Transit of Venus 2012

Who: Hundreds of people and amateur astronomers

Where: Yerkes Observatory and Big Foot Beach State Park

When: Tuesday, June 5^th.  5:04pm Central Time

Visitors standing outside the 8" telescope, Sirius B.

What is a transit?

Venus is on an orbit that lies in between the Sun and the Earth. Since the plane of Earth’s orbit is tilted about 7 degrees and Venus’s orbital plane is tilted about 3 degrees, Venus rarely passes in front of the Sun as seen from Earth.  Transits of Venus occur in pairs 8 years apart with a gap of 120 or 105 years until the next pair! In our lifetime, we were only able to see the 2004 and 2012 transits.

How did we see it?

There were a lot of different instruments set up to view the transit including telescopes, solarscopes, binoculars, and a live feed from the observatory in Mauna Kea, Hawaii!

      

Looking at the transit through the solarscopes. 

Included in the large collection of telescopes set up were a few provided by amateur astronomers in the area.  All of them were equipped with solar filters because it is very dangerous to look directly at the sun, especially through a telescope.

Viewing the transit through a sun funnel.

Viewing the transit just above the treetops.

Family Activities:

We had several family activity tables where kids of all ages and their parents participated and learned some cool, new astronomy facts in the process. 

UV Bead Bracelets:

At one table, everyone learned about the Sun’s strong UV (ultraviolet) rays.  We tested how well different household items blocked UV light. To do that, we used beads that changed color when UV light hit them.  We tried to block the sunlight with sunglasses, clothing, and sunblock. After we figured out what works best, we fashioned the beads into a fun bracelet to take home!

Making UV Bead Bracelets!

Stained Glass Coloring:

At the coloring table, there was a really cool picture of Jeremiah Horrocks watching the Transit of Venus in 1639!  This historic event was remembered in a stained glass window that everyone was able to recreate by coloring his or her own picture.

Parallax:

Everyone was also able to learn how astronomers use parallax to figure out how far a celestial object, such as a star or galaxy, is from the Earth.  Parallax is the phenomenon where an object appears to move in the sky depending on when we look at it. Using some fancy math, astronomers can use the distance the object appeared to move to determine how far away it is! We learned how parallax works in our everyday life by trying a few simple tricks. For example, we held our thumb out in front of us, closed one eye at a time and watched as our thumb appeared to move!

Plasma Demonstration:

Francis Dellutri gave a presentation with several cool demos about what plasma is and where we can find it. Plasma, which makes up our Sun, is the “fourth state of matter” and occurs when very energetic gas causes electrons to break free of their nucleus.  She had hands-on activities to demonstrate the effect different elements have on the plasma gas.

Overall, we spent a wonderful afternoon with the people of our community viewing something amazing that we won’t have a chance to see again!