I am lucky to have a public observatory five minutes drive from my house,  Chabot Space And Science Center, so for yesterday’s Transit of Venus I took my boys to see it through the various telescopes, both the observatory’s and scads of amateurs’.  Have mercy!, the crowd was the largest I’ve seen there for what looked to me like a small black dot in front of a large white one, so I asked a science teacher friend about the transit and got this.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2012/may/29/transit-venus-measuring-heavens

The 1761 transit of Venus was a watershed moment in the history of astronomy. It was the first time astronomers would have the opportunity to measure accurately the size of the solar system. The distance between the Earth and the Sun had been estimated, with variable degrees of success, since the Greeks, but this was different.

Thanks to a rare celestial alignment, Venus was to pass in front of the Sun, taking about six hours to cross the fiery disc. By recording the times of the start and end of the event from widely separated locations around the globe, trigonometry could be used to calculate the distance to Venus and the Sun. With that, Kepler’s laws of planetary motion could be used to calculate the orbits of all the planets out to Saturn, the outermost known planet

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Skipshot - 06 June 2012 09:22 AM

I am lucky to have a public observatory five minutes drive from my house,  Chabot Space And Science Center, so for yesterday’s Transit of Venus I took my boys to see it through the various telescopes, both the observatory’s and scads of amateurs’.  Have mercy!, the crowd was the largest I’ve seen there for what looked to me like a small black dot in front of a large white one, so I asked a science teacher friend about the transit and got this.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2012/may/29/transit-venus-measuring-heavens

The 1761 transit of Venus was a watershed moment in the history of astronomy. It was the first time astronomers would have the opportunity to measure accurately the size of the solar system. The distance between the Earth and the Sun had been estimated, with variable degrees of success, since the Greeks, but this was different.

Thanks to a rare celestial alignment, Venus was to pass in front of the Sun, taking about six hours to cross the fiery disc. By recording the times of the start and end of the event from widely separated locations around the globe, trigonometry could be used to calculate the distance to Venus and the Sun. With that, Kepler’s laws of planetary motion could be used to calculate the orbits of all the planets out to Saturn, the outermost known planet

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Thanks Skipshot, interesting to know.

Yes, very cool, thanks Skip.

Study your Trig.

Neat stuff.

I went to a mini observatory erected recently behind a nearby elementary school.  About 2 dozen people there, plus one dad with a big-ass telescope and a junior high kid with a cardboard and plastic set-up that actually worked.  Clouds for the first hour, then clearing, and there it was!  The tiny dot on the sun.  Everybody got in line, toddlers, school kids, parents, and neighbors.

Besides seeing the Venus dot, I learned…

the other dots and smudges on the sun weren’t from a dirty lens; they were sun spots

the image was flipped in the cardboard and plastic set-up, but righted in the big telescope

the sun appeared as a plain flat disk, without the swirling jets of gas, because those only show up when you’re looking outside the visible light spectrum with special instruments

kids like to roll down hills of mown grass when they’re waiting for the clouds to move

Very fun!

Reminded me again how we all stand on the shoulders of giants.

Isn’t the real cosmos so much more fascinating than made up supernatural crap! Hopefully kids who saw the transit will have their imaginations fired so that they go on to do science and advance real knowledge.

I’m sorry I missed it. We had dense cloud here. Otherwise my telescope would have been trained on Venus. Unless we come up with a cure for death none of us will be here for the next transit so let’s get science moving. Teach evolution and ban creationism. Nothing in biology maikes sense except in light of evolution.

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/40445_Amazing_HD_Video_of_the_Venus_Transit_From_NASAs_Solar_Dynamics_Observatory#.T8_GrrfP9hI.facebook

My science teacher friend hinted, and I’m waiting for more information, that the latest transit is being studied to find ways of finding and examining exo-planets.

burt - 06 June 2012 10:13 PM

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/40445_Amazing_HD_Video_of_the_Venus_Transit_From_NASAs_Solar_Dynamics_Observatory#.T8_GrrfP9hI.facebook

Just hints how much is going on that we either can’t perceive or have no way to know about.  Thank you!