Venus in transit: The world will be watching
 

Some of the best views of the June 8 Venus transit will be live on the Internet.
by Francis Reddy

Updated June 7, 2004
When clouds spoiled Guillaume Le Gentil's chance of viewing the 1769 transit of Venus, the French astronomer wrote that he was "more than two weeks in a singular dejection." In 1761, while outrunning British forces during the Seven Years' War, Le Gentil had lost his other opportunity to see this event.
If you're clouded out like Le Gentil on June 8 — well, there's always 2012. But observers with Internet access will have the best seats in the house.

Dozens of institutions will bring the transit to a browser near you, posting images and live video feeds to web sites across the Internet. The equipment ranges from modest to state-of-the-art. Research-grade instruments include the Swedish 1-meter Solar Telescope on the Canary Islands, and the trio of solar telescopes — in Australia, India, and the Canary Islands — of the National Solar Observatory's Global Oscillation Network Group (NSO/GONG). Both sites will be posting images and animations throughout the transit.

Even a few satellites will get in on the act. Right now, Venus can be seen drifting toward the Sun in one view from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) satellite. SOHO monitors the Sun from a "halo orbit" around a point about 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) closer to the Sun than Earth. The spacecraft is currently offset from a direct line between the pair, so from SOHO's viewpoint, Venus will track beneath the Sun instead of passing directly across it. Still, the spacecraft's instruments will detect the planet as it blocks diffuse ultraviolet light from the Sun's inner corona. Another consequence of the spacecraft's viewpoint is that the transit begins three hours after it starts at Earth. When the transit reaches its height for ground-based observers, around 4:20 A.M. EDT, it will just be starting for SOHO.

The Transition Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE) satellite watches the Sun from Earth orbit, so its view of the transit will be similar to that seen by observers on the ground — with one exception. The reason scientists traveled the globe to view past transits was that Venus takes a slightly different track across the Sun when viewed from different locations on Earth. This shift is the parallax of Venus and can be used to determine the planet's distance. TRACE travels from pole to pole every orbit. From its perspective, the silhouette of Venus will "bounce" across the solar surface, regularly oscillating above and below the straight-line track Earth-based observers will see.

Both SOHO and TRACE scientists will use the black spot of Venus as a reference for improving their understanding of how stray light scatters within spacecraft instruments.

A table of sites providing live images of the transit is listed below. Because this event is both of historical significance and well publicized, expect Internet traffic to be heavy. Some sites may be unreachable at times.

And if you're clouded out and stuck in an Internet traffic jam? Well, there's always 2012.

Check out the site for Links to Venus transit images & webcasts:
http://www.astronomy.com/Content/Dyn...1/750amyns.asp

Assuming it's not cloudy, I'll be out at the local park with my trusty ETX-70 at 5:30AM to check it out.

(Disclaimer: Don't look at it unless you have proper equipment for safely observing the Sun.)

I'm on it - I love this geeky science shit.

I saw it.... I wasn't overly optimistic at first. I arrived at the park at about 5:45AM. The sky was very clear.... except in the east. But the sun was still too low, so it was too early to tell. But it was quite hazy. In fact, there were individual "chunks" of fog on the baseball diamond, which is the lowest part of the park.

By 6:00 the sun was up in the middle of the trees and I was able to find a strategic spot and while it was still hazy, there it was as advertised.

I had to move my setup 3 or 4 times to realign with respect to the trees, but I kept it in view. By about 6:35 or 6:40 almost all the haze was burned off, and the sun was now above the trees. The edge of Venus touched the edge of the sun around 7:05 by my watch (probably not accurate), and was completely gone at about 7:25.

All in all, worth getting up at 5:15 AM for!

Am I the only one that just doesnt care about this. Buy glasses, watch small black disc pass over sun, throw away glasses and watch teh repeats on CNN for the next 6 months.

Most rare astronomical events are ultimately more meaningful for their historical value than for their visual flair. Once you've seen the shots from the space probes and Hubble (to say nothing of movie special effects), if all you're really interested in is a fabulous picture, you're bound to be disappointed with what you see in a telescope. But there are other compensations for direct observing.

But in the scheme of things...I mean it was a major scientific breakthrough at the time (measuring the distance from the earth to the sun which allowed them to work out the 'unit' they had been measuring all the planet distances in, if i remember correctly but now....*shurgs*. Never been a space junkie either way.

I think it is cool just to be able to see something that hasn't been seen in 120 years.

Okay...it would have been cool, had I been (1) awake, (2) further East, and (3) in a cloud-free environenment, none of which was I this morning.

Another oppotunity in 2012 IIRC.

me either, i'm still impatiently waiting for my own millenium falcon or even an x-wing but noooooooo damn scientists haven't gotten that far yet. they spend way too much time worrying about the effects of my suv on some damn spotted owl or some such shit, when if they just got their acts together, created a hyperdrive unit, we could already be working on conquering and destroying other planets...

Here you go OC...

http://skyandtelescope.com/news/article_1276_1.asp

I swore off even trying to take pics through my telescope, but the one on that link credited to Rick Feinberg is very similar to what I saw.

http://skyandtelescope.com/mm_images/6928.jpg

i've heard of a pink moon.....

Wow cool pic. I forget how small we are compared to the sun. :)