The big build-up
The
Transit of Venus that happened on 5/6 earlier this month had been justifiably
billed as one of the most significant astronomical events of our time,
especially from the popular perspective.
Here was something that would not be seen again for well over a hundred
years, truly a chance of a life time. As
an exceptionally rare event and of great historical importance as well, it
attracted the attention of professionals and amateurs alike, the former for its
appeal as a visual spectacle and the latter for its potential as a testing
ground for some of the most refined experimental techniques that have a bearing
on our search for habitable planets outside the solar system. It had received a great deal of publicity
from both the printed and electronic media, most of it highlighting its
scientific aspects. Astrologers who
generally have a field day with their dire predictions when eclipses occur were
conspicuously and mercifully silent, though the event was not too different
from an eclipse and involved objects all too familiar to their profession. There were no special poojas in temples to ward off any evil effects of the event,
apparently because none were perceived.
Unlike eclipses, planetary transits apparently don’t qualify as
harbingers of evil.
In
many parts of the world, particularly in regions like southern India, cloudy
skies posed a significant threat to the visibility of the event, though even a short
respite from the clouds would provide a representative and adequate sample of
the long drawn out event. The pre-event
weather outlook promised as much, with bright sunny mornings preceding the
D-day, particularly at home in Mysore.
For this reason I had opted to observe the event from the comfort of my
home in my home town.
The huge let-down
What
transpired on D-day was one of the most disappointing experiences I have ever
had in my long tryst with observable astronomical events. With assistance from
my grandson, I had set up all necessary equipment at my command and woke up
long before sunrise to watch the live webcast of the event in different parts
of the world even as I waited for the Sun to rise and show up its face. I and a small band of highly motivated and
enthusiastic friends had to wait a very long time before we could even determine
where exactly it was. Finally, more than
two hours after it had been expected to rise, we got our first glimpse of the
Sun through a shroud of dense clouds.
The following is the first and only picture of the event I was able to
capture at this time with a new Canon PowerShot SX40 HS super-zoom (35x
optical) camera, equipped with an appropriate solar filter.
The
silhouette of planet Venus against the spectacular backdrop of the dazzling
solar disk is seen sharply and unmistakably, though none of the sunspots are noticeable.
The transit was already two-thirds of
the way through, having begun around 3:40 AM.
This fleeting glimpse of the Sun lasted only a few seconds, but long
enough for everyone in the gathering to be convinced that Venus was indeed in transit
across the face of the Sun. After that,
for the next ninety minutes or so, the Sun was playing hide and seek with us,
mostly hide because we couldn’t see it clearly enough through our imaging
devices or capture it with the camera.
The small mercies
The
weather relented to some extent during the final 30 minutes of the event though
we never really saw the Sun against a totally cloudless backdrop. The following set of four pictures shows
whatever I could salvage out of the gloomy situation, the last one possible
just minutes before the end of transit.
A keen eye can spot some of the larger sunspots if the picture is magnified
by clicking on it and opening it in a separate window.
To
highlight the effect of the cloudiness, I am reproducing here the following
picture taken on the previous evening in much better conditions, showing a
number of sunspots quite prominently.
The size of the spot corresponding to Venus in transit was much bigger
than the biggest of these.
In
Bangalore, where the initial conditions were no better than in Mysore, the
situation improved greatly as morning progressed, and the overall conditions
were significantly better. The following
set of pictures taken by my son-in-law there with a high-zoom (18x optical)
Panasonic Lumix DMC FZ-35 camera compliment my efforts in Mysore and fill the
gap as well to some extent. When
magnified, these pictures show the sunspots much better than the Mysore
pictures.
Media Glare
The
event was shown from beginning to end from various vantage points in the world
through live webcasts. Many TV channels
pitched in, sandwiching live pictures and commentaries with their regular
programmes.
International Coverage
Perhaps
the best live webcast was provided by NASA through its NASA EDGE@Mauna Kea
website located at the top of mount Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Pictures of the event were provided
continuously from three dedicated solar telescopes capturing images in white light
as well as two different wavelengths – with a Calcium K filter at 393 nm (blue)
wavelength and a hydrogen alpha filter at 656 nm (red) wavelength. Expert commentaries, interviews, and
multimedia programmes relating to the event were interspersed with the show in
rich abundance. It attracted a huge
international viewership, reaching a peak of about three million at one point
in time. Here are a set of illustrative
pictures I grabbed from this webcast (the times are in IST). It is interesting to see that the sunspots
show up best in white light.
The
Hawaii efforts were complemented by a worldwide network of about a dozen
websites that included one belonging to the Indian Institute of Astrophysics at
Hanle in Himalayan Ladakh, the world’s highest astronomical
observatory. Unfortunately, the weather
here was a total washout.
When
I looked at the IAO Hanle webcast just before sunrise, viewers were being
greeted with the following message (presented exactly as seen) repeatedly splashed on the screen: “Live stream
from Hanle at a hight of 14800 ft from sea level. Weather Update:- Its cloudy right now. hope
the weather improved by the time the sun rises”. Not only did they have nothing to show, but
also they chose to say so in embarrassingly poor English.
Interestingly,
one of the websites was located in St Michael’s Church, Much Hoole, Horrocks in
England, home of the historic and pioneering effort of observing the 4 Dec 1639
Transit of Venus by the youthful British astronomer Jeremiah Horrocks (see my
previous blog post).
National Coverage
One
Hindi news channel chose to give uninterrupted coverage to the event for a
considerable time and its excellent work was marred only by the totally
irrelevant and meaningless presence of an astrologer in the discussion
panel. It is astonishing how the media
in the country try to mix up the irrational with the rational, inviting
self-proclaimed pseudo experts to interfere in matters that have nothing to do
with them. This man, in traditional
attire and looking like the personification of arrogance, was saying that the
event was something well known to ancient Indian scholars who had predicted
them much before western civilization woke up to it. When one of the panelists intervened to point
out that even a scientific understanding of the event was of recent origin and asked
him to cite specific details in support of his claim, the astrologer
contemptuously brushed him aside and instead challenged the panelist to prove him wrong!
Planetariums
in several Indian cities played a key role in promoting popular interest in the
event, mainly through live telescopic shows, the best way perhaps to leave a
lasting impression in the minds of the viewers.
The excitement in school children was particularly palpable. Media coverage of the efforts of the
planetarium in Delhi, where the event was hardly affected by the weather, was
noteworthy. This was also the case with the Bangalore planetarium though it was
plagued by bad weather for a considerable time initially.
While
appreciating the work of such agencies in promoting a scientific temper, one
writer writing in the online edition of the Times of India went ethereal by
asking, “Can one truly disengage the scientific wonder from its
astrological significance?” He also went
off his rocker by claiming “Even a mere transit is believed to have an
astrological impact for as many as six months after the occurrence.” Two
other pieces of absolute gems from him: “There are those who
believe that this event is leading up to the Mayans’ prediction that
the world will come to an end in December 2012”
and “The energy of this eclipse also
provides with the ability to bring balance within our relationships as well.” He
could well have been a worthy substitute for the astrologer in the TV panel
mentioned earlier!
Path of Venus in Transit – Confusing Perspectives
Now
it is time for me to try to clear up a major confusion created in the minds of
some uninitiated but highly inquisitive viewers. Echoing their concerns, my long-standing
friend Dr Narasimhan of Virajpet had commented in my previous blog post, “I have been following the various
articles on ToV on 5-6 June 2012. But I
see the Venus crossing the Sun transversely from left to right, an essential
view from high northern latitudes! But
in places nearer the Equator, Venus crosses the Sun vertically from below
upwards. Don't the readers in India,
especially southern India, get confused?”
In saying so he had been partly misled by a well-known Astronomy
simulation software package (Starry Night
Pro Plus) which showed widely different views for different observers by
employing differing orientations of the ecliptic (the apparent path of the
Earth in orbit around the Sun) in its default settings. Without pausing to understand what he was
really trying to communicate, I had replied hastily but correctly, “There
cannot be any confusion since the path of the planet across the solar disk is
practically the same for all observers as can be inferred from the graphics
provided by Espenak/NASA and reproduced in my article. Extremely small differences can indeed be
seen by different observers in different locations due to the well-known
parallax effect, but these are far too small to be noticed by mere visual
observations…” Dr Narasimhan was of
course implying something very different.
It was only after I myself had seen the live
webcast and telecast pictures of Venus in transit from a number of different
sources did I appreciate how pertinent Dr Narasimhan’s concerns were. As he had anticipated, most viewers must have
been greatly puzzled and confused by the widely, perhaps even wildly, differing
paths of Venus they saw across the Sun’s face on the TV or monitor screen. Without trying to justify the confusion, I
would like to point out that these differences are due only to the way a telescope or any other viewing
device forms the image. It is well
known that a refractor telescope with the eyepiece pointing along the length of
the telescope shows an image that is upside down, while a pair of binoculars
shows it correctly because it would be useless otherwise. The problem is further compounded in another
way. If the image is seen through an
eyepiece fitted into a mirror diagonal attached perpendicular to the telescope
tube, even the orientation of the
image changes as the diagonal holder is rotated about the telescope axis (a
classic example being the orientation of Saturn and its ring system). This is often necessary for viewing comfort. It
would be a major irritant for terrestrial viewing, but perfectly acceptable for
astronomical viewing where concepts like ‘up’, ‘down’, ‘right’ and ‘left’ are
mostly irrelevant. For an excellent
write-up on the nuances of image orientation through common telescopes, please
see: http://www.telescope.com/Articles/Current-Articles/Telescopes/Image-Orientation/pc/9/c/192/sc/194/p/99816.uts
Readers may have noticed that star charts show
the East and West directions reversed as compared to geographical maps. This is a long standing convention in
Astronomy, dictated by the fact that when we lie down on our backs to view the
night sky (this is indeed the best way to do so!) with the head facing north,
our right hand points westward and the left hand eastward. The situation is the other way round when we
look at any geographical map. This
difference in convention is one major reason for the confusion.
As stated earlier, a telescope or other imaging
device generally produces a change in the orientation of the image apart also
from a reversal of ‘up’ and ‘down’ directions.
This is indeed the main cause for the confusing paths and locations so
prominently noticed in webcasts and telecasts by most people during the transit
of Venus. All camera shots in this
article show the Sun exactly the way our eyes see it since this is exactly what
we expect from a camera. Venus is seen
to traverse east to west along a path north of the ecliptic and roughly
parallel to it, consistent with the Espenak/NASA graphics shown in my previous
post (note that north is to our left in the pictures). However, the three NASA pictures taken
through telescopes tell a different story because of the change in orientation
of the image captured through the telescopes.
By thoughtfully employing the same geometry in all three of its telescopes
NASA avoided compounding the confusion. The
path of Venus in these three pictures is roughly from top to bottom, whereas
they are very nearly the opposite in the photographs, or as Dr Narsimhan has
put it, ‘vertically from below upwards’.
In
the final analysis, what is very nearly the same for all observers on Earth are
the points of ingress and egress, and the path between these points, irrespective of the orientation of the
picture being viewed.
Transit technique and Exoplanets
As
pointed out in my previous post, the transit of Venus was used to determine the
Astronomical Unit, a measure of
distances on the scale of the solar system.
With the tremendous advances achieved in recent decades in astronomical
instrumentation, both ground based and space based, a wholly new dimension to
precision measurements has opened up and this transit of Venus is being used to
fine tune the techniques involved. They
are already being employed to detect extra solar planets using a super
sensitive light detector that is an integral part of the Kepler
spacecraft. This detector measures the
extremely small variations in the intensities of light received from stars when
a suspected planet makes a transit across the star just like the transit of
Venus across the Sun. Several hundred
such exoplanets have already been found employing the transit technique.
Postscript
As
a rehearsal to observing the transit through a telescope equipped with a solar
filter, I had looked for the sunspots which had suddenly spurted out in
profusion just 3-4 days before the event.
What I saw was one of the most bewildering sights I had ever seen. The field of view was sprayed with not just
dark spots, large and small, but also large cobweb like dark grey patches which
stole the show. Then I suddenly realized
that while most of the spots were indeed an integral part of the solar surface,
the patches were produced by junk material that had collected inside my eye when I had suffered what
is known as a posterior vitreous
detachment some time ago. My eye
specialist had told me that this was only a ‘minor irritant’, something that I
could afford to live with, considering how lucky I was to have escaped from any
damage to my retina. Considering how bad
my vision is with my only ‘good’ eye, I am seriously reviewing my plan of
visiting northeastern Australia to observe the total solar eclipse due on 13
November this year. If I decide to stay
put with my plan, it will be more because of the attraction of the Great
Barrier Reef off the northeastern coast of Australia than the total solar
eclipse for which the expected observing conditions are far from ideal
anyway.
1 comment:
Thanx to your earlier post I could see the transit of Venus very well from here. I have taken a couple of pictures as visible with the naked eye and posted the same on FB. We then got our fellow teachers and students to see the last part of the transit using a solar filter glasses which were thankfully provided by the University of Bahrain.
K Sudhir ( 1985 MScEd batch)
Sr PGT - Physics
The Indian School, Bahrain
Post a Comment