brainwagon

A particularly rare astronomical event – the transit of Venus across the solar disk – will occur on June 8 or about sixteen hours from the time of this posting. Unfortunately (for me) it will not be visible from the western United States, so I won’t get a chance to observe it, but it should be visible from large portions of Europe and the Middle East. If you are lucky enough to be under its shadow, check out this site or this one for information and viewing instructions. I haven’t found any live webcams yet for this event, but when I do I’ll try to post an update below.

The image to the right is a time lapse I did of the November, 1999 transit of Mercury. The entire transit took roughly 45 minutes, and I cut frames from a simple video I did to show it working accross the solar disk. It’s crude, but it works. The Venus transit should take roughly six hours, and Venus will appear significantly larger than tiny Mercury. If you can, get out and observe, but observe with all necessary precautions to your eyesight. You’ll want to use those eyes again, I’m sure.