The Transit of Venus across the Sun – June 5th – 6th 2012

Above: NASA images of the transit of Venus in 2004

As many of you will know the planet Venus traverses across the face of the sun for 7 hours during the evening of June 5th and very early morning of June 6th 2012 (in the northern hemisphere). This event will not happen again for another 105 years so it truly is a once in a lifetime event. I’m not optimistic of a view from my location as it will only be visible between 5.00 and 5.54 am at less than 10 degrees elevation on the horizon, so it needs a perfectly cloud free view from an elevated site to have the best opportunity and we normally have 78% cloud in early June ! Nevertheless, i’ll be out there with the solar telescopes if it looks at all favorable 🙂

If anyone is trying to find out whether the transit will be visible from their location in the northern hemisphere I can recommend the following website http://transitofvenus.nl/wp/where-when/local-transit-times/ which has a handy graphical visibility calculator that is very easy to use. Just pop your postcode into the search box or drag the map to your location.

If the timezones and cloud conspire against you then I can recommend the NASA live broadcast page where you can follow the event in real-time http://venustransit.nasa.gov/transitofvenus/  Another good broadcast site which will be using multiple locations across the globe and telescopes viewing the sun in various wavelengths of light is the Columbus State University site here http://www.ccssc.org/transit2012.html

Hope you all get a view of this rare event. Please remember not to look directly at the sun and do take appropriate safety measures before viewing with the correct equipment. Do get in touch if you have some images and i’ll post them up on the blog – good luck !