(To See Video http://www.pulse24.com/News/Top_Story/20040608-011/page.asp)
TORONTO, June 4, 2004 -- The sun will darken slightly on Tuesday morning, so slightly that many people won’t even notice it. Yet something historic will have occurred: the transit of Venus across the face of the Sun.
Astronomers and would-be astronomers are invited to view this occurrence starting Tuesday at 5 a.m. from York’s Astronomical Observatory on the 4th floor of the Petrie Science & Engineering Building, located at the Keele Campus, 4700 Keele St. north of Finch Avenue West. Venus’s first visible contact with the Sun will occur as the sun rises at approximately 5:38 a.m. and it will remain visible until the transit ends at 7:23 am.
Because looking directly at the sun without proper precautions is extremely dangerous and can cause blindness, York is making special filters and equipment available at the observatory.
The transit of Venus is among the rarest of astronomical events. Mercury and Venus are the only two planets that go between the Sun and the Earth and now, after 122 years, all three planets are aligned. The last transit seen and recorded by humans occurred in 1882.
Transits of Venus have a strange pattern of frequency. First, the solar system goes without a transit for about 121½ years. Then there will be one transit (such as this one in 2004) followed by another transit of Venus eight years later (this time, in the year 2012). Then there will be a span of about 105 ½ years before the next pair of transits occurs, again separated by eight years. Then the pattern repeats.
The orbit of Venus is inclined to the orbit of Earth, so Venus is usually a little above or below the Sun, invisible in its glare.
On Tuesday, Venus will appear as a small black spot slowly moving across the solar disk. For much of the eastern United States and Canada, the Sun will rise with Venus already on its disk, with the transit nearly over. The next transit in 2012 will be visible to North Americans only in its opening stages before sunset. Following that, Venus will not be visible transiting the Sun again until 2117.
For more information on viewing the transit of Venus, visit
http://aries.phys.yorku.ca/observatory/transit-of-venus.htm
For information about York’s Astronomical Observatory, visit http://aries.phys.yorku.ca/observatory/.
-30-
For further information, please contact:
|
David Fuller Media Relations York University 416-736-2100, ext. 22091 |
YU/079/04
