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»Overview »Project Groups »Schedule »Publications
An observational project of amateur astronomers to determine the scale of the solar system with the aid of the Venus transit in 2004. Groups investigate the historical calculations and observations, set up new procedures, prepare the observation and carry out the evaluation.
Direct access to these pages: www.astronomie.info/projectvenus
Deutschsprachige Seiten: www.astronomie.info/projektvenus
On June 8th 2004, in major parts of Europe, Africa and Asia – in particular in the complete German speaking area - a Venus transit takes place which is observable during it‘s entire duration. This is a rare astronomical event. The last transit of Venus took place on Dec. 6th 1882, the one following the next on June 6, 2012 (which will only be partly visible in the German speaking part of Europe). Assuming good weather, Venus will be seen as a small, black disk moving slowly across the sun. For various reasons these transits could only be observed and evaluated by professional astronomers in the past. The astronomer E. Halley (1656 to 1742) had the idea to determine the distance from the earth to the sun (the astronomical unit, AU) from the transit times (together with a bit of geometry) with an error of only a few percent. In particular the transit of Venus of June 3rd 1769 was observed and then evaluated: for instance from Varda (Sweden) and Tahiti.
The mathematical and astronomical instruments available today enable the present day amateur astronomers for the first time to observe and evaluate such a transit. From this emerged the idea for the project „Venus 2004“, initiated by the Astronomical Society of Zurich, Switzerland.
The coming Venus transit we want to
We have become aware of the fact that the success of the project depends essentially upon the motivation and cooperation of a sufficient number of amateur astronomers, but also upon the meteorological conditions on June 8th, 2004 and, above all, whether we will be able to evaluate the large number of observational data in a statistically correct way.
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