Fig 1. The Transit of Venus Click the image to enlarge

Fig 2. The Sun, 17 June 2004, 16h 28m GMT (UT); 100mm refractor x45, 1/1000 sec, ISO200, Baader solar filter. John Vetterlein.

Summer solstice 2004

Summer solstice occurs this year on June 21at 00h 57m with the Sun in declination +23° 26' 18'.

The Sun will have a maximum altitude at Kirkwall this day of a little under 54°.5.

Those wishing to set their sundials should note that the Sun reaches the meridian (Kirkwall) at 12h 14m GMT (UT).

Recent Solar Activity

In contrast to the appearance of the Sun on the 8th June, the day of the Venus transit (Fig 1), there are now (June 17) a number of interesting groups (Fig. 2).

The skies on transit day were generally clear on the mainland so that a large number of people were able to observe the event from start to finish.

Those who were able to watch The Sky at Night programme last Saturday will have seen again the image taken from Rousay a few minutes into ingress.

Some thoughts on the recent Venus transit.

The first thing to strike me as I watched Venus appear on the Sun's disc was its size.

Compared to Mercury last year it was a giant. Next was the sharpness of the image; unlike a sunspot it was regular and jet black. All this

I was anticipating, understandably, but the event itself seemed some how to put a great deal into perspective. Usually when we see Venus as a full disc (100% phase) it is at superior conjunction when it is about one sixth this size, or a little less than Mercury's apparent size at inferior conjunction.

And there was another aspect to all this. Venus in her most regular, "everyday" appearance is a brilliant white stellar-like object to the eye, and a brilliant featureless disc displaying all the phases of the Moon when seen through a telescope.

Today (June 8 2004) she was black, the Miss Hyde of the Jekyll and Hyde of the female sex.

I was taken back to the time when Galileo had to announce with caution another side to Venus which the Ptolemaic theory universe would not allow.

For in Ptolomy's system Venus could not appear more than half phase. Galileo's telescope revealed the truth.

Galileo set forth his discovery in anagrammatic form which in rough translation from the Latin would be: "These unripe forms are now plucked by me".

The letters from the original Latin were later re-grouped to give (again in rough translation): "The harbourer of loves imitates the aspects of Cynthia (the Moon)"

Astronomers before Galileo devised many intricate systems in order to explain the motions of the planets, Sun and Moon within the firmament of stars.

The telescope forced us to abandon some of these. Thus the Geocentric theory may be seen as arising out of human vanity.

Yet today such vanities still exist. We now have a cosmology based on a Homo sapiens time-centred concept of a universe.

We even go so far as to suggest a form (or shape) for this universe. What shape is a puff of smoke?

JV