Venus Sighting
News Report for
Youngsters
Staten Island Advance - June 7, 2004
Want to see something no one has seen in 122 years?
The planet Venus will cross the sun early tomorrow
morning for the first time since 1882.
You absolutely should not look directly at the sun with the naked
eye.
But the astronomy event can be seen for free at the
College of Staten Island’s observatory in Willow-brook. The public
can view Venus’s “transit,” as it’s called, at the observatory
starting around 6 a.m.
When the sun comes up on Staten Island, said Irving
Robbins, an astronomy professor at CSI, Venus will be on the sun
making its way to the edge.
From Staten Island, and most of the Northeast,
planet gazers will be able to see the transit clearly starting about
6 a.m.
It’ll be all finished sometime between 7:05 a.m. and
7:25 a.m.
While Europe, the Middle East, and most of Africa
and Asia will witness the entire event, those in southern Chile or
Argentina, western North America, Hawaii and New Zealand will not
see any of the transit.
The rest of the world — including most of the United
States will only see part of the crossing.
By the time the sun rises in the West Coast, the event is over,
Robbins said. Venus is moving, the Earth is moving, and the Earth is
moving in space as well. All of that couples together to decide who
gets to see it. Transits of Venus happen twice eight years apart
about every century, when the sun, Venus and Earth precisely line
up.
Past transits the last pair were in 1874 and 1882
helped astronomers figure out how far Earth is from the sun.
Scientists at CSI will take photos of the event with
“solar filters,” which will cut out most of the sun’s light.
They’ll also use a narrow spectrum of red light to
watch the planet’s journey.
“It’s like a laser beam,” Robbins said of the red
light. “We’re going to be looking at the sun in one pure color,
which will let us look at storms on the sun simultaneously as we’re
observing.
The transit of Venus has never been observed in that light, he said.
And Robbins had an important reminder for anyone
interested in watching Venus: Don’t look at the sun without the
proper equipment, or you might get blinded.
Those who miss tomorrow’s event will have to wait
until June 6, 2012, to see Venus’s next transit.
And they won’t be able to see it from Staten Island,
or anywhere else in the Northeast.
After that, Venus won’t cross the sun again until
2134.
Reprinted here with permission from the
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