Newsletter 75 – October 2011
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Transit of Venus Presentation
http://sunearthday.nasa.gov/2012/transit/webcast.php Venus visible Venus with the unaided eye: "morning star" or the Earth "evening star. • Similar to Earth: – diameter: 12,103 km – 0.95 Earth’s – mass 0.89 of Earth's – few craters -- young surface – densities, chemical compositions are similar • rotation unusually slow (Venus day = 243 Earth days -- longer than Venus' year) • rotation retrograde • periods of Venus' rotation and of its orbit are synchronized -- always same face toward Earth when the two planets are at their closest approach • greenhouse effect -- surface temperature hot enough to melt lead M ikhail Lomonosov, june 5, 1761 discovered, during a transit, that V enus has an atmosphere The atmosphere is is composed mostly of carbon dioxide. There are several layers of clouds, many kilometers thick, composed of sulfuric acid. Mariner 10 Image of Venus V enera 13 Venus’ orbit is inclined (by 3.39 degrees) relative to the ecliptic If in the same plane we would have 5 transits in 8 years Venus: 13 years , Earth: 8 years Each time Earth completes 1.6 orbits, Venus catches up to it after 2.6 of its orbits Progress of the 2004 Transit of Venus pictured from NASA's Soho solar observatory. Credit: NASA Ascending (A) or Duration since last transit Date of transit Descending (D) node (years and months) 6 December 1631 A 4 December 1639 A 8 yrs 6 June 1761 D 121 yrs 6 months 3 June 1769 D 8 yrs 9 December 1874 A 105 yrs 6 months 6 December 1882 A 8 yrs 8 June 2004 D 121 yrs 6 months 5 June 2012 D 8 yrs 11 December 2117 A 105 yrs 6 months 8 December 2125 A 8 yrs In 6000 years 81 transits only Venus’ Role in History Copernican System vs Ptolemaic System http://astro.unl.edu/classaction/animations/renaissance/venusphases.html Venus’ Role in History Size of the Solar System - Revealed! • Kepler predicted the transit of December 1631 (though not observed!) and 120 year cycle. -
The Earth Observer. July
National Aeronautics and Space Administration The Earth Observer. July - August 2012. Volume 24, Issue 4. Editor’s Corner Steve Platnick obser ervth EOS Senior Project Scientist The joint NASA–U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Landsat program celebrated a major milestone on July 23 with the 40th anniversary of the launch of the Landsat-1 mission—then known as the Earth Resources and Technology Satellite (ERTS). Landsat-1 was the first in a series of seven Landsat satellites launched to date. At least one Landsat satellite has been in operation at all times over the past four decades providing an uninter- rupted record of images of Earth’s land surface. This has allowed researchers to observe patterns of land use from space and also document how the land surface is changing with time. Numerous operational applications of Landsat data have also been developed, leading to improved management of resources and informed land use policy decisions. (The image montage at the bottom of this page shows six examples of how Landsat data has been used over the last four decades.) To commemorate the anniversary, NASA and the USGS helped organize and participated in several events on July 23. A press briefing was held over the lunch hour at the Newseum in Washington, DC, where presenta- tions included the results of a My American Landscape contest. Earlier this year NASA and the USGS sent out a press release asking Americans to describe landscape change that had impacted their lives and local areas. Of the many responses received, six were chosen for discussion at the press briefing with the changes depicted in time series or pairs of Landsat images. -
Venus Transit 5−6 June 2012 (From 22:00 to 4:56 UT) Australia, Japan, Norway
Venus Transit 5−6 June 2012 (from 22:00 to 4:56 UT) Australia, Japan, Norway Objective The main objective of the venus-2012.org project is the observation of the Venus Transit that will take place on 5th/6th June 2012 (see Fig. 1) from three locations: Australia, Japan and Norway. In particular the project will: 1) Perform live broadcasting of the event (sky-live.tv). 2) Promote educational activities usingFIGURE images 1 obtained during the transit (astroaula.net). Global Visibility of the Transit of Venus of 2012 June 05/06 Region X* Greatest Transit Transit at Zenith Transit Sunset Sunset Begins Ends at at IV I IV I Transit at at Entire Ends No Transit III II III II Sunrise in Progress Begins Transit Sunrise in Progress Transit at Sunset Visible Transit Visible at Sunrise Transit (June 05) (June 06) Region Y* F. Espenak, NASAs GSFC eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/OH/transit12.html * Region X - Beginning and end of Transit are visible, but the Sun sets for a short period around maximum transit. * Region Y - Beginning and end of Transit are NOT visible, but the Sun rises for a short period around maximum transit. Figure 1. Earth map showing visibility of the Venus transit in 2012 (credit F. Espenak, NASA/GSFC). The Phenomenon A transit of an astronomical object occurs when it appears to move across the disc of another object which has a larger apparent size. There are different types of transits, like the Galilean moons on Jupiter’s disc, and exoplanets moving across their mother star. -
The Icha Newsletter Newsletter of the Inter-Union Commission For
International Astronomical Union International Union of the History and Philosophy of Science DHS/IUHPS ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ THE ICHA NEWSLETTER NEWSLETTER OF THE INTER-UNION COMMISSION FOR HISTORY OF ASTRONOMY* ____________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ No. 12 – November 2011 SUMMARY A. C41/ICHA Programme at the 2012 Beijing IAU General Assembly by C. Ruggles ............................................................................................................ 2 B. 2012-2015 C41 Organizing Committee Elections by C. Ruggles ……...…… 3 C. Journals and Publications: - Acta Historica Astronomiae by H.W. Duerbeck ........................................ 4 Books 2011 …………………………………………………………………. 5 Some research papers by C41/ICHA members – 2011…… ........................... 5 D. News - Formation of Johannes Kepler Working Group by A. E. L. Davis ………. 5 - The Transit of Venus Working Group Activities by H. W. Duerbeck ….. 6 o Solar parallax Conference (Announcement) o Venus Transit Conference (Announcement) o Special Venus Transit issue of JAHH (Announcement) - Sullivan Papers Available by E. N. Bouton ..…………………………… 7 - History of astronomy in India by B. S. Shylaja …………….………….… 8 - 3 rd Conference on Cultural Astronomy by E. Badolati…………..………. 9 - Nexus International Conference on Architecture and Mathematics by G. Magli ……………………………………………………………………. 10 E. ICHA Member -
Transit of Venus M
National Aeronautics and Space Administration The Transit of Venus June 5/6, 2012 HD209458b (HST) The Transit of Venus June 5/6, 2012 Transit of Venus Mathof Venus Transit Top Row – Left image - Photo taken at the US Naval Math Puzzler 3 - The duration of the transit depends Observatory of the 1882 transit of Venus. Middle on the relative speeds between the fast-moving image - The cover of Harpers Weekly for 1882 Venus in its orbit and the slower-moving Earth in its showing children watching the transit of Venus. orbit. This speed difference is known to be 5.24 km/sec. If the June 5, 2012, transit lasts 24,000 Right image – Image from NASA's TRACE satellite seconds, during which time the planet moves an of the transit of Venus, June 8, 2004. angular distance of 0.17 degrees across the sun as Middle - Geometric sketches of the transit of Venus viewed from Earth, what distance between Earth and by James Ferguson on June 6, 1761 showing the Venus allows the distance traveled by Venus along its shift in the transit chords depending on the orbit to subtend the observed angle? observer's location on Earth. The parallax angle is related to the distance between Earth and Venus. Determining the Astronomical Unit Bottom – Left image - NOAA GOES-12 satellite x-ray image showing the Transit of Venus 2004. Middle Based on the calculations of Nicolas Copernicus and image – An observer of the 2004 transit of Venus Johannes Kepler, the distances of the known planets wearing NASA’s Sun-Earth Day solar glasses for from the sun could be given rather precisely in terms safe viewing. -
This Is an Electronic Reprint of the Original Article. This Reprint May Differ from the Original in Pagination and Typographic Detail
This is an electronic reprint of the original article. This reprint may differ from the original in pagination and typographic detail. Author(s): Sterken, Christiaan; Aspaas, Per Pippin; Dunér, David; Kontler, László; Neul, Reinhard; Pekonen, Osmo; Posch, Thomas Title: A voyage to Vardø - A scientific account of an unscientific expedition Year: 2013 Version: Please cite the original version: Sterken, C., Aspaas, P. P., Dunér, D., Kontler, L., Neul, R., Pekonen, O., & Posch, T. (2013). A voyage to Vardø - A scientific account of an unscientific expedition. The Journal of Astronomical Data, 19(1), 203-232. http://www.vub.ac.be/STER/JAD/JAD19/jad19.htm All material supplied via JYX is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights, and duplication or sale of all or part of any of the repository collections is not permitted, except that material may be duplicated by you for your research use or educational purposes in electronic or print form. You must obtain permission for any other use. Electronic or print copies may not be offered, whether for sale or otherwise to anyone who is not an authorised user. MEETING VENUS C. Sterken, P. P. Aspaas (Eds.) The Journal of Astronomical Data 19, 1, 2013 A Voyage to Vardø. A Scientific Account of an Unscientific Expedition Christiaan Sterken1, Per Pippin Aspaas,2 David Dun´er,3,4 L´aszl´oKontler,5 Reinhard Neul,6 Osmo Pekonen,7 and Thomas Posch8 1Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium 2University of Tromsø, Norway 3History of Science and Ideas, Lund University, Sweden 4Centre for Cognitive Semiotics, Lund University, Sweden 5Central European University, Budapest, Hungary 6Robert Bosch GmbH, Stuttgart, Germany 7University of Jyv¨askyl¨a, Finland 8Institut f¨ur Astronomie, University of Vienna, Austria Abstract. -
The Observer January-February 2012
January-February 2012 Volume 60 The Observer Issue 1 The Newsletter of Central Valley Astronomers of Fresno In this Issue: New elements, new names Stratolaunch, the next generation rocket launch- er Major astronomical events in 2012 Tycho Brahe and his gold- en nose Profiles in Astronomy: Paul Merrill Curiosity heads for Mars Astronomical Object of the Month: The Celestial Rose Attempts to save the Shut- With apologies to Dante’s Paradiso , this object should be nicknamed the Celestial Rose Nebu- tle Program la . It was imaged by NASA’s WISE(Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer) in November 2011. The object lies in the constellation Puppis, its scientific catalogue designation is Puppis A, and it What did Galileo find and cannot be seen through optical telescopes. It was formed about 3,700 years ago, when a star miss? exploded into a supernova, and was discovered and first imaged in 1971. It is also being called “the cosmic cannonball,” because at its heart is a neutron star which scientists have estimated CVA Calendar is moving at three million miles per hour. The green material is actually part of the Vela Nebu- la, which itself is the remains of a supernova which occurred some 12,000 years ago. The ob- January 7-CVA meeting ject is also a strong x-ray source. 7pm-CSUF in EE191 Image-NASA/JPL/UCLA-WISE January 21-Star party at Eastman Lake Quote of the month- …-listen, there’s a hell of a good universe next door; let’s go February 11-CVA meeting -e.e. cummings at 7pm-CSUF EE191 February 25-Star Party at Eastman Lake Full Moon-Jan 8 New -
SHI 112712 Case Study Transit of Venus Webcast.Indd
An SHI Cloud Services Case Study SHI’s Infrastructure as a Service Supports Transit of Venus Webcast NASA, The Coca-Cola Space Science Center, and Columbus State University CUSTOMER PROFILE leverage SHI’s Infrastructure as a Service to support their Transit of Venus Space Science Center webcast to over one million viewers. CHALLENGE The Coca-Cola Space Science Center (CCSSC) in Columbus, Georgia is a Broadcast the Transit of division of Columbus State University (CSU). The Center opened in 1996 for Venus online to viewers around the purpose of public education in space science, physics and astronomy. the world. Summary SHI SOLUTION A Transit of Venus across the Sun occurs when the planet Venus passes Provide Infrastructure as a directly between the Sun and Earth, becoming visible against the solar disk. Service to store images of the During a transit, Venus can be seen from Earth as a small black disk moving Venus transit and relay them to across the face of the Sun. The 2012 Transit of Venus occurred over a seven users via web-server access. hour period on June 5th and 6th and will not occur again until December 2117. BENEFITS/RESULTS Enabled 1.4 million users to watch the Transit of Venus with zero downtime Avoided the purchase of additional hardware Allowed technical resources to focus on more important aspects of the project, rather than supporting infrastructure The CCSSC wanted to broadcast this event on their website to observers around the world and selected SHI to provide cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) to help power the webcast. -
TRACE Observations of the 15 November 1999 Transit of Mercury and the Black Drop Effect: Considerations for the 2004 Transit of Venus
Icarus 168 (2004) 249–256 www.elsevier.com/locate/icarus TRACE observations of the 15 November 1999 transit of Mercury and the Black Drop effect: considerations for the 2004 transit of Venus Glenn Schneider,a,∗ Jay M. Pasachoff,b and Leon Golub c a Steward Observatory, University of Arizona, 933 North Cherry Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA b Williams College—Hopkins Observatory, Williamstown, MA 01267, USA c Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Mail Stop 58, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA Received 15 May 2003; revised 14 October 2003 Abstract Historically, the visual manifestation of the “Black Drop effect,” the appearance of a band linking the solar limb to the disk of a transiting planet near the point of internal tangency, had limited the accuracy of the determination of the Astronomical Unit and the scale of the Solar System in the 18th and 19th centuries. This problem was misunderstood in the case of Venus during its rare transits due to the presence of its atmosphere. We report on observations of the 15 November 1999 transit of Mercury obtained, without the degrading effects of the Earth’s atmosphere, with the Transition Region and Coronal Explorer spacecraft. In spite of the telescope’s location beyond the Earth’s atmosphere, and the absence of a significant mercurian atmosphere, a faint Black Drop effect was detected. After calibration and removal of, or compensation for, both internal and external systematic effects, the only radially directed brightness anisotropies found resulted from the convolution of the instrumental point-spread function with the solar limb-darkened, back-lit, illumination function. -
Towards the 2012 Transit of Venus Report on a Talk by Darren Bellingham, Section Director ASV Solar Section
Towards the 2012 Transit of Venus Report on a Talk by Darren Bellingham, Section Director ASV Solar Section A Venus Transit, we call when we can see the planet Venus passing directly in front of the Sun. That is, when the Sun, Venus and Earth are exactly in line. This is similar to when the Moon passes in front of the Sun on a solar eclipse. But unlike the Moon, which covers most of the Sun, Venus does not eclipse the Sun because it is so much further away. It appears only as a small dot, slowly crossing the face of the Sun. A transit (sometime called a passage) can only occur with the inner planets – Mercury and Venus – because they are the only planets that during their orbits can pass between the Earth and Sun. The astronomical term for it is ‘inferior conjunction’. Transits of Venus are amongst the rarest of solar-system alignments, a rare, once in a life time event. Only seven have occurred since Galileo first pointed his telescope towards the heaven. Because the orbit of Venus is tilted 4.3 degrees with respect to the Ecliptic (Earth’s orbit), alignment occurs only when both meet at the nodes (the up and down crossing points) of the two orbits. Usually the alignment lasts for two successive meets at that point, 8 years apart. The current 2004 - 2012 pair occurs at the descending node. The previous Venus transit (pair) occurred at the upward node 129.5 years ago in 1874 and 1882. The next pair will start 113.5 years from now, in 2117 and 2125, again at the ascending node. -
I N S I D E T H I S I S S
Publications and Products of October / octobre 2005 Volume/volume 99 Number/numéro 5 [714] The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada Observer’s Calendar — 2006 The award-winning RASC Observer's Calendar is your annual guide Created by the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada and richly illustrated by photographs from leading amateur astronomers, the calendar pages are packed with detailed information including major lunar and planetary conjunctions, The Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada Le Journal de la Société royale d’astronomie du Canada meteor showers, eclipses, lunar phases, and daily Moonrise and Moonset times. Canadian and U.S. holidays are highlighted. Perfect for home, office, or observatory. Individual Order Prices: $16.95 Cdn/ $13.95 US RASC members receive a $3.00 discount Shipping and handling not included. The Beginner’s Observing Guide Extensively revised and now in its fifth edition, The Beginner’s Observing Guide is for a variety of observers, from the beginner with no experience to the intermediate who would appreciate the clear, helpful guidance here available on an expanded variety of topics: constellations, bright stars, the motions of the heavens, lunar features, the aurora, and the zodiacal light. New sections include: lunar and planetary data through 2010, variable-star observing, telescope information, beginning astrophotography, a non-technical glossary of astronomical terms, and directions for building a properly scaled model of the solar system. Written by astronomy author and educator, Leo Enright; 200 pages, 6 colour star maps, 16 photographs, otabinding. Price: $19.95 plus shipping & handling. Skyways: Astronomy Handbook for Teachers Teaching Astronomy? Skyways Makes it Easy! Written by a Canadian for Canadian teachers and astronomy educators, Skyways is Canadian curriculum-specific; pre-tested by Canadian teachers; hands-on; interactive; geared for upper elementary, middle school, and junior-high grades; fun and easy to use; cost-effective. -
Étude De L'atmosphère De Vénus À L'aide D'un Modèle De Réfraction Lors
Étude de l’atmosphère de Vénus à l’aide d’un modèle de réfraction lors du passage devant le Soleil des 5-6 Juin 2012 Christophe Pere To cite this version: Christophe Pere. Étude de l’atmosphère de Vénus à l’aide d’un modèle de réfraction lors du pas- sage devant le Soleil des 5-6 Juin 2012. Autre. Université Côte d’Azur, 2016. Français. NNT : 2016AZUR4063. tel-01477867 HAL Id: tel-01477867 https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-01477867 Submitted on 27 Feb 2017 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. UNIVERSITE´ NICE SOPHIA ANTIPOLIS - UFR Sciences E´cole doctorale no 364 : Sciences Fondamentales et Appliqu´e es THE`SE pour obtenir le titre de Docteur en Sciences de l’UNIVERSITE´ Nice Sophia Antipolis Sp´ecialit´e: “SCIENCES DE LA PLANETE` ET DE L’UNIVERS” pr´esent´eeet soutenue publiquement par Christophe PERE Etude´ de l’atmosph`ere de V´enus `al’aide d’un mod`ele de r´efraction lors du passage devant le Soleil du 5-6 Juin 2012 Directeur de th`ese : Paolo TANGA Co-directeur de th`ese : Thomas WIDEMANN le 23 septembre 2016 Jury M.