orin steanek wrote:http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090409.html
Neat photo: 8) Wouldn't you have to look almost directly at the sun to see this awesome event? Does Venus make a transition of the Sun each time it is between the Earth and the sun? Or does the orbital plane of the planets sometimes present the line of sight between the Sun and the Earth cause The view of Venus to be a bit above of below the Sun as viewed from Earth? (not sure I presented that correctly)
Anyway; from the photo; it doesn't look like a transition happened.
Venus was about 8½ degrees higher in the sky than the sun on March 26 and much
of the Rayleigh scattering was probably removed using a vertically polarizing filter.
March 26 is midway (three fifths) between the December 7th / June 7th nodal point
inferior conjunctions that occasionally give us Venus Transits (in pairs):
Code: Select all
TRANSIT starts at 9 Dec 1874 1:38
TRANSIT ends at 9 Dec 1874 6:36
TRANSIT starts at 6 Dec 1882 13:48
TRANSIT ends at 6 Dec 1882 20:22
.................................................
TRANSIT starts at 8 Jun 2004 5:07
TRANSIT ends at 8 Jun 2004 11:33
TRANSIT starts at 5 Jun 2012 22:03
TRANSIT ends at 6 Jun 2012 4:56
Note: There are 4 non-transit Venus inferior conjunctions between
the Venus Transit pair of 2004 / 2012 this was the penultimate one
[approximately (2/5)x 8 years before June 6, 2012].
