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| Transits of Venus |
| Bob Naeye |
| Thursday, May 10, 2012 at 8:00 PM |
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| Transits of Venus across the face of the Sun (as seen from Earth) are among the rarest of predictable spectacles in astronomy. Unless medical science invents some way to extend human life well beyond 100 years, the June 5-6, 2012 transit of Venus will likely be the last one anyone alive today will ever see.
The next Venus transit won’t take place until December 2117, ¬ 105 years from now. Transits of Venus always take place in pairs 8 years apart, with the pairs separated by long intervals of either 105.5 or 121.5 years. This talk will highlight the rare geometric alignments that must take place for transits of Venus to occur, and why they occur so infrequently and in a particular pattern. Included will be an historical overview of Venus transits, which scientists used to discover Venus’s atmosphere and measure the distance between Earth and the Sun. Robert Naeye, who watched the entire 2004 Venus transit from the tomb of Cyrus the Great (founder of the Persian Empire) in Iran, will describe how to view the transit safely, and what you can expect to see when Venus crosses the disk of the Sun.
ATMoB member Robert Naeye is Editor in Chief of Sky & Telescope. He earned a Master's degree in science journalism from Boston University in 1992, and later worked on the editorial staffs of Discover and Astronomy magazine. He served as Editor in Chief of Mercury magazine (published by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific) from 2000 to 2003, was a Senior Editor at Sky & Telescope from 2003 to 2007, and then became Senior Science Writer for the Astrophysics Science Division at NASA's Goddard Space Flight. He returned to Sky & Telescope in June 2008 where he currently serves as Editor in Chief.
Please join us for a pre-meeting dinner discussion at Changsho, 1712 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA at 6:00pm before the meeting. |
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