Sun-Earth Day 2012 Transit of Venus

June 5th was NASA's Sun-Earth Day! This was a celebration of the 2012 Transit of Venus.  A transit is when something passes through something else, and in this case the planet Venus was passing across the face of the sun. Since it is dangerous to look at the sun directly and because Venus won't appear to transit the sun again for over 100 years, my fellow science educators and I decided to become part of the celebration. We often teach people about astronomy at the MOST, but this was the first time our team tried to have a public viewing event. The MOST is located in downtown Syracuse and is surrounded by tall buildings and plenty of light pollution. Since this event involved the sun and would take place in a area of the sky we could see from outside the building, we knew it could work. We started putting the event together a few months beforehand and spreading the word. We put together a number of activities to do inside, as well as a live webcast of the event from Hawaii, and arranged to have sun-safe telescopes set up outside. One of our volunteers brought a couple and the Syracuse Astronomical Society brought the rest.

For my part, I helped organize a computer lab with Sun-Earth Day videos from NASA, gave two planetarium shows that focused on debunking 2012 "end of the world" nonsense, and a station that tough people how to write numbers like the Ancient Maya. The Ancient Maya were Venus experts, and calculated their data with a very different number system than the decimal system we use today.

As June 5th approached the skies grew overcast and I came down with the flu. The event at the MOST started at 6pm, and I arrived a few hours earlier to finish setting up. I was also thinking that I might have to leave before the event, and stay home sick. When I arrived, however, I learned that people had been calling the museum non-stop. I thought that because of the bad weather we might get thirty people to show up, but we already had more than 80 reservations! Staying home sick was not going to be an option. A short trip to the pharmacy later and I was ready to give it my best.

Venus is covered by thick clouds.  Image: NASA

 Our event ended up succeeding beyond our expectations. The weather cleared up, the astronomy society did a great job with their telescopes, our activities were a hit, and over 150 people participated! I really wasn't sure I would have a chance to actually see the transit. While inside I was enjoying teaching people about the ancient Maya counting system, which is a base 20 instead of a base 10 system. My first guest was a mathematician and it certainly didn't take him long to catch on. I was also impressed by an elementary student who loved numbers.  He did a great job taking the time he needed to learn the system.  If you are curious about the Maya system, you can learn it from the Calendar in the Sky website. I was fortunate to recently participate in a 2-day training at the NYC Natural History Museum run by the Calendar in the Sky people. If you go to the resource section of the website, there are a number of lesson plans you can view or download. A couple of these will teach you about the counting system. The planetarium shows were both almost filled to capacity. There wasn't a lot of questions asked, unfortunately, but the shows went well. Often groups with a lot of adults don't ask questions. If I hadn't been sick, maybe I could have coaxed a little more out of them, but I think most everybody enjoyed the show.

The surface of Venus if you could look
through the clouds.
Image: NASA

 And now for the best part! Just as I finished the second planetarium show and the event was ending, my girlfriend surprised me by showing up. She had already seen the transit and urged me to get outside to the telescopes while there was still time. The sun was pretty low in the horizon and most of the scopes were already taken down. Luckily, I was able to look through one just before the sun went behind a phone pole or something. In fact, I may have been the last one to see it that day.

I did go home and spend the night with a nasty fever and little sleep, but I'm still glad I worked the event and that Emily showed up to bring me outside. I will never again have a chance to see this happen, but now I can remember it and talk of it for the rest of my life.

The day before the event I went on Channel 9's Bridge Street morning show to promote Sun-Earth Day as well as other things happening at the MOST.  If your curious, you can watch the clip below.

 

 I was also on Bridge Street a couple months ago to promote our Nano Science Week. You can watch that video below, too.