Transit of Venus at SEC 2011

At the Solar Eclipse Conference 2011, which started today in New Delhi, there are of course a lot of talks about solar eclipses. But with the rarest of eclipse phenomena that can be seen from earth approaching quickly, the transit of Venus also gets some attention. On the first day of the conference eclipse legend Fred Espenak (pictured above by Daniel Fischer, surrounded by Indian students) spoke of the transit of Venus: its history, frequency and current scientific use. Most special among next year’s observations will be the observation by the Hubble Space Telescope, which will try to get spectra of Venus’ atmosphere from the sunlight reflected by the moon’s surface.

The second day of the conference focusses on education, exploration and observing techniques. Chander Devgun will give a talk about the Vamana Project for the upcoming transit in 2012. This outreach project, initiated by SPACE during the 2004 transit, aims at high school students in India, who will measure the distance to the sun from their observations of the transit of Venus. On the third and last day, the preparations for the total and annular solar eclipse of 2012 as well as the transit of Venus are discussed.

The theme of the conference, ‘Chasing the Moon’s shadow across the Earth!’, also has some relevance to the transit of Venus. The shadow of Venus was, after all, chased as well throughout history. And even today there are people who will travel all across the world to see each of the two transits of our lifetime in its entirety, very much like eclipse chasers who are eager to watch each and every eclipse they can see.