Romancing Venus: Pinoys' long-distance love affair with a heavenly body

Skywatchers, mostly amateur astronomers, gathered at the University of the Philippines Diliman campus to view the transit of Planet Venus across the sun early Wednesday, June 6. 

The Philippines is lucky to be one of the few places in the world where this once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon is viewable in its entirety. Most of America will only be able to catch the beginning of the transit; Europe, Africa, and parts of west Asia will only be able to catch the tail end of the event.  

Several telescopes were set up at the National Science Complex amphiteather, with people lined up at each telescope for their few seconds' glimpse of Venus.  Venus' silhouette made first contact with the solar disc at 6:12am. The whole transit will last until about 1 p.m., Philippine Time. The next Venus Transit is in 2117, over a century from now.

-- Photos by Roehl Niño Bautista, GMA News  

The search for earth-like planets

 

When a planet crosses in front of its sun, the brightness of the star dims slightly.  How these skywatchers observe Venus now and how astronomers keep an eye out for the dimming of stars is very much like how new planets are found, including the special ones that could sustain life similar to what is on Earth.

 

Only last December, the United States' National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) revealed their discovery of the most Earth-like planet yet: Kepler-22b.

 

Using NASA's Keppler Space Telescope, the astronomers searched through 150,000 stars in the constellations of Cygnus and Lyra. In three years, they found 2,326 "candidate planets"  of which 10 are roughly the size of Earth and located not too close and not too far from its sun--the so-called "habitable zone". One  planet stood out--Kepler 22b.

 

The astronomers who made the discovery estimate that if Kepler 22b has a solid surface and an atmosphere, it would have a spring season-like temperature of about 22 degrees Celsius.  The team is working on determining if Kepler-22b is solid like Earth or gaseous like Neptune.

 

For today's skywatchers, the Transit of Venus is also a reminder of the importance of the work of astronomers throughout the millennia, especially in the past several centuries. Computations on the distance between Earth and Venus and between Venus and the sun enabled astronomers to learn that Earth is 93 million miles from the sun. That distance is the yardstick known as the astronomical unit.

 

Using the astronomical unit as benchmark, the distances between the sun and other planets were determined.

 

Why does Venus' atmosphere swirl so fast?

 

A mystery about Venus will be the focus of some astronomers in this second Venus transit in the 21st Century. 

 

The occasion offers NASA  the chance to find out why the atmosphere of Venus swirls around much faster at four days while the planet takes 243 days to make one full spin on its axis. NASA scientists said they will focus their observation on Venus' middle atmosphere or mesophere.

 

In the transit eight years ago, astronomers noticed an arc of light surrounding Venus as it crossed the face of the sun. NASA scientists figured out later that the arc what the effect of sunlight striking Venus' mesophere.

 

"According to some models, the mesosphere is key to the physics of super-rotation. By analyzing the lightcurve of the arc, researchers can figure out the temperature and density of this critical layer from pole to pole," according to NASA atsronomer Jay Pasachoff.

 

"We're going to observe the arc using 9 coronagraphs spaced around the world," Pasachoff explained. "Observing sites include Haleakala, Big Bear, and Sacramento Peak. Japan's Hinode spacecraft and NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory will also be gathering data." — with Reuters/ELR/TJD, GMA News