Another great day for astronomical events!
Today was THE day to see the Transit of Venus. This event occurs in tandem roughly every 100 years, the second transit happening about 8 years after the first. The last transit was in 2004, and the next one won't occur until approximately 2117. There were none in the 20th century.
What is the Transit of Venus?
"When Venus passes directly between Earth and the sun, we see the distant planet as a small dot gliding slowly across the face of the sun. Historically, this rare alignment is how we measured the size of our solar system." Like an eclipse, it is dangerous to look directly at the sun, so methods such as filtered telescopes, pinhole projectors, telescope projection, or eclipse glasses are necessary. This is a picture of an image projected through a telescope, so it is a mirror image. In actuality, Venus was on the right side of the sun.
Here is another telescope projection about 90 minutes later. It is easy to see that Venus is indeed travelling across the face of the sun.
Hawaii was one of the best places to see this transit because the entire transit happened during sunlight hours here. It began at 12:09 and will end at 6:42. Because of this, people flocked to Hawaii for the event. I went to our local natural history museum, the Bishop Museum, where they had filtered telescopes, projections and eclipse glasses. There were lots of volunteers who set up telescopes and answered questions for the hundreds and hundreds of people who came and stood in long lines to see this marvelous phenomenon. It was worth the wait!
A view through eclipse glasses. The camera image is fuzzy, but what I really saw was crystal clear - a brilliant deep yellow-orange sun and a tiny black dot. Venus and Earth are close in size - it is rather sobering to think how small we are in this vast universe, and what a precious thing our planet is.
For more information, check out this website:http://www.transitofvenus.org/
ALOHA
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