Transit of Venus, 2012 June 06
posted: 352 days ago, on Friday, 2012 Jun 01 at 14:52
tags: astronomy, outreach, Sun, Venus.
Transit images from South Africa
Images from Louis Trichardt, Limpopo
Images from Kos Coronaios. top-left: With less than half the Sun peeking above the distant treeline, Kos Coronaios captured the turbulent solar disk, with Venus lurking at its upper-left.
top-right: Four prominent sunspots, with Venus, decorate the Sun's surface.
left: Setting up before sunrise. Kos, Sarah and Eban watched with reddish glow on the horizon grow brighter as the rising Sun approached.
Images from Umdloti Beach, Durban
Liezl Botha captured sunrise from Umdloti beach in Durban. Despite the turbulent image, four large sunspots can be made out, as well as the semi-disk of Venus close to the end of transit.
Despite the Sun being below the horizon at the time, atmospheric refraction projected the image just high enough above Liezl's horizon so that the Venusian disk could still be seen in transit. How awesome is that!!
Images from Pretoria
Johan Smit and other members of the ASSA Pretoria Centre set up on Fort Klapperkop, the highest point in Pretoria, to witness the transit. They projected the solar image as well as taking direct images with a telephoto lens. The adventurous group were (left to right) Johan Moolman, Wessel Nel, Danie Barnardo, Johan Smit, George Dehlen, Bosman Olivier, and Percy Jacobs.
In Montana, on the opposite side of Pretoria, Wayne Mitchell, Sean Mitchell, and Theunis Duvenage set up to observe the transit, with good result.
Thanks to Johan Smit for forwarding the above images.
Archive: posted 2012 January 01
Visibility of the transit of Venus, 2012 June 6, from southern Africa. Nothing will be visible from within the red regions. Places in the yellow will see the transit end during sunrise (see the simulation for Louis Trichardt), while places in green will have the Sun above the horizon before the transit ends.
Venus leaving the solar disk, 06:41 SAST, as seen from Makhado (Louis Trichardt).
Transits of Venus are amongst the rarest of planetary alignments. Only seven of these rare events have been witnessed since the invention of the telescope.
The transit on 2012 June 06 begins at 00:09:30 SAST and ends at 06:49:27. For more of South Africa, the Sun is still below the horizon when the transit ends (see the first illustration).
The entire transit is visible from northwestern North America, Hawaii, the western Pacific, northern Asia, Japan, Korea, eastern China, Philippines,
eastern Australia, and New Zealand.
The next transit of Venus will occur more than a century from now, on 2117 December 11. So this is it, folks.
Fred Espenak's NASA Eclipse website has all the extra details you need.
nothing more to see. please move along.