying around like I do.

But the platter out of an old hard disk is very
flat. If it has bright plated media, it'll work.

Now where's that old 800MB Quantum drive gone...?

- jam

Re:Projecting

[Theresa1]

To make things a bit clearer - you align the telescope so that the shadow it casts is as small as possible. That way it will be pointing directly at the sun. It's best to have the paper screen in shadow, so stick a bit of cardboard over the telescope to stop the sun shining directly on the screen (cut a hole in it to stick the telescope threough)
Never look through a telescope at the sun

Re:Eureka! -- need 2 CD thicknesses, no lacquer

[waterbear]

... solar observers have used floppy disks and compact disks (both CDs and CD-ROMs) as protective filters

I have discovered another use for AOL CDs!

Sorry to spoil your day, I just tried it and it's yet another thing that AOL disks are useless for :-)

I just tried a glimpse with various CDs. I find that a single unlacquered CD thickness leaves too much brightness, but 2 CD thicknesses (silver/recorded sides towards the sun) might be ok. (Care now!! Don't blame me if it's too bright for you!)

But another thing is, the CDs probably need to be unlacquered on the non-recorded side (or at least have a partly unlacquered patch to see through). The colored lacquers cause light-scatter and fuzziness of the object seen. (The latest AOL disk had a thick red layer on the non-recorded side, and this made a very fuzzy sight, which I think will be useless for finding a small dot only about 1/32 the diameter of the sun.)

-wb-

Re:Question...

[26199]

It's not an eclipse because the sun isn't blocked out completely. Whereas transit is perfectly sensible, since venus appears to move across the sun...

Re:Projecting

[Avian visitor]

Be carefull if you are using a reflector-type telescope - one with the mirror (for example Newton reflector). These kind of telescopes should never be pointed towards the sun - whether you are looking through the eyepiece or only projecting a picture of the sun to a screen.

Because the mirror focuses the light, the lenses in the eyepiece can get very hot and can deform or even shatter.

Better stay with binoculars. You can even use two pieces of paper. One black with a tiny hole and another one white to use as a screen.

Re:Eureka! -- need 2 CD thicknesses, no lacquer

[aallan]

I just tried a glimpse with various CDs. I find that a single unlacquered CD thickness leaves too much brightness, but 2 CD thicknesses (silver/recorded sides towards the sun) might be ok. (Care now!! Don't blame me if it's too bright for you!)

Congratulations, it's possible you've just done a great deal of damage to your eye. While CD's are (mostly) opaque to visible wavelengths, they're totally transparent to the infra-red. CD's, floppy disks and other media are not safe solar filters.

Do not use make shift filters for direct solar viewing, unless you know the transmission coefficients of the material.

Al.

Why do we care?

[goober]

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.

More Information

[crashnbur]

The Transit of Venus [transitofvenus.org] is a phenomena witnessed very seldomly -- in fact, next Tuesday's transit will be the first witnessable from Earth since 1882. (Google News [google.com] points to hundreds of stories.) The transit [nasa.gov] 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 [nasa.gov]), and it will last several hours. NASA has a map that shows when and where it will be viewable [nasa.gov] (more maps here [dfconcepts.com]), some safety tips [nasa.gov] for properly viewing the sun, and a Sun-Earth Day 2004 web site [nasa.gov] with lots more, including where to find webcasts. This Transit of Venus FAQ [transitofvenus.org] 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 [rl.ac.uk].

(I submitted this to Slashdot several days ago; I was rejected.)

SciAm

[Paulrothrock]

If you want more info, your library should have the May 2004 issue of Scientific American, which has an excellent article about previous transits. It's amazing to see how a single event provides a reference point for the passage of time and progress of society. Imagine what it will be like when the first of the pair of Venus transits comes in 2117. Maybe we'll be watching it from Mars as well...

Re:Projecting

[Idarubicin]

Be carefull if you are using a reflector-type telescope - one with the mirror (for example Newton reflector). These kind of telescopes should never be pointed towards the sun - whether you are looking through the eyepiece or only projecting a picture of the sun to a screen.

This is true of any telescope that doesn't have a miniscule aperture. If you have a large refracting telescope, you also run the risk of cooking the optics in your objective if you point it at the sun.

To directly examine the sun using a telescope, obtain an appropriate solar filter of the type that goes on the front of the telescope before all of the other optics. These can be purchased for telescopes of any size--including reflecting 'scopes. Google for 'solar filter' and 'telescope' and you should turn up any number of suppliers. Do not buy a filter that sits at or near the eyepiece, and don't trust any filter sold by a company that distributes such devices. These filters have an unfortunate habit of heating up on exposure to concentrated sunlight. When they melt through the focused sunlight can rapidly blind an observer.

The parent poster is quite right--for amateur observing of the transit, binoculars projecting onto paper are more than adequate, as is the use of a regular old pinhole. I was in southern Ontario for the annular solar eclipse back in 1994(?). Gaps between the leaves of trees made thousands of effective pinholes--you could see hundreds of little crescents on the ground under trees as totality approached; it was a very cool effect. My watch at the time had a relatively small, flat face and I was even able to use it as an effective low-quality pinhole to project an image of the eclipse on a wall.

Re:Eureka! -- need 2 CD thicknesses, no lacquer

[EvanED]

Uh, can you provide a source for this? I'm more inclined to believe NASA than a random post on /., no offense...

According to this [nasa.gov], CDs and Floppy disks both make safe filters. Optically crummy filters, yeah. But safe. Maybe because the document is specifically taylored to eclipses where the amount of sunlight is less?

Re:8 years (yup)

[Thieron]

Space.com [space.com] has an article on it. The next time is in 2012. "The next transit is on June 6, 2012 and will be visible from northwestern North America, northern Asia, Japan, Korea, eastern China, Philippines, eastern Australia, and New Zealand, according to NASA. Portions of the 2012 event will be visible in parts of North America, Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa."