Date: 8 June 2004
Place: Boyden Observatory
Time: 06:30 – 14:00
Equipment: Nikon F3 (Film),
600mm mirror lens; 2X Converter.
Technique: Red filter. Also
without filter. ND filter was used to reduce light.Image Processing: Negatives were
scanned and digital images was finalised in Photoshop
Photographer: Hannes Pieterse
Information: Transit of Venus. Nobody alive today has seen a
transit of Venus in front of the sun. The
last transit was in 1882.
Sun's
disk. During a transit, Venus can be seen from Earth as a
small black disk moving across the face of the Sun. The duration of such
transits is usually measured in hours (the transit of 2004 lasted six hours). A
transit is similar to a solar eclipse by the Moon, but, although the
diameter of Venus is almost 4 times that of the Moon, Venus appears much
smaller because it is much farther away from Earth. Before the space age,
observations of transits of Venus helped scientists use the parallax
method to calculate the distance between the Sun and the Earth.
Transits
of Venus are among the rarest of predictable astronomical phenomena and
currently occur in a pattern that repeats every 243 years, with pairs of
transits eight years apart separated by long gaps of 121.5 years and 105.5
years. Before 2004, the last pair of transits were in December 1874 and
December 1882. The first of a pair of transits of Venus in the beginning of the
21st century took place on June 8, 2004
(see Transit of Venus, 2004) and the next will be on
June 6,
2012 (see Transit of Venus, 2012). After 2012, the next
transits of Venus will be in December 2117 and December 2125.
A
transit of Venus can be safely observed by taking the same precautions as when
observing the partial phases of a solar eclipse.
Staring at the brilliant disk of the Sun (the photosphere)
with the unprotected eye can quickly cause serious and often permanent eye
damage. (Wikipedia information)
