Eyes turn skyward as Venus travels across sun

• The Hindu Venus (black spot on the left) transits across the face of the sun, as seen in Visakhapatnam on Wednesday. The next transit of Venus is likely to be seen after another 105 years. Photo: K.R. Deepak 
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  AP Venus travels across the surface of the sun as seen through a telescope in Yellowknife, The Northwest Territories.
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  The Hindu Venus (black spot on the left) crosses the sun's face as seen from Chennai’s Elliot's Beach on Wednesday. Photo: V. Ganesan 
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  The Hindu People queue up along the Elliot's Beach in Chennai to look through a telescope as Venus orbits between the Sun and the Earth on Wednesday. Photo: Mukunth

From the U.S. to South Korea, people around the world turned their attention to the daytime sky on Tuesday and early Wednesday in Asia to make sure they caught the once-in-a-lifetime sight of the transit of Venus.

For some astronomers, it wasn’t just a rare planetary spectacle as it won’t be seen for another 105 years. They hoped the passage of Venus between the Earth and the sun would spark curiosity about the universe and our place in it.

Sul Ah Chim, a researcher at the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute in South Korea, said he hoped people see life from a larger perspective, and “not get caught up in their small, everyday problems.”

“When you think about it from the context of the universe, 105 years is a very short period of time and the Earth is only a small, pale blue spot,” he said.

While astronomers used the latest technology to document the transit, American astronaut Don Pettit aboard the International Space Station was planning to take photos of the event and post them online.

In Mexico, at least 100 people lined up two hours early to view the event through telescopes or one of the 150 special viewing glasses on hand, officials said. Observation points were also set up at a dozen locations.

Venus, which is extremely hot, is one of Earth’s two neighbours and is so close in size to our planet that scientists at times call them near-twins. During the transit, it will appear as a small dot.

The transit is happening during a 6-hour, 40-minute span that began just after 2200 GMT. What you can see and for how long depends on what the sun’s doing in your region during that exact window, and the weather.

Those in most areas of North and Central America will see the start of the transit until the sun sets, while those in western Asia, the eastern half of Africa and most of Europe will catch the transit’s end once the sun comes up.

In Hawaii, astronomers planned viewings at Waikiki Beach, Pearl Harbor and Ko Olina. At Waikiki, officials planned to show webcasts as seen from telescopes from volcanoes Mauna Kea on the Big Island and Haleakala on Maui.

NASA planned a watch party at its Goddard Visitor Centre in Maryland with solar telescopes, “Hubble-quality” images from its Solar Dynamics Observatory Mission and expert commentary and presentations.

Experts from Hong Kong’s Space Museum and local astronomical groups were organising a viewing on Wednesday outside the museum’s building on the Kowloon waterfront overlooking the southern Chinese city’s famed Victoria Harbour.

This will be the seventh transit visible since German astronomer Johannes Kepler first predicted the phenomenon in the 17th century. Because of the shape and speed of Venus’ orbit around the sun and its relationship to Earth’s annual trip, transits occur in pairs separated by more than a century.

It’s nowhere near as dramatic and awe-inspiring as a total solar eclipse, which sweeps a shadow across the Earth, but there will be six more of those this decade.