The Hindu : Front Page : A rare celestial spectacle

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jun 09, 2004

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A rare celestial spectacle

GREENWICH (ENGLAND), JUNE 8. The rare spectacle of a tiny Venus passing across the face of the sun drew sky-gazers across a wide band from Australia to the edge of north America on Tuesday.

Many came with a sense of cosmic wonder; some were only puzzled. The day was turned into a sort of festival in India, with thousands of enthusiastic people, including school children, thronging science centres and planetariums to witness the spectacle.

People in Africa, Europe and the Middle East could see the entire transit, while the northeast corner of the United States and Canada saw only the tail end of the event that last happened 122 years ago in 1882 and will only be repeated in 2012 and then in the next century. Some people were waiting in line at 6 a.m. for a chance to use one of the filter-equipped telescopes provided by the observatory, said Emily Winterburn, curator of astronomy. The Royal Observatory, beside the Thames in southeast London, has a historic connection to the transit, which occurs twice — eight years apart — about every century. In 1716, Edmond Halley observed the transit at Greenwich to calculate the distance between the earth and the sun.

Planetariums the world over set up telescopes with eye-protecting solar filters.

About 500 people were lined up at 5 a.m. in Boston to take a turn at a telescope atop the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Among them was noted law professor Laurence Tribe, who was fascinated by "the absolute nature of it, unlike the law, where things are so pliable. It's awesome that there are things like absolute truth."

A blue sky over Sydney gave about 40 persons looking through telescopes at the city's observatory a clear view. The sight had special significance for Australians — the country's east coast was "discovered" by British explorer James Cook on his way home from viewing the 1769 transit in Tahiti.

Rain and cloud obscured the show in Japan and Thailand. It was also cloudy in Hong Kong, but that did not stop more than 100 people queuing up at the Hong Kong Space Museum, where several telescopes were waiting.

"Spectacles such as this reinforce my belief that there is a creator, and we are just tiny specks within this universe," said Zulkarnain Hassan, 26, who caught a glimpse at the National Planetarium in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

"I think it's really fantastic, I can't explain why," said Henrik Mortensen, an amateur astronomer who was among a crowd outside the Tycho Brahe Observatory in Copenhagen. ``I have a strange feeling of something big.''

In a park in Oslo, Norwegian astronomer Knut Joergen Roed Oedegaard proposed to his girlfriend Anne Mette Sannes on a stage in front of about 2,000 people gathered to watch the transit. She said yes to thunderous applause.

A key viewing location in Britain was Carr House in Much Hoole in northwest England. A telescope was set up in the bedroom where astronomer Jeremiah Horrocks observed the transit for the first time on November 24, 1639.

"It was a bit surreal to be stood here and think this is the spot where Jeremiah Horrocks was when he saw the transit all those years ago," said Riddhi Gupta, 16, one of three New Zealand students who won a competition to come to the event.

Clouds mar event in India

For several Indians, the weather god played spoilsport in some parts for a major part of the transit time. Venus appeared as a tiny black dot passing across the face of the sun for about six hours. It was the historic journey of the brightest planet after about 122 years. The planet entered the disc of the Sun at 10.43 a.m. and left it around 4.30 p.m. Cloudy skies in Delhi, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Chennai, Kolkata and Assam disappointed skygazers for some part of the transit. The event is similar to a solar eclipse. But as Venus is smaller it does not block the sunlight and appears as a tiny black dot moving from the sun's south-eastern edge to the southwest.

AP, PTI

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