Even astronauts in space caught Venus transit fever.
NASA astronaut Don Pettit photographed the Venus transit from the observation deck of the International Space Station. He is the first person ever to photograph the transit from space and has been a prolific photographer of Earth and space during his months-long mission aboard the space station.
"For scientific purposes today, the transit of Venus is more of an educational opportunity to look at celestial events and learn and be delighted about how our solar systems, and the dynamics of the planets, operate," Pettit said in a video before the transit.
Venus-watching in the Big Apple
Here in New York City, hundreds of skywatchers flocked to Manhattan's west side where the Amateur Astronomers Association of New York set up two separate observing posts to catch the historic Venus transit. Clouds and occasional rain put a damper on the viewing, but for brief moments the skies parted allowing for amazing views.
Megan McDavid, of Brooklyn, said she came out to see the transit because: "It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. This is my last chance, how could you miss it?"
She admitted that the small dot of Venus was "hard to see" without telescope magnification, but said, "I feel lucky we got a few breaks in the clouds and I got a chance to see it."
Elsewhere in Manhattan, nearly 600 people packed the American Museum of Natural History to watch Venus cross the sun. The museum carried NASA's webcast from Mauna Kea live, with the crowd cheering as the event began.
"We watched a dot move across the screen and it was awesome," said skywatching enthusiast Kip Daly, 16, when asked what he'd tell his future children about the transit.
Venus transit and alien worlds
Back in Moffett Field, Calif., people turned out in droves to view the last-in-a-lifetime Venus transit at NASA's Ames Research Center about 40 miles (64 kilometers) south of San Francisco. [Skywatchers Pictures of 2012 Venus Transit]
Ames' Batalha kicked things off with a standing-room-only talk at 2:30 p.m. local time (5:30 p.m. EDT; 2130 GMT), about 30 minutes before the transit began.
As hundreds of people listened inside Ames' Exploration Center, Batalha explained why planetary transits intrigued astronomers over the centuries—and why they're still important today. NASA's Kepler space telescope uses transits to detect alien worlds, for example, flagging the tiny brightness dips caused when exoplanets cross their stars from the telescope's perspective.
When Batalha finished, the focus shifted to the live NASA webcast of the transit, which began playing on the Exploration Center's huge screen.
Moans and murmurs ran through the crowd when the feed was lost around 3 p.m. PT, just as Venus was getting set to touch the solar disk for the first time. But an appreciative and reverent silence set in when the video was restored and Venus appeared on the sun's limb.
The crowds were big outside in the parking lot, too, where several dozen amateur astronomers had set up specially filtered telescopes and binoculars. It was a perfect day for viewing, sunny and clear, and hundreds of onlookers queued up to see the spectacular sky show.
One such skywatcher was 6-year-old Natalie Buckley, who came to the event with her family. Natalie said she saw Venus and sunspots through the various telescopes, an experience she described as "cool and weird."
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6 Comments
Add CommentI am seriously asking a question, so don't bag on me too badly. Does't the "transit" require a decidedly earth centric view of the universe? Venus does revolve around the sun continually, and it is only the earth's position that makes this a big deal right?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell who ELSE is gonna care? :)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUntil we find them, our perspective is the ONLY intelligent one in the universe; until they tell us "never mind", we're the Ones!
The larger point is the future application of transit data to distant star systems in the hopes of finally getting that Second perspective!
Page 1 of the article calls the Black Drop Effect and optical illusion. This is a misnomer. It is an optical effect. Optical illusions are neurological phenomena which occur only in the perception of a viewer. The Black Drop Effect is not illusory, but a real physical phenomenon.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@jbairddo @promytius Well, transiting is an objective phenomenon in the sense that it involves a certain alignment (i.e. inferior conjunction occurring at the points where planet orbit planes coincide) that all observers can agree on, even if they do not observe it for themselves. There are lots of other transit opportunities in the solar system -- see http://blogs.plos.org/retort/2012/06/05/transits-of-earth-from-other-planets-2/ for a nice discussion. I'll agree, though, that an extrasolar planet transit falls into a different category, because it is not an alignment within an individual system, but random happenstance.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@theDunedan That's a very good point.
@jbairddo @promytius Well, transiting is an objective phenomenon in the sense that it involves a certain alignment (i.e. inferior conjunction occurring at the points where planet orbit planes coincide) that all observers can agree on, even if they do not observe it for themselves. There are lots of other transit opportunities in the solar system -- see http://blogs.plos.org/retort/2012/06/05/transits-of-earth-from-other-planets-2/ for a nice discussion. I'll agree, though, that an extrasolar planet transit falls into a different category, because it is not an alignment within an individual system, but random happenstance.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@theDunedan That's a very good point.
Isn't it highly likely that someone born this year will be alive in December 2117? It would make them 105.
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