Are you ready for today's last-in-a-lifetime Transit of Venus? Or you will just wait for the next transit?
The 2012 transit of Venus, when the planet Venus will appear as a small, dark disk moving across the face of the Sun, began at 22:09 UTC on 5 June 2012, and will finish at 04:49 UTC on 6 June. Almost 7 hours of rare celestial sight. Depending on the position of the observer, the exact times can vary by up to ±7 minutes.
Transits of Venus are among the rarest of predictable celestial phenomena and occur in pairs eight years apart:[the previous transit having been in June 2004, the next pair of transits will not occur until December 2117 and December 2125.
The 2012 transit of Venus, when the planet Venus will appear as a small, dark disk moving across the face of the Sun, began at 22:09 UTC on 5 June 2012, and will finish at 04:49 UTC on 6 June. Almost 7 hours of rare celestial sight. Depending on the position of the observer, the exact times can vary by up to ±7 minutes.
Transits of Venus are among the rarest of predictable celestial phenomena and occur in pairs eight years apart:[the previous transit having been in June 2004, the next pair of transits will not occur until December 2117 and December 2125.
The safest way to watch a transit is to observe an image of the Sun projected onto a screen through a telescope, binoculars, pinhole or reflected pinhole.The event can be viewed without magnification using filters specifically designed for this purpose, such as an astronomical solar filter or eclipse viewing glasses coated with a vacuum-deposited layer of chromium.
However, the disk of Venus is tiny compared to the sun and not much will be seen. The once-recommended method of using exposed black-and-white film as a filter is not considered safe now, as small imperfections or gaps in the film may permit harmful UV rays to pass through. Observing the Sun directly without appropriate protection can damage or destroy retinal cells, causing temporary or permanent blindness.
NASA is airing a live webcast of the transit from Mauna Kea, Hawaii.
This is historically significant because you can derive the solar system's size from precision timing of the event.
In the Philippines, people gathered to UP Diliman to watch todays transit of Venus. Transit of Venus phenomenon creates Twitter trend and online buzz today.
