WI recall: let the pains begin » « Is God an alien?

Goddess of love and beauty caught between a rock and a bright place

And by beauty we mean 700 °F pressure cooker topped with clouds of boiling sulfuric acid. Nevertheless, Venus is the brightest object in the night sky after the moon and the occasional visiting comet or even rarer nova, and the closest planet to earth. Later today it will make a rare transit between the earth and the sun the likes of which will not happen for another century:

(Nat Geo) — The last Venus transit was in 2004—above, the planet glides across the rising sun in a picture taken during the event from the North Carolina coastline. After 2012, we won’t see another transit of Venus until 2117. (Find outhow to see the 2012 transit of Venus.)

“People watching this event through some form of safe solar viewer will see the small, dark silhouette of Venus crossing the sun’s face over the course of about six hours,” said Jay Pasachoff, an astronomer at Williams College in Massachusetts. “The effect won’t be visually impressive, but that black dot against the sun is a remarkable thing to see.”

I’m not sure what the big deal is as far as the media interest. You won’t be able to see it without a telescope fitted with a sun filter, and even then it will be a little bitty dot moving across the sun barely distinguishable from a sunspot.

There was a time lo these many years ago when stuff like this was super important. Aside from the usual mystic frauds clamoring about signs in the heavens and how wonderful they were for local patrons, or how terrible they were for nearby enemies, it was close observation of stars and planets during transits and eclipses that established the size of the inner solar system and went on to validate general relativity.

WI recall: let the pains begin » « Is God an alien?

Comments

  1. StevoR says

    Can I please recommend this post :

    http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/05/30/everything-you-need-to-know-about-next-weeks-transit-of-venus/

    By the Bad Astronomer on this?

    Also, guess what today’s feature first page article is on wikipedia! ;-)

    Looking forward to seeing this Cytherean transit from the Festival Theatre in Adelaide South Australia – just hope the weather is good.

    Wishing y’all clear skies!

    PS. How many links are we allowed in a comment? There’s a few musical accompaniments on youtube I’d kinda like to share if that’s okay too?

  3. StevoR says

    ^ D’oh! Spot – one ‘o’ only. Uh oh. Sorry, I can’t type for .. well, I can’t type well. Sigh.

    Apparently there’s going to be many more than one spot too with plenty of Sun spots & near solar maximum.

    Music themed for the cytherean* transit #2 :

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1f8HjIkU3M

    Venus from Gustav Holst’s Planet’s Suite – classical.

    There’s also the option of the clasical choral piece How BrightlyShines the Morning Star’** but that’s pretty religious-y so perhaps not to all tastes here.

    +++++++

    * Adhjective for pertiaining to the planet Venus derived from the island of Cytheria (now called Cerigo) on whose shores Venus supposedly emerged.

    ** The answer is apparent magnitude minus four at its brightest! Of course against the solar backdrop it like theven brighetr and hotter sunspost looks dark black by comparison and of course we’re also talikng about apparent luminosity as seen inour skies and visible light not othotherwavelengths and .. I’m not sure the title was meant as a question anyhow but still!

  5. The Science Pundit says

    I only hope it’s not too overcast this evening; I’m ready with my solar viewer.

    On a more pedantic note (sorry, but I can’t help myself), Venus is the closest planet to Earth right now due to where its and Earth’s orbits are, but Mars and (especially) Mercury are often closer.

  6. Skip White says

    I’d recommend the Venus movement from Holst’s The Planets, but Mars is more ominous.

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