Transit of Venus 2012

Eight years ago on 8th June 2004 I was lucky enough to see the transit of Venus from Jodrell Bank Observatory. The website I made for that is still around. Over the next few hours we'll have another transit of Venus - the last until 2117!

The transit will be viewable from many places on Earth. If you don't have a view of the Sun from where you are (clouds or the planet getting in the way), there are plenty of live feeds online:


If you decide to view it in real life remember to always use safe solar filters or a proper solar telescope. Don't look at the Sun without protection.

The transit was important, historically, for measuring the Astronomical Unit via the parallax method. This year you can recreate those historical measurements by submitting your own timings via a phone app or posting a tweet.

Tags: | |
Posted in astro blog by Stuart on Tuesday 05th Jun 2012 (21:33 BST) | 3 Comments | Permalink

Comments: Transit of Venus 2012

My blog is short feed Ideogramme...

Posted by Svetoslav Pavlov on Thursday 07th Jun 2012 (00:51 UTC)

ADD A COMMENT:


Don't provide an email/URL unless really necessary as your comment may get caught in the spam filter. No URLs get turned into links so don't bother. The ground rules for commenting are:
  1. No profanity or personal attacks please. Keep it clean.
  2. Restrict comments to subjects relevant to the post.
  3. Don't mention Pluto. If you do it'll be replaced by Goofy.
  4. No spam i.e. anything commercial unrelated to astronomy.
  5. If you think you've discovered a Theory of Everything, a replacement to Relativity, or something similar then please publish it in a journal rather than in my comments.
Comments against the spirit of these ground rules may be removed.











* required fields