Mercury,
March/April 2004 Table of Contents
by
Louis Mayo
On
the 8th of June Venus will pass across the face of the Sun—a
rare event that in the 17th century permitted European scientists
to determine the size of the Solar System.
Where
will you be on 8 June 2004? If you don't yet know, you had better
decide quickly or you may miss one of the rarest events in astronomy:
the passage of Venus's dark silhouette across the bright disk of
the Sun.
Such
a "Venus transit" or "transit of Venus" will
happen on June 8th of this year, again on June 6th in 2012, but
after that not again until 2117. Besides being a geometric rarity,
this type of celestial conjunction was once hugely important for
astronomers trying to answer some of the most fundamental and central
questions in astronomy: How far away is the Sun? How big is the
Solar System? Is the Sun really at the Solar System's center? How
far away are the stars? Upon answers to these questions are built
many of the pillars of modern astronomy, and it is with this humbling
thought in mind that we begin a story of discovery.
If
you enjoyed this excerpt from a feature article and would
like to receive our bi-monthly Mercury magazine, we invite you to
join the ASP and receive
6 issues a year.
|