There was quite a bit of "Venus Transit Fever" on the Internet during the few days leading up to the transit as well as several days afterwards. The plethora of pictures, videos and articles was quite impressive. However there are 2 videos that stand out in my mind....
First a video complied by a friend and fellow Raleigh Astronomy Club member, Chris Cole. All footage was obtained with his own equipment while he was visiting New Mexico:
The second video is from NASA and the footage was obtained from the Solar Dynamics Observatory in space:
On the afternoon of June 5th, 2012 (the morning of June 6th on other parts of the planet) the black silhouette of Venus was observed crossing the face of the sun. This passing in front of the sun is what astronomers call a transit. The next time Venus will transit the Sun, from the Earth’s vantage point, will be December of 2117. Yes, 2117; that’s 105 years from now!
I coordinated a viewing event for Raleigh Astronomy Club members and their guests hosted by the Prairie Ridge Ecostation (near the PNC Arena, formerly the RBC Center). Over 70 people, including my parents and my 2 oldest children attended the event and more than 24 members’ telescopes were on hand to provide excellent views of the transit.
Most of Tuesday afternoon was rather cloudy and the possibility of the viewing the transit from the Raleigh area was in doubt. Thankfully by around 5:30pm the Western horizon began to clear up. Around 6:04pm a friend of mine, Doug, called out, “We have first contact!” That is when the leading edge of Venus began to cross the face of the sun. At that point everyone turned their gaze to the nearest telescope or viewing device.
There were various methods used for safe viewing from Eclipse Glasses, welder’s glass (#14), commercially made white light solar filters, home-made white light solar filters, H-Alpha Solar telescopes, and a few different types of projection methods including a Sun Funnel design and Solar Projector. I had a commercial solar filter on my 8" Celestron SCT, my son's dob had a homemade white light filter and I had made a Sun Funnel for a small refractor I have.
Not only where there lots of people observing, we also had quite a few imagers with dedicated telescopes and cameras taking pictures of this rare event. Additionally smart phones were a popular accessory for observers at the eyepiece snapping mementos of the transit. Below are a few images from some Raleigh Astronomy Club imagers that were at the event.
While clouds did occasionally block the view of the transiting Venus, most of the viewing event was not interrupted by clouds. Although the transit event would take more than 6 ½ hours to complete, once the sun set, you could no longer observe the transit from your local vantage point. At around 7:45pm the sun began to be obscured by clouds low on the horizon. With the sun at only 3 degrees or so above the horizon, that spelled the end of our views from Prairie Ridge.
Overall it was a great event with tremendous turnout, a fantastic venue and a once in a lifetime transit. For more information about the Transit of Venus, check out the following link http://www.transitolfvenus.org/.
Below are a video and a few more photos taken of the observing event:
On my list of objects to view from my own telescope (a 1994
Celestron 8” SCT), has been Quasar 3C 273.
Aesthetically speaking, this object has zero value, it looks like a very
faint star. However what makes this
object so interesting is its origin and its distance.
Quasars are the compact, central region of a massive galaxy
surrounding its super-massive black hole.
What powers these quasars are the accretion discs around the
super-massive black holes. As the theory
goes, quasars were more common in the earlier universe which is why most are so
far away from us (i.e. – the further away an object we see from Earth with
further back in time we are seeing the object).
While 3C 273 is visually unimpressive, the fact that what you see the
super hot, luminous accretion disc of material spinning around a super-massive
back hole makes the observing of this object pretty cool in my book.
The other amazing aspect of this observation is the
distance. Various sources differ on the
distance of this object, anywhere from 1.918 billion light years out to 2.5
billion light years. The fascinating aspect
of this, at least for me, is that photons that I observed, that interacted with
my telescope and my eye’s retina were emitted from 3C 273 and had be traveling through
space for over 2 billion years! Put
another way, that’s a little more than 14.5% of the history of our universe (13.7
billion years old) or about 44% of the history of our Earth (4.5 billion years
old). 2 billion years ago here on Earth
there was no life on land, only simple organisms in the oceans; Oxygen was
starting to replace CO2 in our atmosphere.
Finding 3C 273 was a bit tricky due to how dim it is, it
varies from 11.7 to 13.2 but averages about 12.8. I found the following web site very helpful
in locating and observing 3C 273, http://washedoutastronomy.com/content/3c-273-quasars-are-easy. The coordinates of 3C 273 (J2000 are RA: 12 :
29.1 DEC: +02 : 03.1)
Once I was in the general area, it was difficult to isolate which faint object was 3C 273. Using the
finder charts that are include in the link above made it a bit easier. Below is a photo that will approximate the
view. I looked for a “W” shape and based
on the charts I knew the top center of the “W” was the quasar. It is the brightest of the objects that make
up the central part of the “W.”
Here is an excerpt from one of the charts. 3C 273 is about 12.8 magnitude and therefore should be brighter than 13.5 mag. star off to the right (just outside the red circle in the chart below).
It took a little going back and forth but I was finally able
to nail down the orientation of the stars and patterns on my charts/printed materials with the flipped view from my 8" SCT. This was a great
hunt!
Thursday night I spent some time with fellow RAC members Mark L.and Ian H. (separately) while at the Staunton River Star Party. We were looking through my 8” SCT for the super nova SN2012aw that had been detected last week in the Leo galaxy, M95. After much back and forth on Stellarium, star charts and printed aids, we confirmed the bright object that looked like a foreground star was indeed the supernova SN2012aw.
I read a comment online from someone doing photometry work on SN2012aw that they measured it at 12.67 mag. which might be why we were able to see it with my 8” scope (although the skies were pretty dark – measured at 6.2 mag. by fellow RAC member Phyllis L).
Lastly, check out the blog post of Astronomer Phil Plait. His March 23, 2012 blog post is around the progenitor of SN2012aw that has been found in previous Hubble Space Telescope pictures. Check out the blog post and video >> HERE.
