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February 26, 2012
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100 days till the transit of Venus…

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…and she’s already looking amazing, here to the bottom right of the Moon. Jupiter is just visible in the top left of the picture, taken by yours truly over London about an hour ago.

In case you haven’t looked in the night sky this weekend, get outside right now. What you can see, through the naked eye, is what astronomers call a triple conjunction.

Yesterday and today, the Moon, Venus, and Jupiter have been putting on a dazzling celestial display, coming together in a tight triangle.

Venus, because it is closer to the Sun than Earth, never strays far from the Sun in our sky. Jupiter, being outside the Earth’s orbit, can appear anywhere along the ecliptic – the path of the Sun, Moon, and planets across the sky.

Right now, Venus and Jupiter are gradually growing closer. They’re currently about ten degrees apart. On March 13, they will be only three degrees separating them as they pass one another.

The Moon, meanwhile, is making its monthly trip around the Earth and is passing the two planets this weekend. Last night, it appeared close to Venus, tonight it is nearer to Jupiter.

Today’s triple conjunction takes place 100 days before Venus passes in front of the Sun, an even rarer celestial event that won’t happen again until 2117.

Some of the above via Space.com. There’s an illustrated guide to the Moon-Venus-Jupiter conjunction here and a Nasa video about it here.

Tags: astronomy Jupiter The Moon The Sun transit of Venus triple conjunction Venus

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January 29, 2012
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The 300-year-old mystery of why Venus causes the ‘Black Drop Effect’

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We can see Venus pass in front of the sun once every one hundred and twenty years. Ever since it’s been observed, a strange thing has been happening. Instead of appearing as a dark circle moving across the sun, Venus formed a tear drop shape that slowly oozed onto the solar disc. It took three hundred years for scientists to understand the Black Drop Effect.
Via io9.com

Tags: astronomy black drop effect science transit of Venus Venus

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January 26, 2012

OMG! Opportunity of a lifetime!

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The Australian National Maritime Museum is offering 35 people the chance to sail aboard its replica of the ship Captain James Cook voyaged in to Tahiti in 1769 to observe the transit of Venus.


The ballot for a spot on the HMB Endeavour has already opened. Hopefuls have till 10 February to submit their applications and the winners will be chosen ten days later.


The ship departs Sydney on 31 May and drops anchor off Lord Howe Island on 5 June in time to see this year’s transit begin next day at 08.15 local time.


It really is the opportunity of a lifetime since the next Venus transit won’t happen again till December 2117. Also, it has to be said, Lord Howe Island really does look rather nice.


For more information and to apply click here. There’s also a nice write up here.


Tags: Australian National Maritime Museum Captain James Cook Endeavour our last Transit of Venus transit of Venus Venus

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January 24, 2012
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Charting Venus: a collection of transit maps

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One example from a beautiful collection of historical maps and diagrams of past transits of Venus, the majority of which come from the work of Victorian astronomer Richard A. Proctor. For the full series in high resolution click here.

Tags: astronomy cartography maps Richard A. Proctor science transit of Venus Venus

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January 23, 2012

Chasing Venus

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On 22 January 1761, the French astronomer Chappe d’Auteroche arrived in Warsaw. He was on his way to Tobolsk in Russia, to observe the transit of Venus on 6 June that year.


“Chappe’s diary entries from Warsaw show that he was not only an astronomer but also a connoisseur of women – describing in detail their dress and ‘undress’,” notes Andrea Wulf, in this latest extract from her upcoming book ‘Chasing Venus: The Race to Measure the Heavens.’


“No matter how difficult his voyages, he always found time to investigate women with the taxonomic precision of a scientist,” she writes. “No matter how cold or exhausted he was, he remained an expert of the female sex and remarked appreciatively on their sparking eyes, the ‘slenderness of their waists’, and ‘well-shaped servant maids’. The women in Warsaw, he declared, were beautiful and sociable but also ‘strictly virtuous’.”


Via transitofvenus.nl

Tags: Andrea Wulf astronomy Chappe d'Auteroche Chasing Venus Guillarme Le Gentil transit of Venus Venus

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January 22, 2012
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Maskelyne and Banks

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As Astronomer Royal and president of the Royal Society respectively Nevil Maskelyne and Joseph Banks had a long and complex relationship, spanning more than forty years.


The two giants of late 18th century science were key members of the Board of Longitude and during the formative years of their friendship they were close, sometimes sharing smutty jokes in their letters to one another.

Read More

Tags: astronomy Captain James Cook Joseph Banks National Maritime Museum Nevil Maskelyne Royal Observatory Greenwich Royal Society Schielallion experiment science transit of Venus Venus

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January 17, 2012

On this day in 1761

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On 17 January 1761, British astronomer Nevil Maskelyne set sail for St Helena - a lone speck of land in the Southern hemisphere from which he intended to observe the transit of Venus that was to take place on 6 June that year. via transitofvenus.nl

Tags: 1761 astronomy Nevil Maskelyne transit of Venus Venus

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December 19, 2011
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The unluckiest Frenchman ever?

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French astronomer Guillaume Le Gentil sailed from Paris in 1760 for Pondichéry (Puducherry) in India to observe the transit of Venus on June 6, 1761. On the way, he stopped off at Île de France (Mauritius) and learned of the war that had broken out with the English in the intervening months. They had colonized Pondichéry and so he changed his destination for the more easterly isle of Rodrigues.

But en route, the captain of the frigate he was travelling aboard became wary of the escalating crisis, and performed an about-face, heading back to Mauritius. Le Gentil was still at sea when the transit of Venus happened and due to the motion of the boat and lack of an accurate timepiece he was unable to carry out any meaningful measurements, despite perfect weather. The astronomer was too embarrassed to return home and resolved instead to remain on Île de France, using it as a base from which to scout the Indian Ocean for appropriate observation posts for the 1769 transit.              
 
After spending some time mapping the eastern coast of Madagascar, he decided to record the transit from Manila in the Philippines. Encountering hostility from the Spanish authorities there, however, he headed to Pondichéry, which had been restored to France in 1763. He arrived in March 1768 and built a small observatory where he waited patiently. At last, the day of the transit – June 4, 1769 – arrived, but although the mornings in the preceding month had all been clear, on this day the sky was overcast, and Le Gentil saw nothing. The misfortune drove him to the brink of insanity, but at last he recovered enough strength to return to France.

The return trip was first delayed by dysentery, and further when his ship was caught in a storm and dropped him off at Île Bourbon (Réunion), where he had to wait until a Spanish ship took him home. He finally arrived in Paris eleven years later in October 1771, only to find that he had been declared legally dead and been replaced in the Royal Academy of Sciences. His wife had remarried, and all his relatives had “enthusiastically plundered his estate”.                                                                             
But it wasn’t all misfortune for Le Gentil. He eventually got back his seat in the academy, remarried, and apparently lived happily for another 21 years. His story was also dramatized (with some artistic licence) in Transit of Venus, a 1992 play by Canadian playwright Maureen Hunter, pictured above.                                                                     
Via Wikipedia and Knol.

Tags: 1761 astronomy Guillarme Le Gentil history science transit of Venus Venus

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November 28, 2011
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Royal Observatory rekindles Venus

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The planetarium at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich will next year screen Rekindling Venus, a film from Australian artist Lynette Wallworth especially created for planetariums.

It premieres around the world on 5 June 2012 to coincide with the transit of Venus, which inspired the first known attempts at international scientific co-operation during times of war in 1761 and 1769.

Today, as marine biologists predict that whole ecosystems such as coral reefs may disappear within 50 years and conservationists fight their own war, Rekindling Venus is a call for renewed global cooperation in our present time.

You can watch a clip of Rekindling Venus here.

via festival.london2012.com

Tags: 2012 astronomy climate change conservation Lynette Walworth Royal Observatory Greenwich transit of Venus Venus

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November 09, 2011

Measuring the Universe

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The Royal Observatory in Greenwich will mark next year’s June 5 Transit of Venus with an exhibition and series of talks from March through to August.

Measuring the Universe will explore the way astronomers used the rare celestial event in previous centuries to help figure out the size of the cosmos.

As well as telling the stories of early scientists and explorers such as Edmund Halley and Captain Cook, it will also highlight how the scale of the universe continues to awe and inspire us today.

via nmm.ac.uk

Tags: astronomy National Maritime Museum Royal Observatory Greenwich science transit of Venus Venus