Walking on the sun

On June 5th/6th, 2012, just after midnight Central European Time, the planet Venus will start to cross the face of the Sun on a journey that will take it just over 6 and a half hours to complete.

The Sun, Venus and Earth only rarely come into alignment, allowing us to observe the transit, because the orbits of the Earth and Venus around the Sun are slightly tilted. The transits repeat in a regular pattern of 8 years, 121.5 years, 8 years and 105.5 years. The last was in 2004 and the following one will not be until 2117! Since the invention of the telescope, Venus has crossed the face of the Sun only 7 times.

The 2012 spectacle will not visible from all places on Earth, since the Sun will be below the horizon for many parts of the world during the transit. The GLORIA project, in collaboration with other institutions and organizations, has organized expeditions to watch the event with solar telescopes and digital cameras. Videos and pictures of the transit will be broadcast live on the Internet from Australia (Cairns), Japan (Sapporo) and Norway (Tromsø), so the last occurrence of a transit of Venus for 105 years will be visible by everyone. Follow the event on venus-2012.org!

There will be live commentary in Spanish and English during the broadcasts. All the collected images will be available to all students to perform the calculation of the Earth - Sun distance and the latitude of a place on Earth. See this page.

We would like that on June 5th/6th 2012 all you will document this historic event by turning your cameras back to Earth to capture moments of yourselves, your loved ones and your lives. A dedicated Flickr photo-album will be available for you to collect and share your shots!

Download the press-release in PDF.

Download the booklet of the event in PDF.

Download the event POSTER.