Initially I wasn’t overly
excited about the Venus transit that is happening right now as I write this
field report. I’m not really that into planetary science, favoring more distant
and cataclysmic astrophysical events like binary black hole mergers. But the
local press here in LA did a great job in the past few days to whip up
excitement even in this Physics Groupie. So I decided to take in the event at UCLA
where the astronomy department public outreach effort was in full swing.
As I approached the Royce
Hall quad I was sincerely surprised to see hundreds of Venus enthusiasts lining
up at one of the many specially fitted solar telescopes to get a glimpse of relatively
tiny Venus marching its way across the surface of Sol. Even better, I witnessed
many parents with young children in the crowd; what a great educational
opportunity.
This
is the first transit of Venus visible from Los Angeles since 1882, and the next
one won’t be until 2117. So unless I upload my essence to an android body in
the next few decades, I don’t think I’ll be writing a field report for the next
passage.
A transit happens when Venus
passes directly between the earth and the sun, a rare occurrence due to the
3.4-degree tilt of Venus’s orbit relative to ours. From Los Angeles, Venus
makes first contact with the sun at 3:06 p.m., PDT today. The planet will take
nearly 18 minutes for its silhouette to completely enter the sun’s disk. Venus
comes to within 9.2 arc minutes of the center of the sun’s disk, roughly midway
between the center of the disk of the sun and its northern (upper right) edge,
at 6:25 p.m. The sun sets at 8:02 p.m. with the transit about one hour, 45
minutes from completion.
As
I walked through the crowd, soaking up the appreciation the general public was
showing for a scientific event, I noticed a familiar face, Dr. Mark Morris of
the UCLA Galactic Center group. A nicer more affable astronomer you will not
meet. It was good to see Mark again. I had interviewed him a couple of years
ago for a piece of science journalism I was working on for the Griffith
Observatory and it was good to see a world-class researcher supporting the
event of the day.
With laptop in tow, I found
a nice flat surface under the Royce Hall façade to write this report while
watching the activity a short distance from my perch. It is a fun day of
astronomy.
