Venus draws eyes to the skies

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/06/2012 (4342 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Perfect weather gave Venus true star power in the skies Tuesday before sunset over southern Manitoba.

And hundreds of people in Winnipeg took advantage of filtered telescopes set up at the University of Manitoba and Assiniboine Park to marvel at the planet gliding as a black dot over the face of the sun.

The transit of Venus, a rare celestial alignment that comes in pairs once every hundred years or so, is the result of the way Earth and Venus orbit the sun. When Venus passes directly between us and the sun, we see the planet only as a little black dot moving across the face of our star.

Observed only six or seven times since the telescope was invented, the next event will occur in 2117.

“I’ve been reading up on it,” said Sherrie Plesh. “I think it’s awesome. I had to come out. I’ll never see it again in my lifetime. I calculated I’d be 157 years old… I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

The way the orbits of Earth and Venus are tilted explain the peculiar passage — from the top to the bottom of the sun — as Venus passed by.

That puzzled some observers.

“I thought it would go across and then I thought, ‘But wait a moment,’ ” said Andrew Vineberg. Once he factored in the orbits, he got it and the perspective taught him a lesson. “It’s weird how relative perspective is with space.”

The planetarium set up four safety-filtered telescopes to view the transit of Venus up close at Assiniboine Park.

Dozens of astronomers with the Winnipeg Centre of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada set up their own equipment alongside for the show from 5 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.

Back in the 1700s, the planet’s transit gave scientists a way to measure our solar system. Today, the celestial alignment offers clues to find planets in distant solar systems.

Tonight, Venus goes back to being what we’re used to seeing: the morning and the evening star, even though it’s a planet. Venus shows up twice a day, as the brightest light just before sunrise and just after sunset.

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca