Experience the Transit of Venus
5 June 2012
Due to the snow today, the outdoor activities for the Transit of Venus are cancelled. A live feed from telescopes following the event in other parts of the world can be found at http://events.slooh.com/.
The University of Canterbury is hosting a public open day on 6 June for those keen to view the rare astronomical event, the Transit of Venus.
This is the last chance to see the transit until the year 2117 and the University is hosting events from 10am to 4.30pm that will allow people to safely observe the event.
A transit occurs when Venus passes between the Earth and the sun. Venus becomes visible as a small dark spot passing across the face of the sun and the entire transit will be visible from New Zealand.
UC’s optical telescope at the Mt John Observatory in Tekapo will provide a live web feed which will be shown in the C2 lecture theatre with an astronomer on hand to answer questions. The link to the live web feed will also be on the University’s Physics and Astronomy page at http://www.phys.canterbury.ac.nz/.
The transit will appear differently in other locations around the world because of the parallax effect and the observatory will provide a different view of the event in a live web feed to the international SLOOH Space Camera. The international SLOOH Space Camera webpage can be viewed at http://www.slooh.com/transit-of-venus/.
Warning: It is very dangerous to look directly at the sun, especially through binoculars or telescopes as serious eye damage may result. Specially filtered or projected telescope images or special solar viewers are required.
For more information please contact:
communications@canterbury.ac.nz