farewell, thou beauteous queen!

Oh! then farewell, thou beauteous queen!
Thy sway may soften natures yet untamed,
Whose breasts, bereft of the native fury,
Then shall learn the milder virtues.
We, with anxious mind, follow thy latest footsteps here,
And far as thought can carry us;
My labours now bedeck the monument for future times
Which thou at parting left us. Thy return
Posterity shall witness; years must roll away,
But then at length the splendid sight
Again shall greet our distant children's eyes.

Jeremiah Horrocks (1618-1641)


Unfortunately, I was not able to witness the exciting event of venus transit because I could not get any protective filters for my eyes. Unlike many western countries where you could easily buy such stuff, here we don't have them. When we were kids we used to watch solar eclipses with developed negative rolls but the scientific community now say most of them are unsafe.

I was not prepared for this transit because I remembered about it only very recently. Within a short period of time there is no way you can easily get good filters. Anyway I am glad that I did not watch it without taking safety precautions because a medical description in the www.vt-2004.org outlines dangers to the eyes because of exposure to sun. It says solar retinopathy cases are regularly reported after solar eclipses, mainly caused by the use of inadequate filters.

I wonder to what extent awareness exists in our society concerning this. I have not heard about any student group observing the venus transit either.

So I am unable to repeat what Jeremiah Horrocks, the first observer of a venus transit said: "I then beheld a most agreeable spectacle, the object of my sanguine wishes, a spot of unusual magnitude and of perfectly circular shape".

Beggars can't be choosers.

But you can still participate in the VT-2004 activities by sending a drawing about what you think of the event and be one of the 25 lucky winners to receive a VT-2004 T-shirt. Or you can make a short video on the theme. Among the entries 12 laureate videos will be selected and two members of each laureate team will be invited for the VT-2004 Final Event to be held in Paris during the second week of November. Winners of second and third prizes get a visit to "internationally renowned science film production company in Europe and the opportunity to meet professional film makers. The first prize is a free trip for two to the ESO Paranal Observatory located in the Chilean Andes, one of the foremost astronomical centres in the world and the home of the Very Large Telescope (VLT)."

The Chilean Andes? Now that is a place I want to go.

The June flowers are blooming in 2004 and venus in transit

"We are now on the eve of the second transit of a pair, after which there will be no other till the Twenty-First century of our era has dawned upon the earth, and the June flowers are blooming in 2004.... What will be the state of science when the next transit season arrives God only knows." (American astronomer William Harkness in 1882).

Indeed, many changes have occured in the field of science, by the time the next transit of venus has arrived.

Astronomers call a 'transit' when a star, sun or planet, is seen passing in front of another such celestial body. The most common one is the eclipse of the sun, when the moon passes in front of the sun. But the rare ones, the tranist of Mercury and the Venus, draws more attention.

What the world is about to witness on June 8th, is what no living human has seen; a venus transit.

Earlier, astronomers used venus and mercury transits to get information about the dimensions of the solar system such as the distance between Earth and the Sun. However, the use of modern radio signals emitted by spacecraft has led to the discovery of many such information and the event is not of much scientific importance. Nevertheless, it is still an event that raises educational interest.

www.vt-2004.org is a very informative site dedicated to this event. Here is an interesting account i read from the website.

"Astronomers travelled to remote parts of the world to observe the transits of Venus in 1761 and 1769. To observe the transit of 1769, Captain Cook sailed from England to Tahiti. He discovered Hawaii and a few other places as bonuses along the way; it is not often that the side benefits of astronomical research are so apparent."

One other interesting thing I have read from Wikipedia is that the early Greeks thought the morning and evening appearance of Venus were two different objects. They called it Phosphorus when it appeared in the eastern morning sky and called it Hesperus when it was on the western evening sky. They eventually figured this out thanks to Pythagoras.

Anybody who wants to observe the venus transit is advised to have eyes protected because the direct exposure to sun can lead to retina burn and eye damage, even instant blindness.