Since I celebrated my birthday last Monday, I have been looking forward to this once in a lifetime event, the Solar Transit of Venus. The transit is occurring as we speak, June 5th in the Americas and June 6th to (almost) the rest of the world.
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According the the Transit of Venus app for iOS, the transit’s exterior ingress started at 06:12:52, with the interior ingress at 06:30:38, local time (GMT+8). After about 6.5 hours to traverse the sun, the egress of planet Venus is estimated at 12:30:23 (interior) and 12:47:49 (exterior).
Since I have do not have any special equipment to monitor this event, I’m glued to NASA‘s stream (below) to make sure I don’t miss it. Hopefully, the little girl and I can watch until the exterior egress. I tried to use some old xray film as my pair of special glasses to view Venus crossing the Sun and I do see a very small dot at the upper left side of the sun. Unfortunately I can’t take a picture of it since my camera isn’t equipped for those kinds of shots so I’ll just stick with NASA‘s pictures as well.
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I’m actually having a lot of fun with the little girl since I have to explain everything to her as she’s just 3. But since we will not witness this again, I’m hoping she’ll remember it when she grows up. This is a new learning for her especially since she has been familiar with the solar system (planets, sun an moon) since she was 2.
To witness this once in a century event, just click on the stream below. I sure hope you do see it because the next transit is said to be in the year 2117. For more information on the transit and why scientists are monitoring it closely (to learn the planet Venus’ atmosphere, etc.), you can also check out the post via CNet News.
Live stream by Ustream
