Pas­sa­ge of Venus on June 6th

Astro­no­mers are loo­king for­ward to a very rare event in the ear­ly mor­ning hours of June 06th: a pas­sa­ge of Venus. Obser­va­ti­on oppor­tu­ni­ties will be excel­lent in nor­t­hern Scan­di­na­via and in Spits­ber­gen. Every 130 years the­re are 2 tran­sits of Venus with a few years bet­ween them. The last one was in 2004. The cur­rent one will be the last chan­ce to obser­ve such an event until Decem­ber 2117.

You wouldn’t see if if you didn’t kow about it, but it is a very important and spec­ta­cu­lar moment for astro­no­mers. His­to­ri­cal­ly, tran­sits of Venus were very important for sci­ence, as the simul­ta­neous obser­va­ti­on of a tran­sit from dif­fe­rent places on Earth allo­wed, for exam­p­le, the distance to the sun to be cal­cu­la­ted.

If you want to see some­thing, you will need – next to good wea­ther – at least bino­cu­lar and suf­fi­ci­ent eye pro­tec­tion. If you try to obser­ve it wit­hour pro­per eye pro­tec­tion, you risk to lose your eye­sight imme­dia­te­ly and per­ma­nent­ly!

Do you agree that spitsbergen-svalbard.com is a gre­at re­source for any arc­tic enthu­si­ast?

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