A rare vision of Venus

A small round silhouette will dot the sun on Wednesday, marking a rare astrological sighting, the Transit of Venus.

Those who miss this year’s Transit will have to wait until December 2117 to see the next one.

The event is not only special for star-gazers but holds historical significance since Captain James Cook charted Australia’s east coast to observe the Transit from the island of Tahiti in 1769.

University of Sydney Professor, Bryan Gaensler, said: “After completing his measurements, Cook opened his sealed orders that commanded him to search for Terra Australis and claim it for England.

The rest, quite literally, is history.

If it wasn’t for the Transit of Venus, Australia would probably have been colonised by the French.”

The Transit provides vital information on what a planet looks like when it passes in front of its parent star, he said.

“There is a massive international effort to find Earthlike planets around distant stars, and measurements of the Transit of Venus will help tell us exactly what we need to look for around other stars, should their planets transit.”

Director of the University of Western Sydney Observatory, Associate Professor Miroslav Filipovic, believes the rarity of the Transit is in the setup of our solar system: “The main reason why it is so infrequent is that the Earth and Venus do not move in exactly the same plane around the Sun, there is about 3.39 degree difference in the angle to the plane.”

If there are clear skies on June 6, the contact of the Transit will appear at 8:16am with last contact ending at 2:44pm.

The University of Sydney’s Physics Science Communicator, Tom Gordon, urges spectators to spectate with more than their naked eye.

“You can buy Solar viewing glasses or you can also use a pair of binoculars, facing the wrong way in order to make a projection of the Sun onto a piece of paper,” he said.

“Do not look directly at the sun through the binoculars, you will do yourself permanent eye damage if you do this! You can use a telescope with a sun filter on it, or you can watch it live on the web.”

Both the University Of Western Sydney and the University of Sydney School of Physics will hold special screenings of the event.