Community Corner
View Rare Transit of Venus Tuesday Near Cumming
The 2012 Transit of Venus will occur Tuesday. It's a once-in-a-lifetime celestial event, and you can catch the action at NGCSU in Dahlonega.
It will be a rare astronomical and skywatching event and it happens on Tuesday, June 5: The transit of the planet Venus across the face of the sun.
It will be the last crossing of Venus across the face of the sun until 2117 and North Georgia College & State University’s Coleman Planetarium in Dahlonega (about 28 miles from Cumming) will host a viewing party.
On Tuesday, June 5, teams will film the event from the west balcony of the Health & Natural Sciences Building, and will feed live video down to the projection system inside the planetarium, according to a news release.
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“These transits occur in pairs, with the transits within a pair happening eight years apart,” said Dr. Joseph Jones, associate professor of physics. “However, pairs occur more than 100 years apart. The transit happening on June 5 will be the second of a pair—the first occurred in 2004.”
Johannes Kepler first predicted a Venus transit in the 17th century, a prediction that lead to Edmund Halley studying and timing the crossing in the early 18th century to find a parallax angle—a measurement that gave humanity an absolute distance to Venus, opening doors for other measurements, such as the size of our solar system.
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“As we broadcast the transit, those in attendance will also hear a presentation on the history and importance of Kepler’s and Halley’s discoveries, and how this phenomenon changed astronomy and science,” Jones said. “Observers will also be able to view the transit through telescopes equipped with solar filters.”
The event begins at 5 p.m. at Coleman Planetarium, and will run until 9 p.m. The transit will begin at 6:04 p.m. In case of clouds or inclement weather, the planetarium will broadcast a live feed from Hawaii.
After dark, visitors are invited to the Observatory for telescopic viewing of the night sky.
Jones warned that people should not view the transit without the proper filter. “Immediate and permanent eye damage will result from viewing the transit without the appropriate filter,” he said.
Consider using eclipse shades or a telescope lens filter.
If you can't make it to the planetarium, there are several places to watch the transit of Venus online:
- The Slooh Space Camera will offer an 8-hour webcast of the transit that includes real-time video feeds from 10 telescopes around the world.
- NASA will offer a live video feed from Mauna Kea observatory in Hawaii with expert commentary.
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