National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Math
Transit
 I

Transit Math

Transit of Mercury on May 7, 2003 viewed by the NASA TRACE satellite. The wiggles are
caused by the satellite's polar orbit around Earth which causes the perspective to change
in a north-south direction.

Mathematical problems
featuring transit
applications

Dr. Sten Odenwald

NASA / ADNET Corp.
[email protected]

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 II

This collection of activities is based on a weekly series of space science

problems intended for students looking for additional challenges in the math and
physical science curriculum in grades 6 through 12. The problems were created to
be authentic glimpses of modern science and engineering issues, often involving
actual research data.

The problems were designed to be ‘one-pagers’ with a detailed Answer Key

as a second page. This compact form was deemed very popular by participating
teachers.

Acknowledgments:
We would like to thank the many teachers that support Space Math @ NASA
for their careful reading of this resource for accuracy, and for many valuable
comments.
Ms. Elaine Lewis, coordinator of NASA's Sun-Earth Day Transit of Venus
event in 2012, was instrumental in writing the 'How to use this resource' essay to
help teachers better integrate the problems into classroom situations.

Image Credits:
Front Cover Top) Transit of Venus, June 8, 2004 as seen by NASA TRACE
satellite; Middle) NASA, Sun-Earth Day Transit of Venus poster for 2004; Bottom)
Transit of Mercury as seen by NASA SOHO satellite in 2006.
Back Cover: Transit of Venus, 2004, courtesy Fred Espenak; Transit of the Moon
across sun, STEREO, February 25, 2007; Exoplanet Transit, courtesy Lynette
Cook; Transit of Phobos across sun, NASA Opportunity Rover; Transit of Ariel
across Uranus, by Hubble Space Telescope

For more weekly classroom activities about astronomy and space

visit the Space Math@ NASA website,
http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

Created under an Education and Public Outreach grant,

NNH08CD59C
administered through the
NASA Science Mission Directorate.

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 III

Additional Titles in this Series

Black Holes (2008) 11 Problems An introduction to the basic properties of black holes using
elementary algebra and geometry. Students calculate black hole sizes from their mass, time and
space distortion, and explore the impact that black holes have upon their surroundings.

Image Scaling (2008) 11 Problems Students work with a number of NASA photographs of planets,
stars and galaxies to determine the scales of the images, and to examine the sizes of various
features within the photographs using simple ratios and proportions.

Radiation (2007) 19 Problems An introduction to radiation measurement, dosimetry and how your
lifestyle affects how much radiation your body absorbs.

Solar Math (2008) 15 Problems Exploring solar storms and solar structure using simple math
activities. Calculating speeds of solar flares from photographs, and investigating solar magnetism.

Lunar Math (2008) 17 Problems An exploration of the moon using NASA photographs and scaling
activities. Mathematical modeling of the lunar interior, and problems involving estimating its total
mass and the mass of its atmosphere.

Magnetic Math (2009) 37 Problems Six hands-on exercises, plus 37 math problems, allow students
to explore magnetism and magnetic fields, both through drawing and geometric construction, and by
using simple algebra to quantitatively examine magnetic forces, energy, and magnetic field lines and
their mathematical structure.

Earth Math (2009) 46 Problems Students explore the simple mathematics behind global climate
change through analyzing graphical data, data from NASA satellites, and by performing simple
calculations of carbon usage using home electric bills and national and international energy
consumption.

Electromagnetic Math (Draft:2010) 84 Problems Students explore the simple mathematics behind
light and other forms of electromagnetic energy including the properties of waves, wavelength,
frequency, the Doppler shift, and the various ways that astronomers image the universe across the
electromagnetic spectrum to learn more about the properties of matter and its movement.

Space Weather Math (Draft:2010) 96 Problems Students explore the way in which the sun interacts
with Earth to produce space weather, and the ways in which astronomers study solar storms to
predict when adverse conditions may pose a hazard for satellites and human operation in space. Six
appendices and an extensive provide a rich 150-year context for why space whether is an important
issue.

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 IV

Table of Contents
Acknowledgments i
Table of Contents iv
Alignment With Standards vi
Topic Matrix vii
How to Use this Resource ix

Introduction What are eclipses, transits and occultations? x

Scientific Research xiv
In the News! xxxv

Grade
Eclipses, Transits and Occultations 3-5 1

Geometry Angular Measure in Astronomy 8-10 2

Angular Size and Similar Triangles 6-8 3
Getting an Angle on the Sun and Moon 8-10 4
Angular Size: The Moon and Stars 8-10 5
Changing Perspectives on the Sun's Diameter 8-10 6
General Angle and Radian Measure 8-10 7
The Comparative Angular Sizes of Planets 6-8 8
Hinode Reveals Details on the Sun's Surface 6-8 9
Jupiter and Io 6-8 10
ISS and a Sunspot: Angular Scales 8-10 11

Celestial Planetary Conjunctions 3-5 12

Movements Planetary Alignments 6-8 13
A Lunar Transit of the Sun from Space 8-10 14
Earth and Moon Angular Sizes 9-12 15

Transits Planetary Transits in a Crazy Universe 6-8 16

Transits and Brightness Change 6-8 17
Eclipses and Transits among the Distant Stars 6-8 18
Apparent Star Sizes and Transit Fading 8-10 19
Finding the Period of a Transiting Planet 8-10 20
Decoding Multi-planet Transits 8-10 21
Planet Periods and Orbit Distances 8-10 22

Occultations Occultation Timing and the Diameter of the Moon 8-10 23

Occultation Timing Light Curves 8-10 24
Occultation Timing and the Shape of an Asteroid 8-10 25
Graphing the Shape of an Asteroid 8-10 26

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 V

Additional
Problems The 2003 Transit of Mercury Viewed from Space 8-10 27
The 2004 Transit of Venus Viewed from Space 8-10 28
The 2007 Transit of the Moon Viewed from Space 8-10 29
The 2006 Transit of Mercury from the SOHO Satellite 8-10 30
The Lunar Transit of the International Space Station 8-10 31
Occultation of a Distant Kuiper Belt Object 6-8 32
An Eclipse of the Sun from Space 6-8 33
A Grazing Occultation of Saturn by the Moon 6-8 34
Using Stellar Occultations to Study Saturn's Rings 6-8 35
The Transit of Venus and its Track across the Sun 8-10 36
Planetary Transits in Other Solar Systems 8-10 37
Synodic Periods and Planetary Conjunctions 6-8 38
Synodic Periods and Venus-Earth Conjunctions 6-8 39
What time is the transit? 6-8 40
A Sunrise and Sunset Map of the World 6-8 41
How to Read a Transit Map 6-8 42
Viewing the 2012 Transit of Venus from Hawaii 6-8 43
A High-Precision Study of the 2012 Transit of Venus 6-8 44

Appendix-A The Transits of Venus – Ancient history to 1882 AD A.1

Appendix-B The Transit of Venus – June 8, 2004 B.1
Appendix-C Transits in the News C.1
Appendix-D A Gallery of Transit Imagery D.1
Appendix-E NASA's Kepler Mission E.1
Appendix-F Additional Resources F.1

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 VI

Alignment with Standards

AAAS Project:2061 Benchmarks

(9-12) - Mathematical modeling aids in technological design by simulating how a

proposed system might behave.

2B/H1 ---- Mathematics provides a precise language to describe objects and events
and the relationships among them. In addition, mathematics provides tools for solving
problems, analyzing data, and making logical arguments.

2B/H3 ----- Much of the work of mathematicians involves a modeling cycle, consisting
of three steps: (1) using abstractions to represent things or ideas, (2) manipulating the
abstractions according to some logical rules, and (3) checking how well the results
match the original things or ideas. The actual thinking need not follow this order. 2C/H2

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 VII

Mathematics Topic Matrix

Topic Problem Numbers

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
Inquiry
X
Technology,
rulers
X XX XXX X XXX
Numbers,
patterns,
XX X X X XX X X
percentages
Averages
Time, distance,
speed
X XX XXXXXXXXX
Areas and
volumes
X X X XX X XX X
Scale
drawings
XX X X X XXX XXXXXXX
Geometry
X XX X X X X X X X XXX XXXXXXX
Probability,
odds
Scientific
Notation
X
Unit
Conversions
Fractions
XXXX
Graph or Table
Analysis
X XXX X XXXX
Pie Graphs

Linear
Equations
XX
Rates & Slopes
Solving for X
X X X
Evaluating Fns
X X X X XX X XX
Modeling
XXXX XX XX
Trigonometry
X XXX X
Logarithms

Calculus

Proportions
XX X X XXX X X X XX X XX

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 VIII

Mathematics Topic Matrix (Cont'd)

Topic Problem Numbers

3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 4 4 4 4 4
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4
Inquiry
Technology,
rulers
X
Numbers,
patterns,
X XXXXXX
percentages
Averages
X
Time, distance,
speed
X XXXXXXXX
Areas and
volumes
Scale
drawings
XXX X
Geometry
X XX X X X X X X X X X
Probability,
odds
Scientific
Notation
Unit
Conversions
Fractions
Graph or Table
Analysis
X XX XXXXX
Pie Graphs

Linear
Equations
Rates & Slopes
Solving for X
X
Evaluating Fns
X XX
Modeling
XX X
Trigonometry

Logarithms

Calculus

Proportions
XX X X

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 IX

How to Use this Resource

The Introduction of Transit Math is an excellent resource for teachers in

grades 5-8. The introduction clearly explains eclipses, transits and occultations.
The identification activity is a great way for students to test their own knowledge
prior to reading the introduction section and again after reading the section. High
School students would need to read the introduction as a way to re-visit the
content.

Ms. Smith took advantage of the coming Transit of Venus to make a history,
science and mathematics connection for her middle school students. She divided
her students into groups based on the time frames in the selected readings from
Transit Math:

 Ancient History to 1882 AD,

 The Modern Era of Transit Observations,
 Transit of Venus December 4, 1639,
 Transit of Venus June 5, 1761,
 Transit of Venus June 3, 1769,
 Distance to the Sun,
 Transit of Venus December 8, 1874,
 Transit of Venus December 6, 1882.

Each team will present a summary report from their historical selection, the
students can also use the resources included from the Library of Congress to
enhance their presentation. The students will develop a flier or news article (there
are articles from the past newspapers in Appendix C to serve as a guide) to
advertise the coming Transit of Venus on June 5-6, 2012. In their media
presentation, the students should include what a transit is and why the Transit of
Venus is a rare event. Transit Math provides math challenges for grades 5-12, Ms
Smith selects the ones that work for the level of her middle school students and
challenges them, as they learn about the transit and prepare for the final transit of
Venus in our lifetime. Ms. Smith plans to use the geometric concept of parallax so
her students can understand how scientists determine distances to the planets.

If you missed it in 2004 you have 1 last chance! NASA's Sun-Earth Day will
host a live webcast from Mauna Kea Hawaii, to view the entire event For details
visit their website at (http://sunearthday.nasa.gov

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 X

What are eclipses, transits and occultations?

Although planets, stars and other celestial bodies move through space in
complicated ways, space is so vast that rarely do such bodies collide. However,
when you watch these movements from a distant vantage point, sometimes it
looks as though collisions occur because of your perspective.

Eclipses. One of the most common 'collisions' that you have probably heard
about is called an eclipse. To create an eclipse, from your vantage point the
angular sizes of two bodies have to be exactly equal. An example is the diameter
of the sun and moon during a total solar eclipse.

Total solar eclipses have been watched by humans

for thousands of years. Mostly with a sense of dread
and fear. who would not be a little nervous to see the
sun suddenly disappear into a black 'hole' as though
eaten by some evil space creature! Even today, total
solar eclipses are highly anticipated, and frequently
get millions of people to travel to just he right spots
on Earth to see the 5-minute spectacle. The most
dramatic 'totalities' occur when the sun's outer
atmosphere, the corona, is active.

If the diameters are just slightly different and the

moon is slightly smaller in angular size than the sun
as viewed from Earth, you can still see a small part of
the sun's surface even when both the sun and moon
are exactly 'on top' of each other. This is called an
annular eclipse. Even though barely 5% of the solar
surface remains exposed, the solar surface is so
bright that you may not even notice the slight
diminution of sunlight when it happens.

For thousands of years, astronomers have been able to predict when solar
eclipses will happen. The table below shows the solar eclipses that will be visible
from Earth through 2016.
Upcoming Solar Eclipses
Date Type Date Type
July 11, 2010 Total August 21, 2017 Total
May 20, 2012 Annular July 2, 2019 Total
November 13, 2012 Total December 26, 2019 Annular
May 10, 2013 Annular June 21, 2020 Annular
April 29, 2014 Annular December 14, 2020 Total
March 9, 2016 Total June 10, 2021 Annular
September 1, 2016 Annular December 4, 2021 Total

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 XI

Transits. When the nearby body has an angular size much smaller than the
more distant body, the encounter seen from your vantage point is called a transit.
There are many more transits to be seen each year than solar eclipses. The
most common transits seen each month occur when the satellites of Jupiter or
Saturn pass across the apparent face of their planet as viewed from Earth.

This image was taken by the

Cassini spacecraft and shows the
satellite Io passing across the face of
Jupiter. The satellite can be seen at the
center of the image, and its black
shadow is to the right. As seen from the
cloud-tops of Jupiter, the angular
diameter of the sun is the same as the
angular diameter of the satellite Io, so
under the shadow of Io, an observer on
Jupiter would see a total solar eclipse.
As seen from Earth, we are
watching the small disk of Io pass across
the much larger disk of Jupiter, so this
would be called a transit!

Sometimes we can see transits from an entirely different perspective than

Earth. For example in the sequence of three images below, the satellite of Mars,
Phobos was photographed by the Mars Rover Opportunity, passing across the
face of the sun as viewed from the surface of Mars on March 13, 2004.

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 XII

There are also occasions when Mercury and Venus pass across the face
of the sun as viewed from Earth, although these events are rare. The sequence
of images below was taken by the SOHO spacecraft of the transit of Mercury on
November 8, 2006.

Amateur photographers have also

been very ingenious in catching transits
of man-made objects across the face of
the sun and moon. The image to the left
shows the International Space Station in
orbit around Earth as it passed across
the face of the sun, which contained two
sunspots: each of which are the same
physical size as Earth!
Photographer John Stetson had to
carefully prepare for this event by
knowing exactly the path of the ISS and
the sun through the sky. On March 3,
2010, the transit took less than one
second so hundreds of consecutive
photographs had to be taken by a camera in order to capture just a few with the
ISS in the field of view!
The table below gives the transits of Mercury and Venus during the 21st
Century. Notice that the Transits of Venus happen in June (also December) while
the transits of Mercury happen in November and May.

Table of upcoming planetary transits

Transit Date
Mercury May 7, 2003
Venus June 8, 2004
Mercury November 8, 2006
Venus June 5, 2012
Mercury May 9, 2016
Mercury November 11, 2019
Mercury November 13, 2032
Mercury November 7, 2039
Mercury May 7, 2049
Mercury November 9, 2052
Mercury May 10, 2062
Mercury November 11, 2065

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 XIII

Occultations. A phenomenon related to a transit is called an occultation.

These occur when one body, such as the moon or a planet, passes in front of a
more distant star or other object of interest such as an asteroid or even another
planet! The moon frequently 'occults' bright stars as it moves across the sky.
On a number of
occasions, the moon passes in
front of a more distant planet
such as Mars, Jupiter or Saturn.
As viewed from Earth, on
occasion, the satellites of
Jupiter can occult each other.
This is called a mutual event!
The spectacular image to
the left shows the occultation of
Saturn by the Moon on March
2, 2007 captured by
photographer Pete Lawrence
using Celestron-14 telescope.
[email protected]

The table below gives a list of upcoming planetary occultations of interest.

Table of planetary occultations

Event Date
Mercury occults Theta Ophiuchi December 4, 2015
Venus occults Regulus October 1, 2044
Mercury occults Alpha Libra November 10, 2052
Venus occults Jupiter November 22, 2065
Mercury occults Neptune July 15, 2067
Mercury occults Mars August 11, 2079
Mercury occults Jupiter October 27, 2088
Mercury occults Jupiter April 7, 2094

Lunar occultations are much more common. The moon constantly passes
in front of thousands of stars every hour. Less frequently it passes in front of
planets or asteroids. A short list of the brighter bodies is provided below for 2012:

Lunar occultations for 2012

Event Date
Moon occults Mercury November 14
Moon occults Pluto March 16
Moon occults Spica July 25, August 21, Sept 18,
Oct 15.

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 XIV

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 Eclipses, Transits and Occultations 1

The images above show a variety of transits, eclipses and occultations.

The images are labeled from left to right as (Top Row) A, B, C, D, E; (Middle
Row) F, G, H, I, J, (Bottom Row), K, L, M, N, O. Using the definitions of these
three astronomical events, identify which images go along with each of the three
types of events. One example is shown below.

A) Deimos and the Sun ______ I) Moon and Star Cluster ________

B) Moon and Earth _________ J) Sun and Phobos _________

C) Sun and Mercury _________ K) Sun and Venus _________

D) Sun and Moon ___Transit L) Moon and Saturn _________

E) Rhea and Saturn _________ M) Sun and Moon _________

F) Rhea and Dione _________ N) Sun and Space Station ______

G) Jupiter and Io _________ O) Moon and galaxy __________

H) Earth and Moon _________

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 Answer Key 1

A) Transit of Deimos across the Sun seen by Opportunity Rover

B) Occultation of Earth by the Moon seen by Apollo-8 astronauts
C) Transit of Mercury across sun seen by TRACE?
D) Transit of Moon across Sun seen by STEREO satellite
E) Transit of satellite Rhea across Saturn seen by Cassini spacecraft
F) Rhea occulting Dione seen by Cassini spacecraft near Saturn
G) Io transiting Jupiter seen by Galileo spacecraft
H) Earth occulting moon seen by Space Shuttle astronauts
I) Moon occulting the Pleiades star cluster
J) Phobos transiting sun seen by Opportunity Rover on Mars.
K) Venus transiting the sun seen by TRACE satellite.
L) Moon occulting Saturn
M) Eclipse of the sun by the moon.
N) Transit of the space station across sun
O) Hypothetical occultation of the andromeda galaxy by the moon.

Special Image credits:

Moon occulting Saturn - Pete Lawrence (http://www.digitalskyart.com/)

[email protected].

Space Station transiting sun - John Stetson

Moon and Andromeda - Adam Block ([email protected]

- Tim Puckett ([email protected])

Moon and Star Cluster - Jerry Lodriguss ([email protected])

http://www.astropix.com/

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 Angular Measure in Astronomy 2
The easiest, and most basic, unit of measure in astronomy is the angular
degree. Because the distances to objects in the sky are not directly measurable, a
photograph of the sky will only indicate how large, or far apart, objects are in terms of
degrees, or fractions of degrees. It is a basic fact in angle measurment in geometry,
that 1 angular degree (or arc-degree) can be split into 60 arc-minutes of angle, and
that 1 arc-minute equals 60 arc-seconds. A full degree is then equal to 60 x 60 = 3,600
‘arcseconds’. High-precision astronomy also uses the unit of milliarcsecond to
represent angles as small as 0.001 arcseconds and microarcseconds to equal
0.000001 arcseconds.

Problem 1 – The moon has a diameter of 0.5 degrees (a physical size of 3,474 km)
A telescope sees a crater 1 arcsecond across. What is its diameter in meters?

Problem 2 – A photograph has an image scale of 10 arcseconds/pixel. If the image

has a size of 512 x 512 pixels, what is the image field-of-view in degrees?

Problem 3 – An astronomer wants to photograph the Orion Nebula (M-42) with an

electronic camera with a CCD format of 4096x4096 pixels. If the nebula has a
diameter of 85 arcminutes. What is the resolution of the camera in arcseconds/pixel
when the nebula fills the entire field-of-view?

Problem 4 – An electronic camera is used to photograph the Whirlpool Galaxy, M-

51, which has a diameter of 11.2 arcminutes. The image will have 1024x1024 pixels.
What is the resolution of the camera, in arcseconds/pixel, when the galaxy fills the
entire field-of-view?

Problem 5 – The angular diameter of Mars from Earth is about 25 arcseconds. This
corresponds to a linear size of 6,800 km. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s
HiRISE camera, in orbit around Mars, can see details as small as 1 meter. What is
the angular resolution of the camera in microarcseconds as viewed from Earth?

Problem 6 – The Hubble Space Telescope can resolve details as small as 46

milliarcseconds. At the distance of the Moon, how large a crater could it resolve, in
meters?

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 Answer Key 2
Problem 1 – Answer: 0.5 degrees x 3600 arcsec/degree = 1800 arcseconds.
Using proportions 1/1800 = x/3474 so X = 3474/1800 = 1.9 kilometers.

Problem 2 –Answer: 512 pixels x 10 arcsec/pixel x 1 degree/3600 arcseconds =

5120 arcseconds /3600 = 1.4 degrees, so the image is 1.4 x 1.4 degrees.

Problem 3 –Answer: 85 arcminutes x 60 arcsec/arcmin = 5,100 arcseconds.

This corresponds to 4096 pixels so the scale is 5,100 arcsec/4096 pixels = 1.2
arcsec/pixel.

Problem 4 –Answer: 11.2 arcminutes x 60 arcsec/arcmin = 672 arcsec. This

equals 1024 opixels so the scale is 672/1024 = 0.656 arcsec/pixel.

Problem 5 –Answer: 25 arcsec = 6800 km so 1 arcsec = 6800 km/25 = 272 km

from Earth. For 1-meter resolution at Earth, the angular scale would have to be
1 sec x 1m/272000m = 0.0000037 arcseconds or 3.7 microarcseconds.

Problem 6 – Answer: From Problem-1, 1 arcsecond = 1.9 kilometers. By

proportions, 0.046 arcsec/1 arcsec = x/1.9 km so X = 0.046 x 1.9 km = 0.087
kilometers or 87 meters.

The picture below was taken by the Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn. It is
of the satellite Phoebe, which from Earth subtends an angular size of about 32
milliarcsec. The smallest crater, about 1 km across, would subtend about 160
microarcseconds as seen from Earth.

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 Angular Size and Similar Triangles 3
The corresponding
sides of similar triangles are
proportional to one another as
the illustration to the left shows.
Because the vertex angle of the
triangles are identical in
measure, two objects at
different distances from the
vertex will subtend the same
angle, a . The corresponding
side to 'X' is '1' and the
corresponding side to '2' is the
combined length of '2+4'.

Problem 1: Use the properties of similar triangles and the ratios of their sides to
solve for 'X' in each of the diagrams below.

Problem 2: Which triangles must have the same measure for the indicated angle a ?

Problem 3: The sun is 400 times the diameter of the moon. Explain why they appear
to have about the same angular size if the moon is at a distance of 384,000
kilometers, and the sun is 150 million kilometers from Earth?

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 Answer Key 3
Problem 1: Use the properties of similar triangles and the ratios of their sides to solve
for 'X' in each of the diagrams below.

A) X / 2 = 8 / 16 so X = 1

B) 3 / X = 11 / (X+8) so 3 (X + 8) = 11 X ; 3X + 24 = 11 X ; 24 = 8X and so X = 3.

C) 3 / 8 = 11 / (x + 8) so 3 ( x + 8) = 88 ; 3X + 24 = 88 ; 3X = 64 and so X = 21 1/3

D) 1-inch / 2-feet = 24 inches / ( D + 2 feet); First convert all units to inches;

1 / 24 = 24 / ( D + 24); then solve (D + 24) = 24x24 so D = 576 - 24;
D = 552 inches or 46 feet.

E) 3 cm / 60 cm = 1 meter / ( X + 60 cm). 3/60 = 1 meter / ( X + 0.6 m) then

3( X + 0.60) = 60 ; 3X + 1.8 = 60 ; 3X = 58.2 meters so X = 19.4 meters.

F) 2 meters / 48 meters = X / 548 meters ; 1/24 = X/548 ; X = 548 / 24 ; so X = 22.8.

Problem 2: Which triangles must have the same measure for the indicated angle a ?

Answer: Because the triangle (D) has the side proportion 1-inch /24-inches = 1/24
and triangle (F) has the side proportion 2 meters / 48 meters = 1/24 these two
triangles, D and F, have the same angle measurement for angle a

Problem 3: The Sun is 400 times the diameter of the Moon. Explain why they appear
to have the same angular size if the moon is at a distance of 384,000 kilometers, and
the sun is 150 million kilometers from Earth?

Answer: From one of our similar triangles, the long vertical side would represent the
diameter of the sun; the short vertical side would represent the diameter of the moon;
the angle a is the same for both the sun and moon if the distance to the sun from Earth
were 400x farther than the distance of the moon from Earth. Since the lunar distance is
384,000 kilometers, the sun must be at a distance of 154 million kilometers, which is
close to the number given.

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 Getting an Angle on the Sun and Moon 4

The Sun (Diameter = 696,000 km) and Moon (Diameter = 3,476 km) have very
different physical diameters in kilometers, but in the sky they can appear to be nearly the
same size. Astronomers use the angular measure of arcseconds (asec) to measure the
apparent sizes of most astronomical objects. (1 degree equals 60 arcminutes, and 1
arcminute equals 60 arcseconds). The photos above show the Sun and Moon at a time
when their angular diameters were both about 1,865 arcseconds.

Problem 1 - Using a metric ruler, what is the angular scale of each image in arcseconds
per millimeter?

Problem 2 - In arcseconds, what is the size of the smallest feature you can see in the
images of the Sun and Moon?

2
Problem 3 - About what is the area, in square arcseconds (asec ) of the circular Mare
Serenitatis (A) region in the photo of the Moon?

Problem 4 - At the distance of the Moon, 1 arcsecond of angular measure equals 1.9
kilometers. The Sun is exactly 400 times farther away than the Moon. On the photograph
of the Sun, how many kilometers equals 1 arcsecond of angle?

Problem 5 - What is the area of Mare Serenitatis in square kilometers?

Problem 6 - What would be the physical area, in square-kilometers, of an identical

angular area to Mare Serenitatis if it were located on the surface of the sun?

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 Answer Key 4
Problem 1 - Using a metric ruler, what is the angular scale of each image in arcseconds per
millimeter? Answer: Moon diameter = 65 mm and sun diameter = 61 mm so the lunar image
scale is 1,865 asec/65mm = 28.7 asec/mm and the solar scale is 1865 asec/61 mm = 30.6
asec/mm.

Problem 2 - In arcseconds, what is the size of the smallest feature you can see in the images
of the Sun and Moon? Answer: the smallest feature is about 0.5 mm or 0.5 x 28.7 asec/mm =
14.4 asec for the Moon and 0.5 x 30.6 asec/mm = 15.3 asec for the Sun.

2
Problem 3 - About what is the area, in square arcseconds (asec ) of the circular Mare
Serenitatis (A) region in the photo of the Moon? Answer: The diameter of the mare is 1
centimeter, so the radius is 5 mm or 5 mm x 28.7 asec/mm = 143.5 asec. Assuming a circle,
2 2
the area is A =  x ( 143.5 asec) = 64,700 asec .

Problem 4 - At the distance of the Moon, 1 arcsecond of angular measure equals 1.9
kilometers. The Sun is exactly 400 times farther away than the Moon. On the photograph of
the Sun, how many kilometers equals 1 arcsecond of angle? Answer: The angular scale at
the sun would correspond to 400 x 1.9 km = 760 kilometers per arcsecond.

Problem 5 - What is the area of Mare Serenitatis in square kilometers? Answer: We have to
convert from square arcseconds to square kilometers using a two-step unit conversion 'ladder'.
2 2
64,700 asec x ( 1.9 km/asec) x (1.9 km/asec) = 234,000 km .

Problem 6 - What would be the physical area, in square-kilometers, of an identical angular

area to Mare Serenitatis if it were located on the surface of the sun? Answer: The angular
area is 400-times further away, so we have to use the scaling of 760 kilometers/asec deduced
in Problem 4. The unit conversion for the solar area becomes:

2 2
64,700 asec x (760 km/asec) x (760 km/asec) = 37,400,000,000 km .

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 Angular Size : The Moon and Stars 5

Although many astronomical objects may have the same angular size,
most are at vastly different distance from Earth, so their actual sizes are very
different. If your friends were standing 200 meters away from you, they would
appear very small, even though they are as big as you are!
The pictures show the Moon (d = 384,000 km) and the star cluster
Messier-34 (d = 1,400 light years). The star cluster photo was taken by the Sloan
Digital Sky Survey, and although the cluster appears the same size as the Moon
in the sky, its stars are vastly further apart than the diameter of the Moon!

In the problems below, round all answers to one significant figure.

Problem 1 - The images are copied to the same scale. Use a metric ruler to
measure the diameter of the Moon in millimeters. If the diameter of the moon is
1,900 arcseconds, what is the scale of the images in arcseconds per millimeter?

Problem 2 - The relationship between angular size, , and actual size, L, and
distance, D, is given by the formula:

L = --------------- D
206,265
Where  is measured in arcseconds, and L and D are both given in the same
units of length or distance (e.g. meters, kilometers, light years). A) In the image of
the Moon, what does 1 arcsecond correspond to in kilometers? B) In the image of
M-34, what does 1 arcsecond correspond to in light years?

Problem 3 - What is the smallest detail you can see in the Moon image in A)
arcseconds? B) kilometers?

Problem 4 - What is the smallest star separation you can measure in Messier-34
in among the brightest stars in A) arcseconds? B) Light years?

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 Answer Key 5
Problem 1 - The images are copied to the same scale. Use a metric ruler to measure
the diameter of the Moon in millimeters. If the diameter of the moon is 1,900
arcseconds, what is the scale of the images in arcseconds per millimeter? Answer:
The diameter of the Moon is about 64 millimeters, and since this corresponds to 1,900
arcseconds, the scale is 1,900 asec/64 mm = 29.68 or 30 asec/mm.

Problem 2 - The relationship between angular size, , and actual size, L, and
distance, D, is given by the formula:

L = --------------- D
206,265
Where  is measured in arcseconds, and L and D are both given in the same units of
length or distance ( e.g. meters, kilometers, light years). A) In the image of the Moon,
what does 1 arcsecond correspond to in kilometers? B) In the image of M-34, what
does 1 arcsecond correspond to in light years? Answer: A) For the Moon: L = 1
arcsec/206265 x (384,000 km) = 1.86 or 2.0 kilometers. B) For the cluster, L = 1
arcsec/206265 x (1,400 light years) = 0.007 light years.

Problem 3 - What is the smallest detail you can see in the Moon image in A)
arcseconds? B) kilometers? Answer: A) About 1 millimeter, which corresponds to 1.0
arcsec. B) One arcsec corresponds to 2.0 kilometers.

Problem 4 - What is the smallest star separation you can measure in Messier-34
among the brightest stars in A) arcseconds? B) Light years? Answer: A) Students may
find that some of the bright stars are about 3 millimeters apart, which corresponds to 3
mm x 30 asec/mm = 90 arcseconds. B) At the distance of the cluster, 1 asec = 0.007
light years, so 90 asec corresponds to 90 x (0.007 light years/asec) = 0.63 or 0.6
light years to 1 significant figure.

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 Changing Perspectives on the Sun's Diameter 6

Earth's orbit is not a perfect circle centered on the Sun, but an ellipse!
Because of this, in January, Earth is slightly closer to the Sun than in June. This
means that the sun will actually appear to have a bigger disk in the sky in June
than in January…but the difference is impossible to see with the eye, even if you
could do so safely!
The figure above shows the sun's disk taken by the SOHO spacecraft. The
left side shows the disk on January 4 and the right side shows the disk on June 4,
2009. As you can see, the diameter of the sun appears to change slightly
between these two months.

Problem 1 - What is the average diameter of the Sun, in millimeters, in this

figure?

Problem 2 - By what percentage did the diameter of the Sun change between
January and June compared to its average diameter?

Problem 3 - If the average distance to the Sun from Earth is 149,600,000

kilometers, how much closer is Earth to the Sun in June compared to January?

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 Answer Key 6
Problem 1 - What is the average diameter of the Sun, in millimeters, in this figure?
Answer: Using a millimeter ruler, and measuring vertically along the join between the
two images, the left-hand, January, image is 72 millimeters in diameter, while the right-
hand image is 69 millimeters in diameter. The average of these two is (72 + 69)/2 =
70.5 millimeters.

Problem 2 - By what percentage did the diameter of the Sun change between January
and June compared to its average diameter?
Answer: In January the moon was larger then the average diameter by 100% x (72 -
70.5)/70.5 = 2.1 %. In June it was smaller then the average diameter by 100% x (70.5
- 69)/70.5 = 2.1%.

Problem 3 - If the average distance to the Sun from Earth is 149,600,000 kilometers,
how much closer is Earth to the Sun in June compared to January?

Answer: The diameter of the sun appeared to change by 2.1% + 2.1% = 4.2%
between January and June. Because the apparent size of an object is inversely related
to its distance (i.e. the farther away it is the smaller it appears), this 4.2% change in
apparent size occurred because of a 4.2% change in the distance between Earth and
the Sun, so since 0.042 x 149,600,000 km = 6,280,000 kilometers, the change in the
Sun's apparent diameter reflects the 6,280,000 kilometer change in earth's distance
between January and June. The Earth is 6,280,000 kilometers closer to the Sun in
June than in January.

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 General Angles and Radian Measure 7
The relationship between
the distance to an object, R, the
object’s size, L, and the angle that
it subtends at that distance,  is
given by:

To use these formulae, the units for length, L, and distance, R, must be
identical.

Problem 1 - You spot your friend (L = 2 meters) at a distance of 100 meters. What is
her angular size in arcminutes?

Problem 2 - The sun is located 150 million kilometers from Earth and has a radius of
696.000 kilometers, what is its angular diameter in arcminutes?

Problem 3 - How far away, in meters, would a dime (1 centimeter) have to be so that
its angular size is exactly one arcminute?

Problem 4 - The spectacular photo above was taken by Jerry Lodriguss (Copyright
2007, http://www.astropix.com/HTML/SHOW_DIG/055.HTM ) and shows the
International Space Station streaking across the disk of the sun. If the ISS was located
379 kilometers from the camera, and the ISS measured 73 meters across, what was its
angular size in arcseconds?

Problem 5 - The orbital speed of the space station is 7.4 kilometers/second. If its
distance traveled in 1 second is 7.4 kilometers, A) what was the angle, in arcminutes,
that it moved through in one second as seen from the location of the camera? B) What
was its angular speed in arcminutes/second?

Problem 6 - Given the diameter of the sun in arcminutes (Problem 2), and the ISS
angular speed (Problem 5) how long, in seconds, did it take the ISS to travel across the
face of the sun?

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 Answer Key 7
Problem 1 - Answer: Angle = 3,438 x (2 meters/100 meters) = 68.8 arcminutes.

Problem 2 - Answer: 3,438 x (696,000/150 million) = 15.9 arcminutes in radius, so the

diameter is 2 x 15.9 = 31.8 arcminutes.

Problem 3 - Answer: From the second formula R = 3438 * L/A = 3438 * 1 cm/1 arcminute so
R = 3,438 centimeters or a distance of 34.4 meters.

Problem 4 - Answer: From the third formula, Angle = 206,265 * (73 meters/379,000 meters) =
39.7 arcseconds.

Problem 5 - Answer: The orbital speed of the space station is 7.4 kilometers/second. If its
distance traveled in 1 second is 7.4 kilometers, A) The ISS traveled L = 7.4 kilometers so from
the second formula Angle = 3,438 * (7.4 km/379 km) = 67 arcminutes. B) The angular speed
is just 67 arcminutes per second.

Problem 6 - Answer: The time required is T = 31.8 arcminutes/ (67 arcminutes/sec) = 0.47
seconds.

The spectacular photo by Jerry Lodriguss had to be taken with careful planning
beforehand. He had to know, to the split-second, when the sun and ISS would be in the right
configuration in the sky as viewed from his exact geographic location. Here's an example of
the photography considerations in his own words:

" I considered trying to monitor the transit visually with a remote release in my hand and just firing
(the camera) when I saw the ISS in my guidescope. Then I worked out the numbers. I know that my
reaction time is 0.19 seconds. This is actually quite good, but I make my living shooting sports where
this is critical, so I better be good at it. I also know that the Canon 1D Mark IIn has a shutter lag of
55 milliseconds. Adding these together, plus a little bit of a fudge factor, the best I could hope for
was about 1/4 of a second from when I saw it to when the shutter opened. Since the entire duration
of the transit was only 1/2 of a second, in theory, I could capture the ISS at about the center of the
disk if I fired as soon as I saw it start to cross. This was not much of a margin for error. I could
easily blink and miss the whole thing… Out of 49 frames that the Mark IIn recorded, the ISS is visible
in exactly one frame."

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 Comparative Angular Sizes of the Planets 8

Planet Distance Diameter Angular The angular diameter of a

(million (km) Diameter planet depends on how far away
km) (arcseconds) it is from the Observer. This is a
Mercury 100 4800 basic property of geometry that
Venus 40 12000 follows from the properties of
Mars 75 7200
similar triangles.
Jupiter 630 144000
Saturn 1275 120000

Once you know the physical distance and diameter of a planet in

kilometers, it is easy to work out how big the planet will appear in degrees of arc.
A simple formula that gives the angular diameter in degrees is just

Diameter
  57.3
Distance

Problem 1 - The table above gives the minimum distance to Earth of several
planets, along with their diameters. Calculate the angular diameter of each planet
to the nearest arcsecond if 1 degree = 3600 arcseconds.

Problem 2 - As viewed from Earth, the planet Venus will transit the planet Jupiter
on November 22, 2065. At a scale of 1 arcsecond per centimeter, draw two disks
representing Mercury and Jupiter's apparent angular diameters just before the
occultation begins, if the distance to Venus will be 225 million km and the
distance to Jupiter at that time will be 955 million km.

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 Answer Key 8
Problem 1 - The table above gives the minimum distance to Earth of several planets,
along with their diameters. Calculate the angular diameter of each planet to the
nearest arcsecond if 1 degree = 3600 arcseconds.

Table of planetary distances from the sun

Planet Distance Diameter Angular
(million (km) Diameter
km) (arcseconds)
Mercury 100 4800 10
Venus 40 12000 62
Mars 75 7200 20
Jupiter 630 144000 47
Saturn 1275 120000 19

Problem 2 - As viewed from Earth, the planet Venus will transit the planet Jupiter on
November 22, 2065. At a scale of 1 arcsecond per centimeter, draw two disks
representing Mercury and Jupiter's apparent angular diameters just before the
occultation begins, if the distance to Venus from Earth will be 225 million km and the
distance to Jupiter at that time will be 955 million km.

Answer: The angular diameter of Venus will be 11 arcseconds, and Jupiter will be 31
arcseconds.

This is how the planets appeared on January 3, 1818 when Jupiter was at 930 million
km from Earth and Venus was at 310 million km. Their angular sizes were 32
arcseconds and 8 arcseconds respectively. Unfortunately this event was lost in the
glare of the sun.

Image courtesy Wikimedia: Bart Benjamin and released to public domain.

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SDO Reveals Details on the Surface of the Sun 9

On April 21, 2010 NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) released its
much-awaited ‘First Light’ images of the Sun. The image above shows a full-disk,
multi-wavelength, extreme ultraviolet image of the sun taken by SDO on March
30, 2010. False colors trace different gas temperatures. Black indicates very low
temperatures near 10,000 K close to the solar surface (photosphere). Reds are
o
relatively cool plasma heated to 60,000 Kelvin (100,000 F); blues, greens and
white are hotter plasma with temperatures greater than 1 million Kelvin
o
(2,000,000 F).

Problem 1 – The radius of the sun is 690,000 kilometers. Using a millimeter ruler,
what is the scale of these images in kilometers/millimeter?

Problem 2 – What are the smallest features you can find on this image, and how
large are they in kilometers, and in comparison to Earth if the radius of Earth is
6378 kilometers?

Problem 3 – Where is the coolest gas (coronal holes), and the hottest gas (micro
flares), located in this image?

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 Answer Key 9
Problem 1 – The radius of the sun is 690,000 kilometers. Using a millimeter ruler,
what is the scale of these images in kilometers/millimeter?

Answer: The diameter of the Sun is 98 millimeters, so the scale is 1,380,000 km/98
mm = 14,000 km/mm.

Problem 2 – What are the smallest features you can find on this image, and how large
are they in kilometers, and in comparison to Earth if the radius of Earth is 6378
kilometers?

Answer: Students should see numerous bright points freckling the surface, the
smallest of these are about 0.5 mm across or 7,000 km. This is slightly larger
than ½ the diameter of Earth.

Problem 3 – Where is the coolest gas (coronal holes), and the hottest gas (micro
flares), located in this image?

Answer: There are large irregular blotches all across the disk of the sun that are
dark blue-black. These are regions where thee is little of the hot coronal gas and
only the ‘cold’ photosphere can be seen. The hottest gas seems to reside in the
corona, and in the very small point-like ‘microflare’ regions that are generally no
larger than the size of Earth.

Note: Microflares were first observed, clearly, by the Hinode satellite between 2007-
2009. Some solar physicists believe that these microflares, which erupt violently, are
ejecting hot plasma that eventually ends up in the corona to replenish it. Because the
corona never disappears, these microflares happen all the time no matter what part of
the sunspot cycle is occurring.

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 Jupiter and Io 10

This NASA image of Jupiter with its satellite Io was taken by the Cassini spacecraft. (Credit:
NASA/Cassini Imaging Team). The satellite is 3,600 kilometers in diameter.

The scale of an image is found by measuring with a ruler the distance between two points on
the image whose separation in physical units you know. In this case, we are told the diameter of Io is
3,600 kilometers.

Step 1: Measure the diameter of Io with a metric ruler. How many millimeters in diameter?

Step 2: Use clues in the image description to determine a physical distance or length.

Step 3: Divide your answer to Step 2 by your answer to Step 1 to get the image scale in kilometers per
millimeter to two significant figures.

Once you know the image scale, you can measure the size of any feature in the image in units of
millimeters. Then multiply it by the image scale from Step 3 to get the actual size of the feature in
kilometers to two significant figures.

Question 1: What are the dimensions, in kilometers, of this image?

Question 2: What is the width, in kilometers, of the largest feature in the atmosphere of Jupiter?
Question 3: What is the width, in kilometers, of the smallest feature in the atmosphere of Jupiter?
Question 4: What is the size of the smallest feature on Io that you can see?

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 Answer Key 10
This NASA image of Jupiter with its satellite Io was taken by the Cassini spacecraft. (Credit:
NASA/Cassini Imaging Team). The satellite is 3,600 kilometers in diameter.

The scale of an image is found by measuring with a ruler the distance between two points on
the image whose separation in physical units you know. In this case, we are told the diameter of Io is
3,600 kilometers.

Step 1: Measure the diameter of Io with a metric ruler. How many millimeters in diameter?
Answer: 10 mm

Step 2: Use clues in the image description to determine a physical distance or length.
Answer: 3,600 km

Step 3: Divide your answer to Step 2 by your answer to Step 1 to get the image scale in kilometers per
millimeter to two significant figures.
Answer: 3600 km / 10 mm = 360 km/mm

Once you know the image scale, you can measure the size of any feature in the image in units of
millimeters. Then multiply it by the image scale from Step 3 to get the actual size of the feature in
kilometers to two significant figures.

Question 1: What are the dimensions, in kilometers, of this image?

Answer: 160 mm x 119 mm = 58,000 km x 19,000 km

Question 2: What is the width, in kilometers, of the largest feature in the atmosphere of Jupiter?
Answer: The width of the white equatorial band is 45 mm or 16,000 km

Question 3: What is the width, in kilometers, of the smallest feature in the atmosphere of Jupiter?
Answer: The faint cloud streaks are 0.5 mm wide or 200 km across to one significant figure.

Question 4: What is the size of the smallest feature on Io that you can see?
Answer: The white spots in the southern hemisphere are 0.5 mm across or 200 km to one
significant figure. This is a good time to mention that some details in an image can be artifacts
from the printing process or defects in the camera itself. Students may find photocopying
artifacts at 0.5 mm or less.

Note to teachers: The correct scale for Io and Jupiter will be slightly different depending on how far
away the camera was when taking the picture. If the camera was very close to Io, then the scale you will
infer for Io will be very different than for the more distant Jupiter because Io will take up more of the
field-of-view in the image. Geometrically, for a fixed angle of separation between features on Io, this
angle will subtend a SMALLER number of kilometers than the same angle on the more-distant Jupiter.
However, if the distance from the camera to Jupiter/Io is very large, then as seen from the camera, both
objects are at essentially the same distance and so there will be little difference between the scales
used for the two bodies. Students can check this result with an inquiry assignment.

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 ISS and a Sunspot - Angular Scales 11

Photographer John Stetson took this photo on March 3, 2010 by carefully

tracking his telescope at the right moment as the International Space Station
passed across the disk of the sun.
The angular size, , in arcseconds of an object with a length of L meters at
a distance of D meters is given by
L
  206265
D
Problem 1 - The ISS is 108 meters wide, and was at an altitude of 350 km when
this photo was taken. If the sun is at a distance of 150 million kilometers, how
large is the sunspot in A) kilometers? B) compared to the size of Earth if the
diameter of Earth is 13,000 km?

Problem 2 - The sun has an angular diameter of 0.5 degrees. If the speed of the
ISS in its orbit is 10 km/sec, how long did it take for the ISS to cross the face of
the sun as viewed from the ground on Earth?

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 Answer Key 11
Problem 1 - The ISS is 108 meters wide, and was at an altitude of 350 km when this
photo was taken. If the sun is at a distance of 150 million kilometers, how large is the
sunspot in A) kilometers? B) compared to the size of Earth if the diameter of Earth is
13,000 km?

Answer: As viewed from the ground, the ISS subtends an angle of

Angle = 206265 x (108 meters/350,000 meters) so
Angle = 63 arcseconds.

At the distance of the sun, which is 150 million kilometers, the angular size of the ISS
corresponds to a physical length of
L = 150 million kilometers x (63/206265) so
L = 46,000 kilometers.

The sunspot is comparable in width to that of the ISS and has a length about twice that
of he ISS so its size is about 46,000 km x 92,000 km.

As a comparison, Earth has a diameter of 13,000 km so the sunspot is about 3 times

the diameter of Earth in width, and 6 times the diameter of Earth in length.

Problem 2 - The sun has an angular diameter of 0.5 degrees. If the speed of the ISS
in its orbit is 10 km/sec, how long did it take for the ISS to cross the face of the sun as
viewed from the ground on Earth?

Answer: From the ground, convert the speed of the ISS in km/sec to an angular
speed in arcseconds/sec.

In one second, the ISS travels 10 km along its orbit. From the ground this corresponds
to an angular distance of
Angle = 206265 x (10 km/350 km)
= 5900 arcseconds.

The speed is then 5900 arcseconds/sec. The diameter of the sun is 0.5 degrees
which is 30 arcminutes or 1800 arcseconds. To cover this angular distance, the ISS
will take
T = 1800 arcseconds / (5900 arcseconds/s) so
T = 0.3 seconds!

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 Planetary Conjunctions 12
Since 1995, astronomers have
detected over 1700 planets orbiting
distant stars. Our solar system has 8
planets, and for thousands of years
astronomers have studied their
motions. The most interesting events
happen when planets are seen close
together in the sky. These are called
conjunctions, or less-accurately,
alignments. The figure shows a
simple 3-planet solar system with the
planets starting out 'lined up' with
their star. Each planet revolves
around the star at a different pace, so
it is a challenge to predict when they
will all line up again.

Problem 1 - An astronomer detects three planets, A, B, C, that orbit their star

once every 1, 2 and 4 earth-years in a clockwise direction. Using the diagram
above, draw a series of new diagrams that show where will the planets be in their
orbits after the following number of earth-years: A) 1 year? B) 2 years? C) 3
years? D) 4 years?

Problem 2 - Suppose the three planets, A, B and C, orbited their star once every 2, 3
and 12 earth-years. A) How long would it take for all three planets to line up again? B)
Where would the planets be after 6 earth-years?

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 Answer Key 12

Problem 1 - Students will draw dots located as follows in the top diagram series:

Problem 2 - The bottom series of 12 possibilities indicates it will take 12 earth-

years to return to the original line-up. The pattern after 6 earth-years is also
shown.

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 Planetary Alignments 13
One of the most interesting things to see
in the night sky is two or more planets coming
close together in the sky. Astronomers call this a
conjunction. The picture to the left shows a
conjunction involving Mercury, Venus and Mars
on June 24, 2005.
As seen from their orbits, another kind of
conjunction is called an 'alignment' which is
shown in the figure to the lower left and involved
Mercury, M, Venus, V, and Earth, E. As viewed
from Earth's sky, Venus and Mercury would be
very close to the Sun, and may even be seen as
black disks 'transiting' the disk of the Sun at the
same time, if this alignment were exact. How
often do alignments happen?
Earth takes 365 days to travel one
complete orbit, while Mercury takes 88 days and
Venus takes 224 days, so the time between
alignments will require each planet to make a
whole number of orbits around the Sun and
return to the pattern you see in the figure.

Suppose Mercury takes 1/4 earth-year and Venus takes 2/3 of an earth-year to
make their complete orbits around the Sun. You can find the next line-up from two
methods:
Method 1: Work out the three number series like this:
Earth = 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12,…
Mercury = 0, 1/4, 2/4, 3/4 ,4/4, 5/4, 6/4, 7/4, 8/4, 9/4, 10/4, 11/4, 12/4, 13/4, …
Venus = 0, 2/3, 4/3, 6/3, 8/3, 10/3, 12/3, 14/3, 16/3, 18/3, 20/3, …
Notice that the first time they all coincide with the same number is at 2 earth-years. So
Mercury has to go around the Sun 8 times, Venus 3 times and Earth 2 times for them to
line up again in their orbits.

Method 2: We need to find the Least Common Multiple (LCM) of 1/4, 2/3 and 1. First
render the periods in multiples of a common time unit of 1/12, then the sequences are:
Mercury = 0, 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24,
Venus = 0, 8, 16, 24, 32, 40, …
Earth, 0, 12, 24, 36, 48, 60, …

The LCM is 24 which can be found from prime factorization:

Mercury: 3 = 3
Venus: 8=2x2x2
Earth: 12 = 2 x 2 x 3
The LCM the product of the highest powers of each prime number or 3 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 24.
and so it will take 24/12 = 2 earth-years.

Problem 1 - Suppose a more accurate estimate of their orbit periods is that Mercury
takes 7/30 earth-years and Venus takes 26/42 earth-years. After how many earth-years
will the alignment reoccur?

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 Answer Key 13
Problem 1 - Suppose a more accurate estimate of their orbit periods is that Mercury takes
7/30 earth-years and Venus takes 26/42 earth-years. After how many earth-years will the
alignment reoccur?

Mercury = 7/30 x 365 = 85 days vs actual 88 days

Venus = 26/42 x 365 = 226 days vs actual 224 days
Earth = 1

The common denominator is 42 x 30 = 1,260 so the series periods are

Mercury = 7 x 42 = 294 so 7/30 = 294/1260
Venus = 26 x 30 = 780 so 26/42 = 780/1260
Earth = 1260 so 1 = 1260/1260

The prime factorizations of these three numbers are

294 = 2 x 2 x 3 x 7 x 7
780 = 2 x 2x 5 x 3 x 13
1260 = 2 x 2 x 3 x 3 x 5 x 7

LCM = 2 x 2 x 3 x 3 x 5 x 7 x 7 x 13 = 114,660

So the time will be 114,660 / 1260 = 91 years! In this time, Mercury will have made exactly
114,660/294 = 390 orbits and Venus will have made 114,660/780 = 147 orbits

Note to Teacher: Why did the example problem give only 2 years while this problem gave
91 years for the 'same' alignment? Because we used a more accurate approximation for the
orbit periods of the three planets. Mercury actual period = 88 days but 1/4 earth-year = 91.25
days compared to 7/30 earth year = 85 days. Venus actual period = 224 days but 2/3 earth-
year = 243 days and 26/42 earth-year = 226 days.
This means that after 2 years and exactly 8 orbits (8 x 91.25 = 730 days), Mercury will
be at 8/4 x 365 = 730 days while the actual 88-day orbit will be at 88 x 8 = 704 days or a
timing error of 26 days. Mercury still has to travel another 26 days in its orbit to reach the
alignment position. For Venus, its predicted orbit period is 2/3 x 365 = 243.3 days so its 3
orbits in the two years would equal 3 x 243.3 days = 730 days, however its actual period is 224
days so in 3 orbits it accumulates 3 x 224 = 672 days and the difference is 730-672 = 58 days
so it has to travel another 58 days to reach the alignment. In other words, the actual positions
of Mercury and Venus in their orbits is far from the 'straight line' we were hoping to see after
exactly 2 years, using the approximate periods of 1/4 and 2/3 earth-years!
With the more accurate period estimate of 7/30 earth-years (85 days) for Mercury and
26/42 earth-years (226 days) for Venus, after 91 years, Mercury will have orbited exactly 91 x
365 days/88 days = 377.44 times, and Venus will have orbited 91x365/224 = 148.28 times.
This means that Mercury will be 0.44 x 88d = 38.7 days ahead of its predicted alignment
location, and Venus will be 0.28 x 224 = 62.7 days behind its expected alignment location.
Comparing the two predictions, Prediction 1: Mercury= - 26 days, Venus= - 58 days; Prediction
2: Mercury = +26 days and Venus = - 22 days. Our prediction for Venus has significantly
improved while for Mercury our error has remained about the same in absolute magnitude. In
the sky, the two planets will appear closer together for Prediction 2 in 1911 years than for
Prediction 1 in 2 years. If we want an even 'tighter' alignment, we have to make the fractions
for the orbit periods much closer to the actual periods of 88 and 224 days.

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 A Lunar Transit of the Sun from Space 14
The twin STEREO satellites captured
this picture of our Moon passing across
the sun's disk on February 25, 2007.
The two satellites are located
approximately in the orbit of Earth, but
are moving away from Earth in opposite
directions. From this image, you can
figure out how far away from the Moon
the STEREO-B satellite was when it took
this picture! To do this, all you need to
know is the following:

1) The diameter of the Moon is 3,476

km

2) The distance to the Sun is 150 million

km.

3) The diameter of the Sun is 0.54

degrees

Can you figure out how to do this

using geometry?

Problem 1: Although the True Size of an object is measured in meters or kilometers, the
Apparent Size of an object is measured in terms of the number of angular degrees it subtends.
Although the True Size of an object remains the same no mater how far away it is from you,
the Apparent Size gets smaller the further away it is. In the image above, the Apparent Size of
the Sun was 0.54 degrees across on February 25. By using a millimeter ruler and a calculator,
what is the angular size of the Moon?

Problem 2: As seen from the distance of Earth, the Moon has an Apparent Size of 0.53
degrees. If the Earth-Moon distance is 384,000 kilometers, how big would the Moon appear at
twice this distance?

Problem 3: From your answer to Problem 1, and Problem 2, what is the distance to the Moon
from where the above photo was taken by the STEREO-B satellite?

Problem 4: On February 25, 2007 there was a Half Moon as viewed from Earth, can you draw
a scaled model of the Earth, Moon, Stereo-B and Sun distances and positions (but not
diameters to the same scale!) with a compass, ruler and protractor?

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 14
Answer Key:
Problem 1: Although the True Size of an object is measured in meters or kilometers, the
Apparent Size of an object is measured in terms of the number of angular degrees it subtends.
Although the True Size of an object remains the same no mater how far away it is from you,
the Apparent Size gets smaller the further away it is. In the image above, the Apparent Size of
the sun is 0.5 degrees across. By using a millimeter ruler and a calculator, what is the angular
size of the Moon?

Answer: The diameter of the sun is 57 millimeters. This represents 0.54 degrees, so the image
scale is 0.54 degrees / 57 millimeters = 0.0095 degrees/mm
The diameter of the Moon is 12 millimeters, so the angular size of the Moon is

12 mm x 0.0095 degrees/mm = 0.11 degrees.

Problem 2: As seen from the distance of Earth, the Moon has an Apparent Size of 0.53
degrees. If the Earth-Moon distance is 384,000 kilometers, how big would the Moon appear at
twice this distance?
Answer: It would have an Apparent Size half as large, or 0.26 degrees.

Problem 3: From your answer to Problem 1,

and Problem 2, what is the distance to the
moon from where the above photo was taken
by the STEREO-B satellite?

Answer: The ratio of the solar diameter to the

lunar diameter is 0.54 degrees/0.11 degrees =
4.9. This means that from the vantage point of
STEREO, it is 4.9 times farther away than it
would be at the Earth-Moon distance. This
means it is 4.9 times farther away than
384,000 km, or 1.9 million kilometers.

Problem 4: On February 25, 2007 there was a

Half Moon as viewed from Earth, can you
draw a scaled model of the Earth, Moon,
Stereo-B and Sun distances and positions (but
not diameters!) using a compass, ruler and
protractor?

Answer: The figure to the right shows the

locations of the Earth, Moon and STEREO
satellite. The line connecting the Moon and the
Satellite is 4.9 times the Earth-Moon distance.

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 Earth and Moon Angular Sizes 15
In space, your perspective can
change in complicated ways that
sometimes go against Common Sense
unless you 'do the math'. This
happens very commonly when we are
looking at one object pass across the
face of another. Even though the Moon
is 1/4 the diameter of Earth, the simple
ratio of their apparent diameters will
depend on how far from them YOU are
when you see them.

An important 'skinny triangle' relationship for triangles states that, if the angle is less
than 1 degree (< 0.017 radians), the angle measure in radians equals very nearly the sine of
the angle, which is just the ratio of the opposite side to the hypotenuse: = D/R where D is the
radius of the object in kilometers, R, is the distance to the object in kilometers, and  is the
angular radius of the object in radians. For instance, the Moon is located r = 384,000 km from
Earth and it has a radius of d = 1,738 km, so its angular radius is 1,738/384,000 = 0.0045
radians. Since 1 radian = 57.3 degrees, the angular radius of the Moon is 0.0045 x 57.3 = 0.26
degrees, so its diameter is 0.52 degrees as viewed from Earth.

Problem 1 - In the figure above, assume that the diameter

of the Moon is less than 1 degree when spotted by the
spacecraft located at 'O'. What is the angular diameter of:
A) the Moon, m, in terms of d and R? B) The Earth, e, in
terms of D and R? and C) What is the ratio of the angular
diameter of the Moon to the Earth in terms of d, D, r and
R?

Problem 2 - A spacecraft is headed directly away from the

Moon along the line connecting the center of Earth and the
Moon. At what distance will the angular diameter of the
Moon equal the angular diameter of Earth?

Problem 3 - The figure to the top left shows the martian

satellite Phobos passing across the disk of the sun as
viewed from the surface of Mars by the Rover Opportunity.
If the ratio of the diameters is 1/2, and if r = 228 million km,
d = 10 km, and D=696,000 km, about how far from
Phobos was Opportunity at the time the photo was taken?

Problem 4 - The Deep Impact spacecraft observed the

Moon pass across the disk of Earth as shown in the photo
to the bottom left. The ratio of the disk diameters is 1/3.9,
and if r = 384,000 km, d=1,786 km and D = 6,378 km,
about how far from Earth, R, was the spacecraft?

Problem 5 - As the distance, R, becomes very large, in

the limit, what does the angular ratio of the disk
approach in the equation defined in Problem 1?

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 Answer Key 15
Problem 1 - What is the angular diameter of:
A) the Moon, m, in terms of d and R? Answer:
2 d
m 
Rr
B) The Earth, e, in terms of D and R? Answer:
2 D
e 
R
C) What is the ratio of the angular diameter of the Moon to the Earth in terms of d, D, r and
R? Answer:
m R d

e R  r D
Problem 2 - At what distance will the angular diameter of the Moon equal the angular
diameter of Earth? Answer:
R (1, 786)
1
R  384, 000 (6,378) so 3/4 R = 384,000 km, and so R = 512,000 km.

Problem 3 - If the ratio of the diameters is 1/2, and if r = 228 million km, d = 10 km, and
D=696,000 km, about how far from Phobos was Opportunity at the time the photo was
taken? Answer:

1 R (10km)

2 R  228million (696, 000km) so 34799 R = 228 million km, and so R = 6,552 km.

Problem 4 - The ratio of the disk diameters is 1/3.9, and if r = 384,000 km, d=1,786 km and
D = 6,378 km, about how far from Earth, R, was the spacecraft? Answer:

1 R (1, 786km)

3.9 R  384, 000km (6,378km) so 0.02 R = 384,000 km , so R = 19.2 million km.
Note: the actual distance was about 30 million km for the photo shown in this problem.

Problem 5 - As the distance, R, becomes very large, in the limit, what does the angular
ratio of the disk approach in the equation defined in Problem 1? Answer: As R becomes
much, much larger than r (e.g the limit of r approaches infinity), then the equation
approaches
m d R

e R D
and since the 'R' terms cancel, we get the angular ratio approaching the physical ratio
d/D of the diameters of the two bodies. In other words, although the apparent angular
sizes change rapidly when you are very close to the bodies and the value of R is
comparable to 'r', at very great distances, the angular ratio approaches a constant value
d/D. This has many practical consequences in the search for planets around other stars
as they' transit' their stars.

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 Kepler Spies Five New Planets 16
NASA's Kepler spacecraft recently
announced the discovery of five new
planets orbiting distant stars. The satellite
measures the dimming of the light from
these stars as planets pass across the
face of the star as viewed from Earth. To
see how this works, lets look at a simple
model.
In the Bizarro Universe, stars and
planets are cubical, hot spherical. Bizarro
astronomers search for distant planets
around other stars by watching planets
pass across the face of the stars and
cause the light to dim.

Problem 1 - The sequence of figures

shows the transit of one such planet,
Osiris (black). Complete the 'light curve' for
this star by counting the number of
exposed 'star squares' not shaded by the
planet. At each time, T, create a graph of
the number of star brightness squares.
The panel for T=2 has been completed
and plotted on the graph below.

Problem 2 - If you knew that the width of

the star was 1 million kilometers, how
could you use the data in the figure to
estimate the width of the planet?

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 Answer Key 16
Problem 1 - The sequence of figures shows the transit of one such planet, Osiris (black).
Complete the 'light curve' for this star by counting the number of exposed 'star squares' not
shaded by the planet. At each time, T, create a graph of the number of star brightness
squares. The panel for T=2 has been completed and plotted on the graph below.

Answer: Count the number of yellow squares in the star and plot these for each value of
T in the graph as shown below. Note, for T= 3 and 5, the black square of the planet
occupies 2 full squares and 2 half squares for a total of 2 + 1/2 + 1/2 = 3 squares
covered, so there are 16 - 3 = 13 squares remaining that are yellow.

Problem 2 - If you knew that the width of the star was 1 million kilometers, how could you use
the data in the figure to estimate the width of the planet?

Answer: The light curve shows that the planet caused the light from the star to decrease from
16 units to 12 units because the planet blocked 16-12 = 4 units of the stars surface area. That
means that the planet squares occupy 4/16 of the stars area as seen by the astronomers. The
area of the star is just the area of a square, so the area of the square planet is 4/16 of the stars
area or Ap = 4/16 x Astar. Since the star as a width of Wstar = 1 million kilometers, the
4
planet will have a width of Wp  Wstar or 500,000 kilometers.
16

The amount of star light dimming is proportional to the ratio of the area of the planet
and the star facing the observer. The Kepler satellite can detect changes by as little as 0.0001
in the light from a star, so the smallest planets it can detect have diameters about 1/100 the
size of the stars that they orbit. For a star with a diameter of the sun, 1.4 million kilometers, the
smallest planet detectable by the Transit Method has a diameter about equal to 14,000
kilometers or about the size of Earth.

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 Transits and Brightness Change 17
When a dark object like a planet
passes across the disk of a brighter object
such as a star, the light from the star will
become dimmer as it is blocked by the
planet from our vantage point in space.
The figure to the left shows the
planet Mercury as it transited the face of
the sun on May 7, 2003. Its black disk
reduced the brightness of the sun by an
amount equal to the area covered by the
planet’s disk.
Because the shapes of both the sun
and planet are very-nearly circular, the
percentage of brightness change in the
sun’s light is just
 r2
Courtesy: Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope, B  100%
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences  R2

Where R is the angular radius of the sun in

degrees and r is the radius of the planet in
degrees.

Problem 1 – During the transit of Venus on June 8, 2004, from the vantage point of
Earth, the angular diameter of the sun was 0.53 degrees and the angular diameter
of Venus was 0.016 degrees. A) By what percentage was the light from the sun
reduced during the transit of Venus? B) If the brightness of the sun is 1300
2
watts/meter at the surface of Earth, by what amount was the power reaching Earth
reduced?

Problem 2 – Someday we may have spacecraft orbiting Saturn that can capture a
view of Jupiter transiting the sun. If the angular diameter of the sun at the distance
of Saturn is 0.056 degrees and the angular diameter of Jupiter from Saturn is 0.013
degrees, by what percentage will the light from the sun be reduced during a transit
of Jupiter?

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 Answer Key 17
Problem 1 – During the transit of Venus on June 8, 2004, from the vantage point of
Earth, the angular diameter of the sun was 0.53 degrees and the angular diameter of
Venus was 0.016 degrees. A) By what percentage was the light from the sun reduced
2
during the transit of Venus? B) If the brightness of the sun is 1300 watts/meter at the
surface of Earth, by what amount was the power reaching Earth reduced?

Answer:

A) We will use the formula

 r2
B  100%
 R2

where the radius of the sun is R = 0.53/2 = 0.265 degrees

and the radius of Venus is r = 0.016/2 = 0.008 degrees. Then
2
B = 100% (0.008/0.265) so
B = 0.091 %
2
B) If 100% = 1300 watts/meter , then the brightness change is
W = 1,300 x 0.00091
2
= 1.2 watts/meter .
So instead of 1,300 watts falling on each square meter of Earth's surface, only 1,300 -
1.2 = 1,299 watts were delivered.

Problem 2 – Someday we may have spacecraft orbiting Saturn that can capture a
view of Jupiter transiting the sun. If the angular diameter of the sun at the distance of
Saturn is 0.056 degrees and the angular diameter of Jupiter from Saturn is 0.013
degrees, by what percentage will the light from the sun be reduced during a transit of
Jupiter?

Answer: R = 0.056/2 = 0.028 degrees and r = 0.013/2 = 0.0065 degrees then

2
B = 100% (0.0065/0.028)
= 5.4 %

When Jupiter eclipses the sun as viewed from Saturn, the sun's brightness dims by
5.4%. This is a much larger change than what is observed at Earth during the transit of
Venus, which is only 0.09%.

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 Eclipses and Transits among the Distant Stars 18
An amazing thing about studying
transits and eclipses is that you do not have
to actually see the star’s disk to know that
they happen!

Eclipses: If you were measuring the

brightness of a star and it suddenly faded
completely out of sight, this means that
some object with its same angular size as
the star passed between you and the star
from your vantage point in space.

Transits: If you were measuring the

brightness of a star and it suddenly lost
Courtesy: Super-WASP Consortium some, but not all of its original brightness,
this means that some object with a smaller
angular size than the star passed between
you and the star from your vantage point in
space.

Suppose you discovered that the brightness of a star decreased by 1%

and then brightened again to its normal level after a few days. You know that the
maximum amount of fading is just the ratio of the circular area of the planet
compared to the circular area of its star.

Problem 1 – What is the ratio of the radius of the planet to the radius of its star?

Problem 2 – If the radius of the star is 500,000 kilometers, what is the radius of
the planet?

Problem 3 – How would you classify this transiting planet compared to the planet
Neptune in our solar system if the radius of Neptune is 25,000 kilometers?

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 Answer Key 18
Problem 1 – What is the ratio of the radius of the planet to the radius of its star?

 r2 r
B = 1% so 0.01  and so  0.1
 R2 R

Problem 2 – If the radius of the star is 500,000 kilometers, what is the radius of the
planet?

Answer: R = 500,000 km so since r/R = 0.1 we have

r = 0.1 x 500,000
r = 50,000 km

Problem 3 – How would you classify this transiting planet compared to the planet
Neptune in our solar system if the radius of Neptune is 25,000 kilometers?

Answer: The planet is about one-half the size of Neptune.

Note: The diameter of Earth is 13,000 km, so this planet is about 3.8 times the
diameter of Earth, and would be classified as a super-Earth planet.

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 Apparent Star Sizes and Transit Fading 19

The approximately-scaled figures above show the transit of Venus in 1882

(Photograph courtesy the United States Naval Observatory) as seen at various
distances from Earth. The amount by which the sun’s light faded during the transit is
given by the formula
 r2
B  100%
 R2

where R is the sun’s radius in degrees and r is the radius of Venus in degrees.

Problem 1 – From Earth, r = 0.008 degrees and R = 0.27 degrees. By what

percentage did the sun’s light fade as viewed from Earth during the transit of Venus?

Problem 2 – From Jupiter, r = 0.0015 degrees and R = 0.052 degrees. By what

percentage would the sun’s light have faded had the transit been viewed from
Jupiter?

Problem 3 - From Pluto, r = 0.0002 degrees and R = 0.0068 degrees. By how much
would the sun’s light have faded had the transit been viewed from Pluto?

Problem 4 - From the star Betelgeuse located 650 light years from Earth,
-10 -9
r = 2.0x10 degrees and R = 6.8 x 10 degrees. By how much would the sun’s
light have faded had the transit been viewed from the vicinity of the star Betelgeuse?

Problem 5 - Explain why you do not need to actually see the surface of a star in
order to detect the transit of a planet.

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 Answer Key 19
Problem 1 – From Earth, r = 0.008 degrees and R = 0.27 degrees. By what
percentage did the sun’s light fade as viewed from Earth during the transit of Venus?
2
Answer: B = 100% (0.008/0.27) = 0.088 %

Problem 2 – From Jupiter, r = 0.0015 degrees and R = 0.052 degrees. By what

percentage would the sun’s light have faded had the transit been viewed from Jupiter?
2
Answer: B = 100% (0.0015/0.052) = 0.083 %

Problem 3 - From Pluto, r = 0.0002 degrees and R = 0.0068 degrees. By how much
would the sun’s light have faded had the transit been viewed from Pluto?
2
Answer: B = 100% (0.0002/0.0068) = 0.087 %

-10
Problem 4 - From the star Betelgeuse located 650 light years from Earth, r = 2.0x10
-9
degrees and R = 6.8 x 10 degrees. By how much would the sun’s light have faded
had the transit been viewed from the vicinity of the star Betelgeuse?
-10 -9 2
Answer: B = 100% (2.0x10 /6.8x10 ) = 0.087 %

Problem 5 - Explain why you do not need to actually see the surface of a star in order
to detect the transit of a planet.

Answer: The percentage of dimming that you calculated for each of the four examples
was essentially identical: 0.08%. The percentage change in the brightness of a star
during the transit only depends on the ratio of the planet's angular diameter to the
star's angular diameter. It does not depend on the actual diameter of the star at the
time of the transit. Because, by the property of similar triangles, your distance from the
transit affects both the angular size of the star and the angular size of the planet at the
same time, your distance from the transit 'cancels out' in the ratio used in the
calculation, and so you will see exactly the same amount of dimming in the star's
brightness whether you can fully see the disk of the star, or the star is an unresolved
point of light in the sky.

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 Finding the Period of a Transiting Planet 20

Planets travel in elliptical orbits around their parent stars. The time it takes for
one complete revolution is called the period of the planet. For Earth, the period of its
orbit is exactly 1 'Earth Year'. For more distant planets such as Neptune, the period
is as long as 164 years, while for Mercury, its period is only 88 days!

When a planet passes in front of its star, called a transit, the light dims slightly
as shown in the graph above taken by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft. The time between
successive transits is equal to the period of revolution of the planet around its star.

Problem 1 - The stellar brightness data for the star Kepler 005972334 is shown in
the graph above. What is the orbital period of the planet?

Problem 2 - The brightness of the star near the middle transit at T = 980 days is
about 204 units. From the 'depth' of the brightness change and the known radius of
this sun-like star of 635,000 kilometers, what is the diameter of the transiting planet?

Problem 3 - If Jupiter has a radius of 73,000 km, how does the size of this transiting
planet compared to that of Jupiter?

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 Answer Key 20
Problem 1 - The stellar brightness data for the star Kepler 005972334 is shown in the
graph above. What is the orbital period of the planet?

Answer: The dips in the star's brightness occur at times T = 965 days, T = 980 days
and T = 995 days so the average period is P = 15 days.

Problem 2 - The brightness of the star near the middle transit at T = 980 days is about
204 units. From the 'depth' of the brightness change and the known radius of the star
of 700,000 kilometers, what is the diameter of the transiting planet?

Answer: The amount of light lost by the star during the transit is B = 204 - 201 = 3
units. As a fraction of the light lost this is 3/204 = 0.0147 .Since this is equal to the
ratio of the apparent angular areas of the planet an the star we have
 r2
0.0147 
 R2
r
so that 0.121 
R

Since R = 635,000 km, the radius of the planet is about

r = 0.121 x 635,000
r = 77,000 km.

Problem 3 - If Jupiter has a radius of 73,000 km, how does the size of this transiting
planet compared to that of Jupiter?

Answer: The radius of Jupiter is 73,000 km so this transiting planet is about the same
size as Jupiter!

Note: From the Kepler data archives at

http://archive.stsci.edu/kepler/data_search/search.php

This star is located at RA(2000) = 19h 48m 08.93s and Dec(2000) = +41d 13' 19.1"
Its apparent magnitude is 13.7m in the infrared 'J-band', and it has a surface
temperature of 5,495 K, which is similar to our sun's temperature of 5,770 K, making
this a sun-like 'yellow' star. The distance to this star is about 300 light years.

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 Decoding Multi-Planet Transits 21

During its first few months of observation, NASA's Kepler Space

Observatory discovered that five of its nearly 150,000 target stars had multiple
planets. A study of the transits in the star's brightness time record - called a light
curve by astronomers showed the tell-tail 'blips' as the planets passed in front of
their star. The light curve above is for the star KOI-896 in the Kepler catalog of
'Objects of Interest'. It shows two planet transits, one with a period of about 6
days (green dashed lines) and the other with a period of about 16 days (red
dashed lines).

Problem 1 - Create a simulated light curve for two planets with periods of 50
days and 200 days.

Problem 2 - Create a simulated light curve for 3 planets with periods of 15 days,
75 days and 100 days.

Problem 3 - If you could only observe your two simulated stars for 80
consecutive days, which planets might you miss having discovered?

Problem 4 - How many days of consecutive data-taking would you need to

gather in order to have a good chance of detecting a planet like Earth with a
period of 365 days?

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 Answer Key 21
The light curve for KOI-896 was obtained from the paper by Jason Steffen et al
"Five Kepler target stars that show multiple transiting exoplanet candidates"
arXiv:1006.2763v1[astro-ph.EP] which is a pre-print available at
http://arxiv.org/abs/1006.2763

Problem 1 - Create a simulated light curve for two planets with periods of 50 days and
200 days.

Problem 2 - Create a simulated light curve for 3 planets with periods of 15 days, 75
days and 100 days.

Problem 3 - If you could only observe your two simulated stars for 80 consecutive
days, which planets might you miss having discovered?
Answer: The planets with periods of 100 and 200 days.

Problem 4 - How many days of consecutive data-taking would you need to gather in
order to have a good chance of detecting a planet like Earth with a period of 365 days?

Answer: You would need at least 365 days in order to see two consecutive transits. IF
there are more than one planet in this system, you would need considerably more days
to avoid confusion.

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 Planet Periods and Orbit Distances 22

For stars with masses similar to our sun, there is a relationship between
the period of the planet in its orbit, and the average radius of the planet's orbit.
Called Kepler's Third Law, it says that the square of the orbit period is
proportional to the cube of the average orbital radius. When the orbit distance, a,
is stated as a multiple of the Earth-Sun distance (150 million km), called the
Astronomical Unit (AU), and the orbit period, T, is in multiples of Earth Years,
Kepler's Third Law becomes
T 2 = a3
Problem 1 - Plot this relationship for orbital distances between 0.1 AU and 5 AU
with the orbital period, in days, along the horizontal axis.

Problem 2 - The table below gives the data for 10 known exoplanets. Calculate
the missing tabular entries using Kepler's Third Law.

Table of exoplanet orbital properties

Planet Orbit Period (days) Orbit Distance (AU)
Epsilon Eridani-b 2,502
Kepler-8b 0.048
WASP-5b 1.6
55 Cancri-b 5.7
Fomalhaut-b 115
HD209458-b 3.5
Gliese-876-b 0.2
MOA-2005-BLG-390lb 4,800
HD-80606-b 111
Upsilon Andromedae-d 2.6

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 Answer Key 22
Problem 1 - Plot this relationship for orbital distances between 0.1 AU and 5 AU with
the orbital period, in days, along the horizontal axis.

1.2

1
Distance(AU)

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

0
0 100 200 300 400

Time(days)

Problem 2 - The table below gives the data for 10 known exoplanets. Calculate the
missing tabular entries using Kepler's Third Law.

Table of exoplanet orbital properties

Planet Orbit Period Orbit Distance
(days) (AU)
Epsilon Eridani-b 2,502 3.6
Kepler-8b 3.8 0.048
WASP-5b 1.6 0.026
55 Cancri-b 4967 5.7
Fomalhaut-b 450,000 115
HD209458-b 3.5 0.044
Gliese-876-b 32.7 0.2
MOA-2005-BLG-390lb 4,800 5.6
HD-80606-b 111 0.5
Upsilon Andromedae-d 1530 2.6

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

Occultation Timing and the Diameter of the Moon 23
Eclipses are spectacular to see, and
transits can be dramatic especially when they
involve solar system bodies, but the vastly more
common occultations can provide hard-to-get
information about distant celestial bodies.
Extracting this information begins with
determining how long an occultation lasted,
which is the most basic information you can
gather.
These two images were taken by
Amateur Astronomer Ray Emery in Rothwell,
UK on April 2, 2002. It shows the occultation of
Saturn by the Moon. The top image was taken
at 20:59:50 UTC when the western-most edge
of the ring of Saturn just touched the eastern
edge of the disk of the moon. The bottom image
was taken at 21:26:15 UTC when the eastern-
most edge of Saturn's ring emerged from behind
the western edge of the moon at the end of the
occultation.

Problem 1 - How many seconds did the occultation take from start to end?

Problem 2 - Draw a chord through the disk of the moon along the track of Saturn.
What fraction of the full diameter of the moon did the length of the occultation
chord occupy?

Problem 3 - If the occultation of Saturn followed exactly along the full diameter of
the moon, how long, in seconds, would the occultation have taken?

Problem 4 - Based on the orbit and distance of the moon, the speed of the moon
perpendicular to the line connecting the center of Earth with the center of the
moon is 1.3 km/sec. From the occultation timing information, what is the diameter
of the moon in kilometers?

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 Answer Key 23
Problem 1 - How many seconds did the occultation take from start to end?

Answer: Start = 20:59:50 End = 21:26:15 so the difference in time is

21:26:15 21:25:75 20:85:75
- 20:59:50 - 20:59:50 - 20:59:50
----------------- ---------------- -----------------
25 26:25

or 26 minutes and 25 seconds

Problem 2 - Draw a chord through the disk of the moon along the track of Saturn.
What fraction of the full diameter of the moon did the length of the occultation chord
occupy?

Answer: The exact numbers will depend on the magnification used in reproducing the
images. The ratio of the chord to the full diameter is about 0.6 or 3/5

Problem 3 - If the occultation of Saturn followed exactly along the full diameter of the
moon, how long, in seconds, would the occultation have taken?

Answer: 26:25 is decimal form = 26.42 which is 3/5 of the full diameter, so the full
time to travel the diameter would be 26.42 x 5/3 = 44.0 minutes which is 2,640
seconds.

Problem 4 - Based on the orbit and distance of the moon, the speed of the moon
perpendicular to the line connecting the center of Earth with the center of the moon is
1.3 km/sec. From the occultation timing information, what is the diameter of the moon
in kilometers?

Answer: The diameter of the moon is just 1.3 km/sec x (2640 seconds) = 3,400
kilometers. The actual value is about 3,432 kilometers.

Image Credit: See http://www.popastro.com/sections/occ/satapr16.htm

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 Occultation Timing Light Curves 24

Many occultations involve a planet or asteroid passing in front of a star.

Because the start and end times must be known to fractions of a second for small
occulting bodies, humans cannot be involved in taking the data. Instead, sensitive
light meters called photometers measure the brightness of the target star, and
then automatically record the brightness hundreds of time a second.
One such occultation is recorded in the photometric data in the above
graph. The data were taken by amateur astronomer Ed Morana
([email protected]) who lives in Livermore California and brings his equipment
to many locations in the western United States to record occultations. His other
timing data can be found at http://pictures.ed-morana.com/AsteroidOccultations/.

Problem 1 - The horizontal axis gives the star brightness measurements from
09h 47m 45.952s to 09h 48m 04.824s. What is the time interval between
measurements in units of seconds?

Problem 2 - At about what time did the occultation of asteroid Palma begin?

Problem 3 - At about what time did the occultation of asteroid Palma end?

Problem 4 - What was the total duration of the occultation?

Problem 5 - At the time of the observation, Asteroid Palma was traveling at 1

kilometers/sec. About what is the width of this asteroid along the unknown chord
measured by this occultation measurement.

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 Answer Key 24
Problem 1 - The horizontal axis gives the star brightness measurements from 09h
47m 45.952s to 09h 48m 04.824s. What is the time interval between measurements in
units of seconds?

Answer: From the two consecutive measurements at 45.086s and 45.219s the time
interval is 0.133 seconds.

Problem 2 - At about what time did the occultation of asteroid Palma begin?

Answer: Reading from left to right, the brightness of the star dipped at about 47:49.424

Problem 3 - At about what time did the occultation of asteroid Palma end?

Answer: The star regained its former brightness at about 48:00.903.

Problem 4 - What was the total duration of the occultation?

Answer: 48m 00.903s - 47m 49.424 = 60.903 - 49.424 = 11.479 seconds.

Problem 5 - At the time of the observation, Asteroid Palma was traveling at 1

kilometers/sec. About what is the width of this asteroid along the unknown chord
measured by this occultation measurement.

Answer: The width is about 1.0 km/sec x 11.5 seconds = 11.5 kilometers.

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 Occultation Timing and the Shape of an Asteroid 25
If you know that the object
doing the occulting has a circular
shape, you can use one occultation
timing measurement for a single
chord of the circle to determine the
physical diameter of the object once
you know its speed. But suppose you
cannot even see the shape of the
object because it is too small to
clearly distinguish in your telescope?
When a number of observers
make occultation timings of an
asteroid from a number of different
locations, their timing 'tracks' outline
the many different chords that make
up the asteroid.

Amateur astronomers are very active in measuring asteroid occultations.

The above map was created by combining the data from ten different amateur
astronomers located in California, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. On December
11, 2008 the asteroid 135-Hertha occulted the faint star HIP-13021 located in the
constellation Aries. The asteroid was at a distance of about 135 million kilometers
from Earth.
Like the path of a total solar eclipse, the shadow of the asteroid passes
across the surface of Earth. The lines in the above figure show the location of this
path at the various locations of the Observers who took part in the occultation
study. The gaps in the lines show the locations (times) when the asteroid occulted
the star from each station.

Problem 1 - At the time of the occultation, draw a continuous line that shows the
shape of the cross-section of asteroid 135-Hertha. Fill-in the shape to look like a
dark asteroid!

Problem 2 - The 'shadow' of the asteroid as it passes across a star can be

thought of as a parallel cylinder of rays that strike Earth's surface and create a
moving path across its surface. The width of this path, in kilometers, is equal to
the projected width of the asteroid in kilometers. If the perpendicular distances
between the northern-most (top) and southern-most (bottom) tracks in the above
diagram was 80 kilometers, in kilometers, what is:
A) The projected width of the asteroid?
B) The projected length of the asteroid?
C) The average diameter of asteroid 135-Hertha?

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 Answer Key 25
Problem 1 - At the time of the occultation, draw a continuous line that shows the
shape of the cross-section of asteroid 135-Hertha. Fill-in the shape to look like a dark
asteroid!

Problem 2 - The 'shadow' of the asteroid as it passes across a star can be thought of
as a parallel cylinder of rays that strike Earth's surface and create a moving path
across its surface. The width of this path, in kilometers, is equal to the width of the
asteroid. If the perpendicular distances between the northern-most (top) and southern-
most (bottom) tracks in the above diagram was 80 kilometers, in kilometers, what is: A)
The projected width of the asteroid? B) The projected length of the asteroid? C) The
average diameter of asteroid 135-Hertha?

Answer: A) Use a millimeter ruler to determine the scale of the image. For example,
The perpendicular distance between the two tracks is about 50 millimeters so the scale
is 80 km/50mm = 1.6 km/mm. The width is about 60 kilometers.

B) The length is about 103 kilometers.

C) The average diameter is about (103+60)/2 = 82 kilometers.

For more examples of amateur astronomers conducting occultation

measurements see:
http://scottysmightymini.com/PR/20090719Pretoria_pr.htm

Also visit IOTA: the International Occultation Timing Organization

http://www.lunar-occultations.com/iota/iotandx.htm

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 Graphing the Shape of an Asteroid 26
Observer Start End When occultation timings from
several stations are combined, the shape
1 11:15:08 11:15:13
of the occulting body can be determined
2 11:15:07 11:15:21 (i.e. its cross-section).
3 11:15:04 11:15:14 The table to the left gives the
4 11:15:02 11:15:14 locations and timings for when the star
5 11:15:04 11:15:15 was behind the asteroid as viewed by 10
6 11:15:06 11:15:17 Observers who watched the occultation of
7 11:15:08 11:15:16 the star XYZ1325 by Asteroid Phoenix.
8 11:15:09 11:15:16 The geographic locations (X,Y) of
the Observers are given in kilometers on a
9 11:15:11 11:15:18 N-S and E-W grid. The times are given in
10 11:15:13 11:15:16 minutes and seconds from the start of
11:00 p.m Local Time.

Problem 1 - The position-time grid above is marked in 1-km squares. In the

horizontal direction, each grid represents the distance traveled by the shadow
in 1 second. Assuming that the path of the asteroid shadow is from left to
right exactly parallel to the horizontal axis at each station, and that the left-
hand edge is the location of the shadow at exactly 11:15 p.m, draw the
occultation chords.

Problem 2 - What were the approximate dimensions of the asteroid in

kilometers?

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 Answer Key 26
Problem 1 - The position-time grid above is marked in 1-km squares. In the horizontal
direction, each grid represents the distance traveled by the shadow in 1 second.
Assuming that the path of the asteroid shadow is from left to right exactly parallel to the
horizontal axis at each station, and that the left-hand edge is the location of the
shadow at exactly 11:15 p.m, draw the occultation chords.

Answer: Example: For Station 1, the occultation chord begins at 11:15:08 and ends at
11:15:13. Since each horizontal cell corresponds to 1 second, the chord will be drawn
starting at 8-cells (8 seconds) to the right of the left vertical edge of the graph (at
11:15:00), and extend 5 cells to the right.

Problem 2 - What were the approximate dimensions of the asteroid in kilometers?

Answer: Each square corresponds to a vertical distance of 1 km, and a time-interval

that also corresponds to 1 kilometer. The vertical 'length' of the asteroid is about 12
kilometers, and the horizontal width varies from about 8 kilometers to 11 kilometers.

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

The 2003 Transit of Mercury Viewed from Space 27

NASA's TRACE satellite is in a polar orbit around Earth. On May 7, 2003 it

took a series of pictures of the sun during the time that the planet Mercury was in
transit. The track of the planet disks across the face of the sun has a pronounced
wiggle caused by the satellite's north-south movement along its orbit as it took the
images. The TRACE satellite orbit had a radius of R=6,698 kilometers. The
parallax shift seen in the above wiggle of Mercury disks was caused by the
satellite as its vantage point changed by 2R.

Problem 1 - At the time of the transit, the angular diameter of the sun was 0.53
degrees. The angular scale of the image above is 0.0028 degrees/millimeter.
About what is the diameter of Mercury in A) degrees? B) seconds of arc?

Problem 2 - Draw two parallel lines from left to right so that: A) The first line
connects the centers of the Mercury disks at the top of the sequence of disks. B)
The second line connects the centers of the Mercury disks at the bottom of the
sequence of disks. What is the angular separation, , of the two parallel lines in
degrees?

Problem 3 - The above photo montage was created by removing the solar
parallax angle from each disk image and then superimposing the disks. The total
parallax angle, , is then  =  + 0.0019 degrees. The parallax formula states
that Tan() = R/D. If R is the radius of the TRACE satellite orbit, what is the
distance, D, from Earth to Mercury at the time of the transit?

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 Answer Key 27

Problem 1 - Answer: Measure several mercury

disks in the image and take their average. The
images are about 1.2mm in diameter, so their
angular diameter is A) 1.2 x 0.0028 deg/mm =
0.0033 degrees B) 0.0033 degrees x (60
minutes/1 degree) x (60 seconds/1 minute) = 12
arcseconds in diameter.

Problem 2 - The separation of the lines should be

about 2.0 millimeters. Since the scale is 0.0028
degrees/mm, the separation is 2.0 mm x 0.0028
deg/mm = 0.0056 degrees.

Problem 3 - The above photo montage was

created by removing the solar parallax angle /2
from each disk image and then superimposing the
disks. The total parallax angle, , is then  =  +
0.0019 degrees. The parallax formula states that
Tan() = R/D. What is the distance, D, from Earth
to Mercury at the time of the transit given the
orbital radius, R, of the satellite?

Answer:  = (0.0056/2) + 0.0019

= 0.0047 degrees.

D = 6698/tan(0.0047)
= 82,000,000 km.

Note that a 0.2mm uncertainty in measuring the

parallel line separations yields distances between

 = 0.0050 to 0.0044
so D = 77 million to 87 million km.

the actual distance between Earth and Mercury

was 82 million km.

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 The 2004 Transit of Venus Viewed from Space 28

NASA's TRACE satellite is in a polar orbit around Earth. On June 8, 2004 it

took a series of pictures of the sun during the time that the Venus was in transit.
The wavy string of superposed Venus disks is caused by the satellite, which
orbits Earth in a polar orbit, changes its vantage point from one side to the other
of Earth's center by a projected distance of 6,698 km, and so the disk of Venus
appears, first lower, then higher than its average dead-on position. This is a
familiar parallax effect that can be used to determine the distance to Venus.

Problem 1 - The width of the disks in the wavy black line is equal to the diameter
of Venus, which had an angular diameter of 0.0016 degrees on this date. Draw
two parallel lines that connect the A) centers of the disks at the top of the wave
and B) the centers of the disks at the bottom of the wave. If the scale of this
image is 0.0032 degrees/millimeter, what is the angular separation of the lines in
degrees which defines the angle α?

Problem 2 - The image was created by subtracting a solar parallax angle of

0.0024 degrees from each image, and then superimposing the images to show
the movement of Venus across the sun. The total parallax angle, θ, is then θ =
α/2 + 0.0024 degrees. The parallax formula states that Tan(θ) = R/D. What is the
distance, D, from Earth to Venus at the time of the transit given the radius, R, of
the satellite's orbit around Earth?

Problem 3 - During the previous Transits of Venus in the years 1874 and 1882,
one of the most important aspects of our model of the solar system was to
convert the predicted distances given in terms of the Earth-Sun distance unit (
called the Astronomical Unit) into actual physical distances such as miles or
kilometers. Careful studies of the track taken by the transit of Venus across the
sun's disk could be geometrically used to determine the parallax distance to
Venus at the time of the transit. For the 2004 transit of Venus, the modeled
distance from Earth to Venus was 0.29 Astronomical Units. From your answer to
Problem 2, what would you estimate as the length of the Astronomical Unit in
kilometers?

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 Answer Key 28
Problem 1 - The width of the disks in the wavy black line is
equal to the diameter of Venus, which had an angular
diameter of 0.0016 degrees on this date. Draw two parallel
lines that connect the A) centers of the disks at the top of
the wave and B) the centers of the disks at the bottom of
the wave. If the scale of this image is 0.0032
degrees/millimeter, what is the angular separation of the
lines in degrees which defines the angle α?

Answer: The separation is about 4 millimeters, so the

angular separation is 4 mm x 0.0032 degrees/mm = 0.013
degrees.

Problem 2 - The image was created by subtracting a solar

parallax angle of 0.0024 degrees from each image, and
then superimposing the images to show the movement of
Venus across the sun. The total parallax angle, θ, is then
θ = α/2 + 0.0024 degrees. The parallax formula states that
Tan(θ) = R/D. What is the distance, D, from Earth to
Mercury at the time of the transit given the radius, R, of the
satellite's orbit around Earth?

Answer: θ = 0.013/2 + 0.0024 = 0.0089 degrees.

so D = 6,698 km / tan(0.0089)
= 43,000,000 km.

Problem 3 - For the 2004 transit of Venus, the modeled

distance from Earth to Venus was 0.29 Astronomical Units.
From your answer to Problem 2, what would you estimate
as the length of the Astronomical Unit in kilometers?

Answer: 0.29 AU = 43 million km, so

1.0 AU = 43 million/0.29 AU
= 145 million km.

Note: The actual, very accurate, adopted length has been

established as 1 AU = 149,597,870.7 kilometers. This has
been determined by bouncing radio signals off of a variety
of solar system bodies (e.g. asteroids) whose distances in
AU have been precisely predicted, and using the time it
takes light to travel out and back at a speed of 299,792
km/sec.

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

The 2007 Transit of the Moon Viewed from Space 29

NASA's STEREO-B satellite is in an orbit around the sun at the same

distance as Earth. On February 25, 2007 it took a series of pictures of the sun
during the time when the moon was in transit across the sun, and when the
satellite was 1.7 million km from the moon. The normal Earth-Moon distance is
380,000 km. By comparison, the distance to the sun from Earth is 149 million km.

Problem 1 - If the angular diameter of the sun was 2100 arcseconds at the time
of the transit as viewed by STEREO-B, what was the diameter of the moon as
viewed by STEREO-B in A) arcseconds? B) degrees?

Problem 2 - By what percentage was the sun's light dimmed during the times
when the full, circular, lunar disk covered the solar surface in these images?

Problem 3 - Based on the sequence of images in the above series, with the
Universal Time (hour:minutes) indicated in the lower right corner of each image,
draw the light curve of this lunar transit from start to finish in terms of the
percentage of sunlight visible by the STEREO-B satellite, from 93% to 100%, and
the Universal Time in decimal hours since 06:00.

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 Answer Key 29
Problem 1 - Method 1: The diameter of the
solar disk in each image is about 21
millimeters, so the scale of the images is
2100 arcseconds/21 mm = 100
arcseconds/mm. The lunar disk measures
about 4mm, so the angular diameter is
4mm (100 asec/mm) = 400 arcseconds.

Method 2: Using the trigonometric formula

Tan(θ) = D/R
Tan(θ) = 3400/1,700,000 = 0.002
So θ = 0.11 degrees = 410 arcseconds.

So the diameter of the moon is about 400

arcseconds

Problem 2 - By what percentage was the

sun's light dimmed during the times when
the full, circular, lunar disk covered the solar
surface in these images?

Answer: By the ratio of their circular areas.

2
100% x (400/2100) = 3.6%

Problem 3 - Answer: See graph below:

Movies of the transit can be found at the

STEREO website

http://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/item.p
hp?id=selects&iid=8

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

The 2006 Transit of Mercury Viewed from Space 30

On November 8, 2006 NASA's SOHO satellite took a series of pictures of the sun
during the time that the Mercury was in transit. This photo montage shows the transit
between 19:12:04 Universal Time on November 8 and 00:10:08 Universal Time on
November 9. The path of the transit follows a chord across the circular face of the sun.
The image only shows a portion of the face of the sun, not the full disk. This provides an
opportunity to use a basic property of chords top determine the full diameter of the solar
disk, and the perpendicular distance between the chord and the center of the sun.

Problem 1 - For any chord, the perpendicular bisector of the chord coincides with a
diameter of the circle, and passes through the center of the circle. From the figure below,
and the properties of similar triangles, D/X = X/r. Use this proportionality, and a millimeter
ruler, to determine the diameter of the sun at the scale of the image above.

Problem 2 - The angular diameter of the solar disk at the time of the transit was 1850
seconds of arc. From your answer to Problem 1, A) what is the scale of the image in
arcseconds/millimeter? B) What was the minimum distance between the center of the
sun and the path of the transit, to the nearest second of arc?

In the figure to the left, the segment

lengths are related to the proportion
variables, x, r, and D as follows:

Segment cd = r
Segment ad = bd = x
Segment de = D

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 Answer Key 30
Problem 1 - Answer: On the
front image, the transit path
has a length of 134 millimeters,
so x = 134/2 = 66 millimeters.
Constructing the perpendicular
bisector of this transit chord,
the segment corresponding to
DC in the figure measures 42
millimeters, then from the
proportion:
D x 662
 we have D 
x r 42
So D = 104 mm.

The full diameter d = D + r so

d = 146 mm.

Problem 2 - Answer: A)
Scale = 1850 asec/146 mm
= 12.7
arcseconds/mm.

B) The shortest distance is just

S = (D+r)/2 - r
= (146 mm)/2 - 42 mm
= 31 mm

And the corresponding angular

distance is just
31 mm x (12.7 asec/mm) =
394 arcseconds.

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

The Lunar Transit of the International Space Station 31

On December 29, 2009

amateur astronomer Alex
McConahay captured this
sequence of images of the
International Space Station
(ISS) transiting the moon at
8:30:43 p.m from a location in
Moreno Valley, California.

The center to center

distance of the moon from Earth
was 364,794 km with a lunar
radius of 1,738 km. The image
speed was 15 frames per
second. The ISS has the
dimensions 108 x 73 meters.

The angular size in degrees, q, of a distant object depends on its actual

physical size, R, and its distance from the Observer, D, according to the basic
formula:
R R
Tan(θ ) = which for angles less than a degree becomes θ = 57.3
D D

Problem 1 - From the given measurements, what is the angular diameter in

arcseconds of the Moon?

Problem 2 - The maximum angular width of the ISS at the time of the transit was
44 seconds of arc. How far from the ISS was the photographer when this image
was taken?

Problem 3 - About how long, in seconds, did the transit of the ISS take?

Problem 4 - At the distance of the ISS, how fast was the ISS moving in km/s?

Problem 5 - How many meters from the photographer's location would the track
of the ISS have just missed the lower-right limb of the moon in this picture?

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 Answer Key 31

Problem 1 - Answer: 57.3 x (2x1738)/364794 = 0.546 degrees or 1,966 arcseconds

Problem 2 - Answer; D = 57.3 x (3600 asec/deg) x 108 meters/44 = 506 kilometers.

Problem 3 - Answer: About seven time intervals x 1/15 sec/interval = 7/15 sec = 0.47
seconds

Problem 4 - Answer: The scale of the image is 1966 asec/68mm = 29 asec/mm. The
length of the transit chord is 62mm so the angular length is 1798 asec. At 506 km, this
corresponds to R = 1798/(57.3x3600) x 506 km = 4.4 kilometers. This took 0.47 seconds
so the speed along its orbit was V=4.4 km /0.47sec ; V = 9.4 km/sec.

Problem 5 - At the distance of the ISS, the chord must shift an angular distance equal to
the midpoint of the chord to the limb of the moon. On the photo this is a distance of 23 mm
or 23 x (29 asec/mm) = 667 asec. From the formula,
R = 667 / (57.3 x 3600) x 506 km
R = 1.6 kilometers.

Image courtesy Alex McConahay [email protected]

Amateur astronomers use CalSky http://www.calsky.com/ to predict when the ISS will transit the
sun and moon from a given geographic location.

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 Occultation of a Distant Kuiper Belt Object 32

The Kuiper Belt Object KBO-

55636 orbits the sun beyond the
orbit of Neptune. It is believed to be
one of over 70,000 similar bodies
traveling in the dark outskirts of our
solar system at a geocentric speed
of about 25 km/s.

Knowing the detailed orbit of

this previously-discovered body,
astronomers predicted that on
October 9, 2009 it would occult an
unnamed star. They succeeded in
detecting its occultation light curve
shown to the left, and 55636
became the first KBO to be
observed during an occultation.

Problem 1 - About how long did the transit take as viewed from Haleakala,
Hawaii according to the light curve above?

Problem 2 - As viewed from Earth, a 1-meter shift at the distance of the KBO
corresponds to 1-meter displacement of the KBO shadow along the occultation
track at Earth's surface. From the timing information and the geocentric speed of
the occultation, what was the approximate diameter of the KBO assuming that it
was perfectly round?

Problem 3 - If the angular size in seconds of arc, θ, is related to the diameter, L,

and distance, D, to an object in kilometers according to θ = 206265 (L/D), what is
the average angular diameter of KBO-55636 if the distance to this object is D =
6,422 million km ?

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 Answer Key 32
Problem 1 - About how long did the transit take as viewed from Haleakala, Hawaii
according to the light curve above?

Answer: The light curve shows that before the transit the brightness was about 0.95
stellar flux units, and dimmed to zero for a full occultation (eclipse actually!) between -5
sec and +5 seconds around the center of the occultation, for a duration of 10 seconds.

Problem 2 - As viewed from Earth, a 1-meter shift at the distance of the KBO
corresponds to 1-meter displacement of the KBO shadow along the occultation track at
Earth's surface. From the timing information and the geocentric speed of the
occultation, what was the approximate diameter of the KBO assuming that it was
perfectly round?
Answer: D = 10 sec x (25 km/sec) = 250 kilometers.

Problem 3 - If the angular size in seconds of arc, θ, is related to the diameter, L, and
distance, D, to an object in kilometers according to θ = 206265 (L/D), what is the
average angular diameter of KBO-55636 if the distance to this object is D = 6,422
million km ?

Answer: From the angle formula:

θ = 206265 x (250 km/6422 million km) so
θ = 0.008 arcseconds.

Note: After measuring the exact amount of time that the star was blocked from view, as
well as the velocity with which the shadow of 55636 moved across Earth, the
researchers calculated that the KBO has a diameter of about 286 kilometers.
J. L. Elliot, M. J. Person, C. A. Zuluaga, A. S. Bosh, E. R. Adams, T. C. Brothers, A. A. S. Gulbis, S. E.
Levine, M. Lockhart, A. M. Zangari, B. A. Babcock, K. DuPré, J. M. Pasachoff, S. P. Souza, W. Rosing,
N. Secrest, L. Bright, E. W. Dunham, S. S. Sheppard, M. Kakkala, T. Tilleman, B. Berger, J. W. Briggs,
G. Jacobson, P. Valleli, B. Volz, S. Rapoport, R. Hart, M. Brucker, R. Michel, A. Mattingly, L. Zambrano-
Marin, A. W. Meyer, J. Wolf, E. V. Ryan, W. H. Ryan, K. Morzinski, B. Grigsby, J. Brimacombe, D.
Ragozzine, H. G. Montano, A. Gilmore. Size and albedo of Kuiper Belt object 55636 from a stellar
occultation. Nature, 2010; vol. 465, pp. 897

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 An Eclipse of the Sun from Space 33
This spectacular
image of the moon
passing across the face of
the sun was taken by
ESA's Proba 2 satellite on
January 15, 2010 while
millions of people in South
Africa watched the
'annular eclipse' event
from the ground. The
satellite orbits Earth at an
altitude of 750 km.
The face of the
sun is imaged by Proba-2
at ultraviolet wavelengths
similar to its sister
satellite, SOHO, located
at the L1 point over 1.5
million km from Earth. A
spectacular 'active region'
can be seen in the image
in the upper right.

No matter where you are in the solar system, or beyond, total solar
eclipses are actually very rare. They require that the diameter of the star, the
eclipsing body, and the observer be just-right so that as seen from the observer's
location, the eclipsing body exactly covers the disk of the star as viewed by the
observer.

Problem 1 - The sun has a diameter of 1,392,000 km. At the time of this
photograph, Earth was located 147 million km from the sun, and the solar angular
diameter was 1,953 arcseconds. Meanwhile, the moon had a diameter of 3,476
kilometers. How far from the moon was the Proba-2 spacecraft at the time of this
photo?

Problem 2 - In the distant future, a photographer from National Geographic

wants to capture the total eclipse of the sun by Europa as viewed from a
spacecraft near Jupiter's satellite Europa. Jupiter is located 770 million km from
the sun, and Europa has a diameter of 2,900 km. How far from Europa must the
spacecraft be in order that the photographer can view a total solar eclipse?

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 Answer Key 33
Problem 1 - The sun has a diameter of 1,392,000 km. At the time of this
photograph, Earth was located 147 million km from the sun, and the solar angular
diameter was 1,953 arcseconds. Meanwhile, the moon had a diameter of 3,476
kilometers. How far from the moon was the Proba-2 spacecraft at the time of this
photo?

Answer: At what distance from the moon, D, will the moon have the same angular
diameter as the sun of 1,953 seconds of arc? Since the angles are the same, the
distances have to be in proportion:

1,392, 000 3, 476

 so X = 367,000 kilometers.
147, 000, 000 X

Problem 2 - In the distant future, a photographer from National Geographic wants

to capture the total eclipse of the sun by Europa as viewed from a spacecraft near
Jupiter's satellite Europa. Jupiter is located 770 million km from the sun, and Europa
has a diameter of 2,900 km. How far from Europa must the spacecraft be in order
that the photographer can view a total solar eclipse?

Answer: At this distance, the angular diameter, x, of the sun can be deduced from
the proportion:

x 147 million
 so x = 373 arcseconds.
1953 770million

The angular size of Europa from the spacecraft must equal 373 arcseconds, so
since the angles are the same, the distances have to be in proportion:
d 2900km

770million 1,392, 000km

so d = 1.6 million kilometers from Europa.

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 A Grazing Occultation of Saturn by the Moon 34

Although transits and eclipses are dramatic, many interesting events called grazing
occultations also occur, especially with our moon. This image was taken on March 3, 2007
by UK amateur astronomer Pete Lawrence (Image courtesy Digital-Astronomy) and shows
the moon passing close-by Saturn, and partially occulting its rings in a series of images
spaced every 90 seconds. To catch transits, occultations and grazing occultations, the
astronomer has to be very close to the track of the event as it races across the surface of
Earth. Because small angles are involved in getting the occultation track exactly right, we
use the formula  = 206265(L/D) where  is the angular size in arcseconds; L is the
diameter of the object in km, and D is the distance in km of the occulting object from the
Observer's location.

Problem 1 - At the time of the grazing occultation, Saturn had a maximum angular
diameter (disk + rings) of about 25 arcseconds, the moon's distance from the
surface of Earth was about 384,000 km, and the moon's diameter is (as always!)
3,476 km. How many kilometers, L, would you have to move to shift the moon's sky
location by exactly the angular diameter of Saturn and its rings?

Problem 2 – From the beginning to the end of this photo sequence, how much time
elapsed?

Problem 3 – Occultation timing is an important tool to verify our understanding of

the exact orbit of a body such as the moon. If the predicted center of the moon had
been shifted 60 kilometers to the upper right, what would the photo have shown?

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 Answer Key 34
Problem 1 - At the time of the grazing occultation, Saturn had a maximum angular
diameter (disk + rings) of about 25 arcseconds, the moon's distance was about
384,000 km and the moon's diameter is (as always!) 3,476 km. AS viewed from Earth,
how many kilometers, L, would you have to move to shift the moon's sky location by
exactly the angular diameter of Saturn?

L
Answer: Solve for L: 25  206265 to get L = 47 kilometers.
384000km

Problem 2 – From the beginning to the end of this photo sequence, how much time
elapsed?

Answer: There were 14 images spaced 90 seconds apart, so the total elapsed time
was T = 14 x 90 s = 1,260 seconds or 21 minutes.

Problem 3 – Occultation timing is an important tool to verify our understanding of the

exact orbit of a body such as the moon. If the predicted center of the moon had been
shifted 1 kilometer to the upper right, what would the photo have shown?

Answer: At the distance of the moon, a 60 km shift corresponds top an angular shift of
Q = 206265 x (60 km/384000 km) = 32 arcseconds.
This is much larger than the 25 arcsecond diameter of Saturn and its rings, so instead
of a grazing occultation, the photograph would have shown an actual full occultation
with the disk of Saturn completely hidden by the limb of the moon in the 7th and 8th
images.

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 Using Stellar Occultations to Study Saturn's Rings 35
On September 26, 2006
NASA's Cassini spacecraft took this
picture of a portion of Saturn's rings
occulting a distant star from a
distance of 543,000 km.

Occultation observations
point the Cassini camera toward a
star whose brightness is well
known. Then, as Cassini watches
the rings pass in front of the star,
the star's brightness changes as it
is blocked by numerous particles
too small to directly image.

The figure above shows the path taken by Star A from right to left as
viewed from a spacecraft equipped with a sensitive light meter. Suppose that
for this occultation, there are seven pieces of rock/ice in this imaginary portion
of the ring of Saturn. At the location of the spacecraft, the ring particles are
too small to be visible. The relative speeds of the spacecraft and the ring
particles, however, causes the star to occult these particles along the path
shown, and the occultation takes exactly 1 second from the time the star
disappears behind the right-hand edge of the rock on the far-right, to time that
the star emerges from behind the left-hand edge of the rock on the far-left.

Problem 1 - Using a millimeter ruler, what is the scale of the image above in
seconds/millimeter?

Problem 2 - From the locations and widths of the rocks along the occultation
path, draw a curve that represents the brightness changes of the star during
the occultation of the ring particles.

Problem 3 - If the relative speed of the spacecraft and the rocks is 1 km/sec,
how wide are the rocks, in meters, based on the occultation information?

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 Answer Key 35
Problem 1 - Answer: the distance between the asteroid edges is about 112
millimeters, so this takes 1 second during the occultation and so the scale is
S = 1 sec/112 mm
= 0.009 seconds/mm.

Problem 2 - Table gives time intervals, which are graphed below:

Occulting Distance Time
Rock Number from start from start
(from right to (mm) (seconds)
left)
1 0 0
1 8 0.072
2 19 0.171
2 34 0.306
3 41 0.369
3 46 0.414
4 54 0.486
4 76 0.684
5 96 0.864
5 101 0.909
6 107 0.963
6 112 1.000

120
Percent of Full Intensity

100

80

60

40

20

-20
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2
Time (0.01 sec)

Problem 3 - Answer: Rock1: Duration of occultation = 0.072 sec, length = 0.072

sec x 1000 meters/sec, so Rock 1 = 72 meters. Rock 2 = 135 meters; Rock 3 = 45
meters; Rock 4= 198 meters; Rock 5= 45 meters and Rock 6= 45 meters.

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 The Transit of Venus and its Track Across the Sun
36

As Venus transits the solar disk, its track defines a chord, whose length
and location depend on the position of the observer on Earth's surface. Two
observers on Earth located far apart (North-South) will observe slightly different
chord tracks parallel to each other. From this parallax shift, the distance to Venus
can be determined.

The complicated geometric figure above was drawn by James Ferguson in

his 1790 book 'Astronomy Explained Upon Sir Isaac Newton's Principles', for the
June 6, 1761 Transit of Venus. It shows the chord taken by this transit as
observed from London, England. The scale of this image reproduction is 13
arcseconds per millimeter.

Problem 1 - The distance to Venus from Earth during the 1761 transit was about
40 million km. Suppose that astronomers located at the same longitude as
London, but 8,000 km due south viewed the same transit. The parallax formula
states that
L
  206265
D

where L is the viewing shift distance in km, D is the distance to Venus, and q is
the resulting angular shift in seconds of arc. Where will the new transit chord be
located on the solar disk from this southern position for the observers?

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 Answer Key 36
Problem 1 - The distance to Venus from Earth during the 1761 transit was about
40 million km. Suppose that astronomers located at the same longitude as London,
but 8,000 km due south viewed the same transit. The parallax formula states that
L
  206265
D

where L is the viewing shift distance in km, D is the distance to Venus, and q is the
resulting angular shift in seconds of arc. Where will the new transit chord be
located on the solar disk from this southern position for the observers?

Answer: The parallax shift angle would be

8,000 km
  206265 so  = 41 arcseconds.
40 million km

The scale of this figure is 13 arcseconds/mm, so on the figure, the shift will be
about 41 asec x (1 mm/13 asec) = 3 millimeters. Because the new observers are
located south of the London observers, the new track will shift upwards by 3
millimeters, and parallel to the London track as shown below.

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 Planetary Transits in Other Solar Systems 37
As viewed from Earth,
Mercury and Venus can transit our
sun and provide a rare glimpse of
planetary motion in our solar
system. In the last 10 years,
astronomers have discovered
nearly 1000 planets orbiting
hundreds of other stars near our
sun. One of these, the red dwarf
star Gleise 581 has 6 planets
orbiting within 150 million
kilometers of their star. This
provides some interesting transit
opportunities in this very compact
Gliese 581b transit (Don Dixon; Copyright 2007
cosmographica.com)
planetary system!

The angular diameter, θ, in seconds of arc of an object whose physical

diameter is L kilometers, as viewed from a distance of D kilometers, is given by
L
θ = 206265
D
For example, our moon has a diameter of L=3,400 kilometers and distance, D =
384,000 kilometers, so from Earth, its angular diameter is about θ = 1,800 arc
seconds.

Problem 1 - Suppose that observers were located on the outermost planet Gliese
581f and viewing the other planets as they transited the face of Gliese 581. The
diameter of this star is about 400,000 km. A) What is the angular diameter of the star
from the surface of Gliese 581f? B) From the table below, what are the angular
diameters of the interior planets b-g viewed from Gliese 581f? C) Which planet would
appear to be the largest dark 'spot' on the face of Gliese 581?

Properties of exoplanets in the Gliese system

Planet Relative Distance Diameter Angular
Speed (million (km) Diameter
(asec/hr) km) (asec)
Gliese 581 e 94 5 15,000
Gliese 581 b 68 6 50,000
Gliese 581 c 45 11 20,000
Gliese 581 g 33 22 20,000
Gliese 581 d 25 33 25,000
Gliese 581 f ---- 114 25,000

Problem 2 - Assuming that the planets transit across the full diameter of the star, from
the orbital speeds noted in the table, how long would each transit take as viewed
from Gliese 581f? (Note: In our solar system, the 2012 transit of Venus will take
about 7 hours.

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 Answer Key 37
Problem 1 - Suppose that observers were located on the outermost planet
Gliese 581f and viewing the other planets as they transited the face of Gliese
581. The diameter of this star is about 400,000 km. A) What is the angular
diameter of the star from the surface of Gliese 581f? B) From the table below,
what are the angular diameters of the interior planets b-g viewed from Gliese
581f? C) Which planet would appear to be the largest dark 'spot' on the face of
Gliese 581?

Answer: A) Star diameter = 206265 (400,000 km/114,000,000 km)

= 724 arcseconds.
Note Our sun has a diameter of 1800 arcseconds as viewed from Earth so
Gliese 581 is about 40% as big as our sun as viewed from Gliese 581f.

B) See entries in last column. Example For Gliese 581e is located 114 million
-5 million = 109 million km from Gliese 581f, so its angular diameter will be, q =
206265 (15000/109,000,000) = 28 arcseconds.

C) The star has a diameter of 724 arcseconds, so the planets will subtend the
following percentages of the solar disk;
Gliese 581e = 100% x 28/724 = 4%. Similarly: Gliese 581b = 13%, Gliese
581c = 6%; Gliese 581g = 6% and Gliese 581d = 9%.

Note: By comparison, Venus subtends only 3 % of the solar diameter as

viewed from Earth.

Planet Speed Distance Diameter Angular

(asec/hr) (million (km) Diameter
km) (asec)
Gliese 581 e 94 5 15,000 28
Gliese 581 b 68 6 50,000 95
Gliese 581 c 45 11 20,000 40
Gliese 581 g 33 22 20,000 45
Gliese 581 d 25 33 25,000 64
Gliese 581 f 114 25,000

Problem 2 - Assuming that the planets transit across the full diameter of the
star, from the orbital speeds noted in the table, how long would each transit
take as viewed from Gliese 581f? (Note: In our solar system, the 2012 transit of
Venus will take about 7 hours.)
Answer: The star's diameter from Gliese 581f is 724 arcseconds, so for
Gliese 581e the transit time is about T = 724/94 = 7.7 hours. The other
times are as follows: Gliese 581b = 10.6 hours; Gliese 581c = 16.1 hours;
Gliese 581g= 21.9 hours and Gliese 581d = 29.0 hours.

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 Synodic Periods and Planetary Conjunctions 38
One evening at 6:00 PM, you happen
to look towards the western sky at sunset
and notice the very bright planet Venus high
up in the western sky. A few weeks later you
look for it again, but now at 6:00 PM it is
lower in the sky, and a week later it is even
lower. Then, it sets at the same time as the
sun, and now you have to get up before
sunrise to start seeing Venus climb higher
up in the sky.

You would really like to know how

long you need to wait in order to see Venus
at its highest point in the sky just at sunset.
The phases of Venus follow a synodic period
(Courtesy Statis Kalyvas – VT2004 Program)
To do this calculation, you need to know the
synodic period of Venus as seen from Earth.

The synodic period, S, of a body is defined as the time it takes the body to
re-appear in the same spot of the observer’s sky. Or example, the phases of
Venus depend on the location of Venus, Earth and the sun, so from Earth, you
have to wait for the proper positions to re-occur so that you can see the
illuminated portion of Venus in the same phase as before. The distance of Venus
from the Sun as seen from Earth also follows a synodic cycle. If you were to plot
the distance of Venus from the sun in degrees, over a period of time, you would
get a ‘sine’ curve.
For a solar system body inside the orbit of Earth viewed from Earth, where
E = 365 days, and the orbital period of the body is P, the synodic period, S is
given by the simple formula:
1 1 1
 
S P E

Problem 1 – An astronomer notes that the separation between Venus and the
sun on the near-side of the sun is exactly zero degrees on January 1, 2010. If E =
365.24days and P = 224.7 days, A) how many days will the astronomer have to
wait to see Venus once again reach a separation of zero degrees on the near-
side of the sun? B) On what date will this occur?

Problem 2 – As viewed from Mars for which E = 687 days, how long must you
wait to see Earth once again reach its greatest distance from the sun in the
martian sky? Explain how this is also the time between situations where the
planets are at their closest positions to each other in their orbits.

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 Answer Key 38
Problem 1 – An astronomer notes that the separation between Venus and the sun on the
near-side of the sun is exactly zero degrees on January 1, 2010. If E = 365.24days and P =
224.7 days, A) how many days will the astronomer have to wait to see Venus once again
reach a separation of zero degrees on the near-side of the sun? B) On what date will this
occur?

Answer: 1/S = 1/224.7 - 1/(365.24)

1/S = 0.00445 – 0.00274
1/S = 0.00171
S = 1/0.00171
and so S = 584.84 days.

Problem 2 – As viewed from Mars for which E = 687 days, how long must you wait to see
Earth once again reach its greatest distance from the sun in the martian sky? Explain how
this is also the time between situations where the planets are at their closest positions to
each other in their orbits.

Answer:
1/S = 1/365.24 - 1/(687)
1/S = 0.00274 – 0.00146
1/S = 0.00128
S = 1/0.00128
and so S = 781 days.

This is also the time between the closest distances between Earth and Mars, which
is a time when NASA can send spacecraft and future manned missions to mars
while traveling the shortest distance. See figure below:

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 Synodic Periods and Venus-Earth Conjunctions 39
Because the orbit plane of Venus
is tilted with respect to Earth’s, there are
exactly two times during the year when
Venus is located at the intersection point
of these tilted planes – a location called
the Node. The two nodes can be
connected with a ‘line of nodes’ that
passes through the center of the sun.

Because the tilt of the orbit planes is only 3.4 degrees, but the sun has a
diameter of 0.5 degrees, there will be many times when Venus is located between
Earth and sun, but for Venus to be close enough to the sun for it to be seen as a
dark spot ‘transiting’ the sun is very rare. First let’s have a look at the synodic
cycle of Venus and Earth. This will tell us how many days will elapse between
Earth, Venus and the sun being roughly lined up.

The synodic period is the time it takes a planet viewed from Earth to be
observed at exactly the same illumination phase as it had previously. This
depends on the planet, Earth and sun being in exactly the same geometric
relationship as before. For example, the time between lunar Full Moons is the
moon's synodic period. The time between the centers of Earth, Venus and the
sun falling on exactly the same straight line on two successive times is called the
synodic period or Venus. This is also the time between seeing Venus at its
farthest distance (in angular measure) in the evening sky from the sun on two
successive occasions.

Problem 1 – If the orbit period of Earth is 365.24 days and Venus is 224.7 days,
the synodic period is just 584.84 days. Show that the period of time that elapses
between 5 synodic periods of Venus is nearly equal to 8 Earth years.

Problem 2 – Draw two concentric circles with the sun at the center, with the inner
circle being the orbit of Venus and the outer circle being the orbit of Earth. Place
a dot on each circle to represent Earth and Venus at their closest positions, called
oppositions, and draw a line between them that intercepts the sun. From this
starting position, mark 4 new dots on the orbit circle for Earth that represent the
passage of 5 synodic time intervals. Mark the location of Venus at these times
and draw lines that connect Earth and Venus to the sun at each new opposition
time. What inscribed figure can you draw by connecting the five Earth points?

Problem 3 – If one of these 5 oppositions represents a time when Venus is

exactly at one of the orbital nodes so that you can see a transit of Venus across
the sun, how long will you have to wait to see the next transit of Venus?

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 Answer Key 39
Problem 1 –Answer: 5 x (584.84) = 2,924 days. 8 x (365.24) = 2,922 days.

Problem 2 – Answer: The synodic period of 584.84 days equals 1.60 Earth years, so on
the Earth orbit, we place dots for Earth that are spaced 1.6 Earth years apart. Since one
full circle represents 1.0 Earth years, the ‘remainder’ is a distance of 0.6 of a year or 216
degrees apart, so the dots are placed as follows:

Dot 1 = 0.0 (Start)

Dot 2 = (1.6 -1)*360 = 216 degrees
Dot 3 = (3.2 – 3)*360 = 72 degrees
Dot 4 = (4.8 – 4)*360 = 288 degrees
Dot 5 = (6.4 - 6)*360 = 144 degrees
Dot 6 = (8.0 - 8)*360 = 0 degrees (Start)

Plot these points on the Earth circle and draw a line from the earth dot to the sun, placing a
dot for Venus on the Venus circle where the intersection. Notice the pentagram figure
formed by connecting the dots in the order above, also, the 5 points (0, 72, 144, 216, 288)
are exactly 72 degrees apart, forming a regular pentagon. Students may construct a more
accurate drawing using a protractor to measure the angles along the earth circle.

Problem 3 - Answer: You will have to wait about 2,922 days or 8 earth years.

Note: Because the orbits of Earth and Venus are not exact circles, there are actually two
cycles for transits of Venus; an approximately 121 / 105-year cycle, and a pair of transits
separated by 8 years. The two transits in 1874 and 1882 were separated by 8 years,
followed by the transits of 2004 and 2012 after a gap of 122 years. The next transit after
2012 will occur after 105 years in the year 2117 AD. In addition, although the transits
occurring 8 years apart appear during the same month, they switch from June to
December and then back to June during the longer cycle. The 2004 and 2012 transits
occurred in June, but the 2117 and 2125 transits will occur in December.

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 What time is that transit? 40

Have you ever traveled a long distance across the United States only to discover
that the current time is an hour or more different than what is one your watch? With
millions of air travelers moving across the globe every day, the concept of the 'time zone'
has started to become well known in a practical way. When astronomers calculate when
a transit or other celestial event will occur, they use a Universal Time (UTC) standard
rather than Local Time.
Universal Time is the Local Time precisely in Greenwich, England. For all other
observers at other longitudes, you have to convert from UTC to Local Time to figure out
what your clock time should be for an event. The map above shows the internationally-
adopted time zones. The top line indicates the number of hours in the westward direction
(left) that have to be subtracted from 0:00 UTC to convert to Local 'standard' time.
Moving to the right (eastward) gives the number of hours added to 0:00 UTC to get to
Local Standard Time.

Problem 1 - A total solar eclipse is supposed to start at 19:00 UTC in the

afternoon in London. At what Local Time will it start in Los Angeles?

Problem 2 - On June 8, 2012 the Transit of Venus is predicted start at 22:09

UTC. What local time will that be in Hawaii (Time Zone W)?

Problem 3 - Sunset occurs at 5:47 p.m Local Time in Rio de Janeiro; A) What
UTC is this? B) If the Transit of Venus occurs between 22:09 UTC and 04:49
UTC, will it be visible?

Problem 4 - For what UTC will it be 9:00 a.m Local Time in New York and 10:00
p.m Local Time in Perth, Australia?

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 Answer Key 40
Problem 1 - A total solar eclipse is supposed to start at 19:00 UTC in the afternoon in
London. At what Local Time will it start in Los Angeles?

Answer: From the time zone map, Los Angeles is 8 hours to the west of Greenwich,
so it is 8 hours behind UTC, and so its Local Time is 19:00 UTC - 8:00 = 11:00 a.m
Local Time.

Problem 2 - On June 8, 2012 the Transit of Venus is predicted start at 22:09 UTC.
What local time will that be in Hawaii (Time Zone W)?

Answer: Hawaii is located 10 behind Greenwich, so the Local Time will be 22:09 UTC
- 10:00 = 12:09 p.m Local Time in Hawaii.

Problem 3 - Sunset occurs at 5:47 p.m Local Time in Rio de Janeiro; A) What UTC is
this? B) If the Transit of Venus occurs between 22:09 and 04:49 UTC, will it be
visible?

Answer: A) Rio de Janeiro is 2 hours behind UTC. The local time 5:47 p.m is the
same as 17:47 on the '24-hour' clock, so sunset happens at 17:47 + 2:00 = 19:47
UTC.
The Transit of Venus occurs between 22:09 and 04:49 UTC, so sunset occurs about 2
hours (2:22) before the transit starts. The transit will not be visible from Rio de
Janeiro.

Problem 4 - For what UTC will it be 9:00 a.m Local Time in New York and 10:00 p.m
Local Time in Perth, Australia?

Answer: New York is 5 hours behind UTC so UTC = 09:00 + 5:00 = 14:00 UTC.
Perth is 8 hours ahead of UTC so 10:00 PM - 8:00 = 2:00 PM or 14:00
UTC.

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 Sunrise and Sunset Map of the World 41

At any given moment, some part of earth is in daylight, some part is in nighttime.
Along a specific geographic band, observers are watching sunrise, while along another
band, the sun is just setting. The above 'world clock' displays all of these conditions so
that travelers can see where these different 'diurnal' events are taking place at a specific
moment in time. The dot is the location where the sun is directly over head at Noon.

Problem 1 - From your knowledge of the direction of Earth's rotation, along which
arcs are sunrise and sunset occurring?

Problem 2 - Has western Australia witnessed sunrise or sunset?

Problem 3 - The equator runs along the horizontal mid-line of the figure, and the
figure is drawn for a day near the summer solstice. Where would an observer see
'High Noon' with the sun directly overhead?

Problem 4 - What will the figure look like in 6 hours?

Problem 5 - What would an observer witness along the top edge of the figure?

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 Answer Key 41
Problem 1 - From your knowledge of the direction of Earth's rotation, along which arcs
are sunrise and sunset occurring?

Answer; The sun rotates from west to east. Moving to the left from the vertical
centerline of the daylight region, you are moving into time zones that are earlier than
Noon, so the sun will be lower and lower in the East until you reach the far-left edge of
the daylight boundary, which represents sunrise. Similarly, moving to the right is in the
direction of sunset on the far-right boundary of the sunlit zone.

Problem 2 - Has western Australia witnessed sunrise or sunset?

Answer: It has witnessed sunset and is now entering nighttime.

Problem 3 - The equator runs along the horizontal mid-line of the figure, and the figure
is drawn for a day near the summer solstice. Where would an observer see 'High
Noon' with the sun directly overhead?

Answer: Near the white dot in the middle of the African continent.

Problem 4 - What will the figure look like in 6 hours?

Answer: The continents will all be shifted to the right by 6/24 = 1/4 of the Earth's
surface, and so the sunset line will pass through eastern Africa, South America will be
towards the center of the daylight zone, and High Noon will be somewhere near
Venezuela.

Problem 5 - What would an observer witness along the top edge of the figure?

Answer: This region shows a band of light extending across all time zones, so
this must be Arctic Summer during the Summer Solstice in June, when the sun
is above the horizon 24 hours a day.

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 How to Read a Transit Map 42

The figure above shows the visibility of the Transit of Venus for June 6,
2012 using a global map. Although this is a compact way to present transit
information, it can be very confusing to read.
The transit progresses from Exterior Ingress with the solar disk (around
22:09 UTC) to Exterior Egress with the solar disk (around 04:49 UTC) some six
hours later. Because you can only see the transit when in the daytime, you also
have to keep track of local sunrise and sunset. On June 6, sunrise will occur at
03:46 UTC, and sunset at 20:32 UTC. Locations to the left of the center line near
o
a longitude of 165 East represent locations for which the sun is rising during the
transit, and to the right of center, locations where the sun is setting during the
transit. Note: Since 180 degrees in Longitude equals 12 time zones, there are 15
degrees per time zone.

Problem 1 - If the middle of the transit occurs at 01:30 UTC, where will this occur
at High Noon (12:00 p.m) Local Time? Draw a vertical line at this location.

Problem 2 - In New York City, (Local Time = UTC - 4 hours) sunrise and sunset
occur at 5:25 a.m and 8:23 p.m. How much of the transit will be visible at this
location?

Problem 3 - In San Francisco, (Local Time = UTC - 7 hours) sunrise and sunset
occur at 5:48 a.m and 8:28 p.m. How much of the transit will be visible at this
location?

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 Answer Key 42
Problem 1 - If the middle of the transit occurs at 01:30 UTC, where will this occur
at High Noon (12:00 p.m) Local Time? Draw a vertical line at this location.

Answer: This will occur at a longitude that is 12:00 - 01:30 = 10.5 hours east of
Greenwich England (0 Longitude). Since 180 degrees in Longitude equals 12 time
zones, there are 15 degrees per time zone, so 10.5 hours east equals a Longitude
of 15 x 10.5 = 158 East of Greenwich, England (0 longitude).

Problem 2 - In New York City, (Local Time = UTC - 4 hours) sunrise and sunset
occur at 5:25 a.m and 8:23 p.m. How much of the transit will be visible at this
location?

Answer: The transit information is given in UTC, so we first convert the New York
times to UTC. New York Local Time is 4 hours behind UTC so sunrise = 05:25 +
4:00 = 09:25 UTC and sunset = 8:23 PM + 4:00 = 00:23 UTC. The transit lasts from
22:09 UTC to 04:49 UTC, so from New York the observer gets to see the first
22:09 UTC - 00:23 UTC = 2h 14m of the transit before the sun sets

Problem 3 - In San Francisco, (Local Time = UTC - 7 hours) sunrise and sunset
occur at 5:48 a.m and 8:28 p.m. How much of the transit will be visible at this
location?

Answer: The transit information is given in UTC, so we first convert the San
Francisco times to UTC. San Francisco Local Time is 7 hours behind UTC so
sunrise = 05:48 + 7:00 = 12:28 UTC and sunset = 8:28 PM + 7:00 = 03:28 UTC.
The transit lasts from 22:09 UTC to 04:49 UTC, so from San Francisco the
observer gets to see the first 22:09 UTC - 03:28 UTC = 5h 19m of the transit
before the sun sets

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 Viewing the 2012 Transit of Venus from Hawaii 43

The figure above shows the visibility of the Transit of Venus for June 6,
2012 using a global map. Although this is a compact way to present transit
information, it can be very confusing to read.
The transit progresses from Exterior Ingress with the solar disk (around
22:09 UTC) to Exterior Egress with the solar disk (around 04:49 UTC) some six
hours later. Because you can only see the transit when in the daytime, you also
have to keep track of local sunrise and sunset. On June 6, sunrise will occur at
03:46 UTC, and sunset at 20:32 UTC. Locations to the left of the center line near
o
a longitude of 165 East represent locations for which the sun is rising during the
transit, and to the right of center, locations where the sun is setting during the
transit. Note: Since 180 degrees in Longitude equals 12 time zones, there are 15
degrees per time zone.

Problem 1 - On the day of the transit, the sun will be at its highest point in the
sky, High Noon, at exactly 12:00 Local Time. If Hawaii is located 10 hours to the
west of Greenwich, England, what will be the Universal Time (UTC) of Hawaii
High Noon?

Problem 2 - If the start of the transit occurs at 22:09 UTC, and sunrise from
Honolulu occurs at 5:49 a.m, how soon after sunrise with the transit start?

Problem 3 - If sunset occurs at 7:11 p.m Local Time, how long before sunset
did the transit end?

Problem 4 - At what Local Times in Hawaii does the transit begin and end?

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 Answer Key 43
Problem 1 - On the day of the transit, the sun will be at its highest point in the sky,
High Noon, at exactly 12:00 Local Time. If Hawaii is located 10 hours to the west of
Greenwich, England, what will be the Universal Time of Hawaii High Noon?

Answer: UT = 12:00 + 10:00 = 22:00 UTC.

Problem 2 - If the start of the transit occurs at 22:09 UTC, and sunrise from
Honolulu occurs at 5:49 AM, how soon after sunrise with the transit start?

Answer: UTC for sunrise is 05:49 a.m + 10:00 = 15:48 UTC. The transit starts at
22:09 UTC, so it begins 22:09 - 15:48 = 6h 21m or 6 hours and 21 minutes after
sunrise in Honolulu.

Problem 3 - If sunset occurs at 7:11 p.m Local Time, how long before sunset did
the transit end?

Answer: Sunset is at 19:11 + 10:00 = 05:11 UTC. The transit ended at 04:49
UTC, so it ended 05:11 - 04:49 = 22 minutes before sunset.

Problem 4 - At what Local Times in Hawaii does the transit begin and end?

Answer: In terms of Local Time, the transit starts at 22:09 UTC - 10h = 12:09 p.m
Local Time, and ends at 04:49 - 10h = 28:49 - 10:00 = 18:49 or 6:49 p.m Local
Time.

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 High-Precision Measurements of the 2012 Transit of Venus
44
Hawaii and Alaska are US locations where the
entire 6-hour transit can be observed:

Anchorage: Latitude = +61.218 Honolulu: +21.307

Longitude= -149.900 -157.858

Here are the Local Hawaii Times for the four stages
(contacts) of the transit shown in the diagram to the left:
Local Times for Transit Contacts
Contact= 1 2 3 4
Anchorage 14:06:28 14:24:02 20:30:44 20:48:31
Honolulu 12:10:06 12:27:45 18:26:37 18:44:36

When astronomers and other observers want to experience and record the
exact transit events of 'first contact' and 'last contact' it is not sufficient to know the
timing of the transit events to the nearest minute. Because of the speed of
movement of the disk of Venus as it crosses the sun, you can easily miss these
events by being too late or too early. Forecasts can now be calculated years or
decades in advance. They use accurate mathematical and physical models of the
orbits of Earth, Venus and the location of the sun, to make predictions that are 'good'
to fractions of a second. To do this, the latitude and longitude of the observer have
to be known to fractions of a degree, and the obsever’s altitude to meter-accuracy.

Problem 1 - Between First Contact (1) and Second Contact (2) in the table, the disk
of Venus travels exactly its own angular diameter of 58.26 arcseconds in the
indicated time. The diameter of the sun at this time is 1,891.4 arcseconds. How
many seconds elapse between these events as observed at A) Anchorage and B)
Honolulu?

Problem 2 - What is the full duration, in seconds, of the transit between Second
Contact and Third Contact as viewed from A) Anchorage and B) Honolulu?

Problem 3 - From your answer to Problem 1, and using the angular diameter of
Venus, what is the average speed of the transit in arcseconds/second between First
and Second Contacts in A) Anchorage? B) Honolulu?

Problem 4 - What is the length, to the nearest arcsecond, of the transit chord
between Second and Third Contact as seen from A) Anchorage? B) Honolulu?

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 Answer Key 44
Contact= 1 2 3 4
Anchorage 14:06:28 14:24:02 20:30:44 20:48:31
Honolulu 12:10:06 12:27:45 18:26:37 18:44:36

Problem 1 - Between First Contact (1) and Second Contact (2) in the table, the disk of Venus
travels exactly its own angular diameter of 58.3 arcseconds in the indicated time. The
diameter of the sun at this time is 1,891.4 arcseconds. How many seconds elapse between
these events as observed at A) Anchorage and B) Honolulu?

Answer: Anchorage: T = 14:24:02-14:06:28 Honolulu: T = 12:27:45 - 12:10:06

= 24:02 - 06:28 = 27:45 - 10:06
= 17:34 = 17:39
= 17 minutes 34 seconds = 17 minutes 39 sec
= 17x60 + 34 = 17x60+ 39
= 1,054 seconds = 1,059 seconds

Problem 2 - What is the full duration, in seconds, of the transit between Second Contact and
Third Contact as viewed from A) Anchorage and B) Honolulu?

Answer: Anchorage: T = 20:30:44 - 14:24:02 Honolulu: 18:26:37 - 12:27:45

= 6:06:42 = 5:58:52
= 6x3600 + 6x60 + 42 = 5x3600 + 58x60 +52
= 22,002 seconds = 21,532 seconds

Problem 3 - From your answer to Problem 1, and using the angular diameter of Venus, what
is the average speed of the transit in arcseconds/second between First and Second Contacts
in A) Anchorage? B) Honolulu?

Answer: A) Anchorage: The diameter of Venus is 58.26 arcseconds, and it takes 1,054
seconds to travel this distance, so the average speed is 58.26 arcseconds /1,054 seconds =
0.05527 arcseconds/sec.
B) Honolulu: It takes 1,059 seconds to travel this distance, so the average speed is 58.26
arcseconds /1,059 seconds = 0.05501 arcseconds/sec.

Problem 4 - What is the length, to the nearest arcsecond, of the transit chord between Second
and Third Contact as seen from A) Anchorage? and B) Honolulu?

Answer: A) Anchorage: The average speed of the transit is 0.05527 arcseconds/sec, so the
length of the chord is just 22,002x0.05527 = 1,216 arcseconds. B) Honolulu: The average
speed of the transit is 0.05501 arcseconds/sec, so the length of the chord is just
21,532x0.05501 = 1184 arcseconds.

This website provides a calculator for your specific latitude and longitude
http://www.transitofvenus.nl/details.html

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 Appendix A:
The Transits of Venus: Ancient History to 1882 AD
History credits the English Astronomer Jeromiah Horrocks as the first human to ever
witness a transit by Venus, which occurred in 1631, but could other more ancient people
have also seen transits of Venus as well? There have been 52 transits of Venus across
the Sun between 2000 B.C and 1882 A.D. As seen on the sun, Venus is as big as a
large sunspot. You could see it with the naked eye if you knew exactly when to look.
But, because you cannot look directly at the sun except when it is close to the horizon,
you would have only a very short time to be lucky to see it, and would need a reason for
wanting to look at the sun on the horizon in this way at all! Four transits occurred during
the Babylonian Era on May 20, 1641 BC, November 20, 1540 BC, November 18, 1512
BC and May 23, 1406 BC Could any of these have been seen?

In the British journal 'Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society' for
November 1882 (vol. XLIII page 41) you can find a curious article written by Rev. S.J.
Johnson that asks whether the ancient Assyrians had observed the Venus Transit. He
said that an article in the journal Nature published a few years earlier, and written by the
well-known Oriental scholar Rev. Sayce,
mentioned a broken Assyrian cuneiform tablet. The
tablet was about Venus, and a translated sentence
on the tablet had breaks in it which seemed to
indicate that such a transit had been seen. "the
planet Venus --- it passed across ---- the Sun ---
across the face of the Sun" .The data of the tablet
was apparently before the 16th Century B.C.. So,
what was this mysterious tablet mentioned by
Sayce, and had it really been translated correctly?
The implication is that sometime before ca 1500
'something' involving Venus and the Sun at close
quarters did occur from Babylonia. If it was perhaps
one of the four transits in the list above, this would
be one of the earliest astronomical phenomena ever
recorded by humans that survived to the present
time! Since it is impossible to tell from the articles
exactly which cuneiform tablet the inscription
appeared upon, we cannot subject this tablet to a
modern translation to see if its message stands up.
The Venus Tables of Ammizaduga were discovered in 1850 in Nineveh by Sir Henry
Layard in excavations of the library of Asurbanipal. The translations were published a
few years later by Sir Henry Rawlinson and George Smith as "Tables of the movements
of the planet Venus and their influences". One of the large tablets called K.160 contains
14 observations of Venus and For example, in section 1 we read "If on the 21st of Ab,
Venus disappears in the east, remains absent in the sky for two months and 11 days,
and in the month of Arahsamna on the 2nd day, there will be rains in the land
;desolation will be wrought". None of these tablets have any inscription suggesting a
transit. The tablets indicate that the Babylonians knew that every 8 solar years (8 x
365.24 = 2921.92 days) Venus reappears in the exact same place in the sky ( 5 x
583.9d = 2919.5 days). Because this also equals 99 lunar months (99 x 29.5 = 2920.5d)
Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov
 Venus returns to the same place in the sky at the same lunar month (and phase) too,
but the return happens 2 1/2 days later each time (2921.92 - 2919.5 = 2.42d) . After
150.8 years the return is exact (2.42 x 150.8 = 365.24).

How about Chinese observers? Chinese astrologers kept close track of the
sun, especially large sunspots that could be seen at sunrise and sunset before the sun
became too bright to see with the unaided eye. The earliest records of sunspot sightings
began around 800 BC., but their observations apparently began in earnest around 167
BC. Astronomers Zhuang and Wang (1988) compiled a list of over 270 sunspot
sightings from ancient Chinese, Korean and Japanese records. A comparison by
Wittman and Zu (1987) and Yao and Stephenson (1988) of sunspots and the expected
Venus transits shows no examples of near-misses.

Mideavel Arab astronomers often explained dark spots on the sun as transits
of Mercury or Venus, examples are 840, 1030, 1068 and 1130 AD, but no Venus
transits occurred during these years so they were probably very large sunspots.

Did Montezuma see the Venus transit in

1518? Montezuma, the leader of the Aztec
people in pre-Columbus Mexico, was a careful
observer of the sun which he used in his
divination practices. Venus was a very
important celestial body in Aztec mythology as
well as Mayan. The Transit of May 25, 1518
would have been visible to him at sunset. It is
said that a jade figure at the British Museum
of the god Quetzalcoatl, an aspect of Venus,
wearing the Sun as his neck ornament, is a
memorial of this rare event. Since Montezuma
and the Aztec civilization were conquered by
Cortez in 1520, this would certainly have been
an ill-omen of impending doom!

The Modern Era of Transit Observations

We now arrive at the modern era of Venus transit observing as scientists first sorted
out the shape and scale of the solar system and planetary orbits, and then began to
make very accurate forecasts of where planets would be in the sky. Galileo Galilee in ca
1610 was the first human to actually see Venus as more than just a bright point of light
in the sky. With his telescope, he made the discovery that it has a disk shape that
changed its illumination phase just the way the Moon does as it circles Earth. This only
made sense if Venus orbited the Sun, and so Venus played a very important role in
confirming the heliocentric model of Copernicus. In September 1610, he sent an
anagram to a friend of his announcing his discovery which translates as: "The mother of
love [Venus] emulates the shapes of Cynthia [the Moon]".

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 Johannes Kepler, meanwhile, was shaking up
the world by his meticulous use of astronomical
data assembled by Tycho Brahe. The result was
his discovery of three important laws of planetary
motion, and later on, the publication of the
Rudolphine Tables in September 1627. These
tables were superior to commonly used tables
based on Ptolmey's epicycle models, and
included planetary position predictions to 1636.
What he discovered during these laborious hand
calculations was that Venus would pass in front of
the Sun in 1631, so he wrote a 'Notice to the
Curious in Things Celestial' to alert them to the
Venus transit of 1631 as well as a second transit to take place in the 1700's. The
December 6th 1631 transit was looked for by Gassendi from Paris but not seen. It was
actually not visible from Europe at all. Kepler himself died in 1630, but he had actually
missed a second transit of Venus which would occur 9 years later.

Transit of Venus December 4, 1639.

Jeremiah Horrocks (b. 1619) was an ‘amateur’ astronomer who had made numerous
planetary observations, and noticed that they didn’t agree with the established Tables
based on Kepler’s work.

His observations, and updated calculations, led to his predicting that on December
4, 1639, the planet Venus would pass across the face of the sun. This would happen 8
years after the previous ‘Transit of Venus’ that had been predicted by Kepler. Let's see
what he had to say in his own words, taken from the article that he wrote on the event:

"Anxiously intent therefore on the undertaking through the greater part of the 23rd, and
the whole of the 24th, I omitted no available opportunity of observing her ingress. I
watched carefully on the 24th from sunrise to nine o'clock, and from a little before ten
until noon, and at one in the afternoon, being called away in the intervals by business of
the highest importance, which, for these ornamental pursuits I could not with propriety

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 neglect. But during all this time I saw nothing in the sun except a small and common
spot, consisting as it were of three points at a distance from the center towards the left,
which I noticed on the preceding and following days. This evidently had nothing to do
with Venus. About fifteen minutes past three in the afternoon, when I was again at
liberty to continue my labors, the clouds, as if by divine interposition, were entirely
dispersed, and I was once more invited to the grateful task of repeating my
observations. I then beheld a most agreeable spectacle, the object of my sanguine
wishes, a spot of unusual magnitude and of a perfectly circular shape, which had
already fully entered upon the sun's disc on the left, so that the limbs of the Sun and
Venus precisely coincided, forming an angle of contact. Not doubting that this was really
the shadow of the planet, I immediately applied myself sedulously to observe it"

"...I wrote therefore immediately to my most esteemed friend William Crabtree, a

person who has few superiors in mathematical learning, inviting him to be present at
this Uranian banquet, if the weather permitted; and my letter, which arrived in good
time, found him ready to oblige me; he therefore carefully prepared for the observation,
in a manner similar to that which has been mentioned. But the sky was very
unfavorable, being obscured during the greater part of the day with thick clouds; and as
he was unable to obtain a view of the Sun, he despaired of making an observation, and
resolved to take no further trouble in the matter. But a little before sunset, namely about
thirty-five minutes past three, certainly between thirty and forty minutes after three, the
Sun bursting forth from behind the clouds, he at once began to observe, and was
gratified by beholding the pleasing spectacle of Venus upon the Sun's disc. ... but
Crabtree's opportunity was so limited that he was not able to observe very minutely
either the distance itself; or the inclination of the planet. As well as he could guess by
his eye, and to the best of his recollection, he drew upon paper the situation of Venus,
which I found to differ little or nothing from my own observation;...

I wrote also of the expected transit to my younger brother, who then resided at
Liverpool, hoping that he would exert himself on the occasion. This indeed he did, but it
was in vain, for on the 24th, the sky was overcast, and he was unable to see anything,
although he watched very carefully....I hope to be excused for not informing other of my
friends of the expected phenomenon, but most of them care little for trifles of this kind,
preferring rather their hawks and hounds, to say no worse; and although England is not
without votaries of astronomy, with some of whom I am acquainted, I was unable to
convey to them the agreeable tidings, having myself had so little notice... At Goesa, in
Zealand, where Lansberg lately flourished, it [the Transit] commenced at fourteen
minutes past three, and the Sun set at fifty-five minutes past three, consequently it
might have been seen there. But no one excepting Lansberg and his friend Hortensius,
both of whom I hear are dead, would trouble themselves about the matter; nor is it
probable that, if living, they would be willing to acknowledge a phenomenon which
would convict their much-vaunted tables of gross inaccuracy...In short, Venus was
visible in the Sun throughout nearly the whole of Italy, France, and Spain; but in none of
those countries during the entire continuance of the transit. But America! O fortunatos
nimium bona Si sua norit! Venus! Which riches dost thou squander on unworthy
regions, which attempt to repay such favors with gold, the paltry product of their mines.
Let these barbarians keep their precious metals to themselves, the incentives to evil,
which we are content to do without. These rude people would indeed ask from us too
much should they deprive us of those celestial riches, the use of which they are not able
to comprehend. But let us cease this complaint O Venus! and attend to thee ere thou
dost depart.'
Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov
 In 1663, James Gregory, a Scottish mathematician and astronomer, suggested that
a more accurate measurement of the Solar Parallax could be gained from observations
of the transit of Venus made from various widely separate geographical locations.

Sir Edmund Halley (1656-1742) realized

importance of transits in determining sun's distance
during 1677. During a stay on the island of Saint-
Helena, Halley observed a Mercury transit in that
year and made careful note of the times of entry
and exit of Mercury over the solar disk. He realized
that if a transit would be observed from different
latitudes on Earth, the different observers would
see Mercury cross the Sun along at a different
angle. This effect is known as parallax (this is even
more noticable for Venus transits, since Venus is
closer to us than Mercury, which increases the
difference in angles) and could be used to
determine an accurate Earth-Sun distance.Halley
published past and future transit predictions in
1691, then in 1716 he published a greatly refined
version of a paper originally read before the Royal
Society in 1691, entitled ‘A new Method of determining the Parallax of the Sun, or his
Distance from the Earth’. In the paper he championed the idea of scientists from
various nations observing the 1761 and 1769 transits of Venus in as many parts of the
world as possible. This, he argued, would result in a ‘certain and adequate solution of
the noblest, and otherwise most difficult problem’ of accurately establishing the distance
between the Earth and the Sun.

In 1716, Halley formally proposes Venus transit observations and shows how to use
them to find exact value of the astronomical unit - the distance from the sun to earth. In
his article published in the Philosophical Transactions and titled "A new Method of
determining the Parallax of the Sun, or his Distance from the Earth" he notes:

"We therefore recommend again and again, to the curious investigators of the stars to
whom, when our lives are over, these observations are entrusted, that they, mindful of
our advice, apply themselves to the undertaking of these observations vigorously. And
for them we desire and pray for all good luck, especially that they be not deprived of this
coveted spectacle by the unfortunate obscuration of cloudy heavens, and that the
immensities of the celestial spheres, compelled to more precise boundaries, may at last
yield to their glory and eternal fame."

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 Transit of Venus, June 5, 1761.
On June 5, 1761 the transit of Venus was observed by 176 scientists from 117
stations all over the world. The curious 'Black Drop Effect' was first spotted, and the
Russian astronomer Mikhail Lomonosov (see center panel of figure) was the first to
deduce that Venus had an atmosphere because of the beautiful halo of light that
surrounded its dark disk just as it crossed the edge of the
sun. This transit was not one of the best ones to observe
to determine the distance to Venus and the sun. It
actually took nearly 50 years for the astronomer Encke to
finally collect all of the observations, analyze them
mathematically, and report an improved estimate for the
distance of 95 million miles.

Some of the scientists were involved in spectacular

international events in carrying out their observations in
remote corners of the world. Most were French or
English, and the transit occurred during the peak of the
Seven Year's War between these two international
empires. Special letters of passage were carried by
these scientists so that they could safely pass into
'enemy' territory.

Here's what the newspapers had to say about this transit in a very short
announcement on June 8, 1761. By the way, written english used the letter 'f' instead of
's' in many words!:

"The tranfit of Venus over the Sun on Saturday laft was carefully obferred by many
curiouf Gentlemen and differ'd confiderably from every Computation made of it. Its
Emerfion was at about 35 Minutes after Eight, but the Morning being cloudy, was not
vifible in London til it had paff'd three Fourths of the Sun's Diameter."

Transit of Venus, June 3, 1769

.
"Projection of the Transit of
Venus over the Sun as observed
at Norrington in Pennsylvania
June 3, 1769."

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 The Distance to the Sun
Although you cannot measure this distance directly, it is possible to use the
Parallax Effect together with careful measurements of the transit of Venus to determine
the distance to Venus from Earth, and relate this directly to the predicted distance given
in terms of the distance from the sun to Earth, called the Astronomical Unit.

The sun is located at a distance of 150 million km, so if you were to view the
sun from the poles of Earth, a distance of 13,000 kilometers, the angular ‘parallax’ shift
would be about 18 seconds of arc. Mounting expeditions to Earth's North and South
Poles is an impractical experiment, especially for the technology available during the
17- 19th centuries! However, if you deployed ships to
islands separated by Earth’s radius, 6,378 km, this angular
difference would be 9 arcseconds. As a comparison, the
angular diameter of the sun is about 1,800 arcseconds.

Although there were many international expeditions

involved in these observations, the is perhaps the most
famous expedition at the time, under the lead of Captain
James Cook, who set up an observation post in Tahiti with
his ship, the Endeavour. The expedition astronomers setup
an observatory on what is now called "Point Venus".

Other expeditions were no so successful. The French

scientist Guillaume Le Gentil was a passenger on a
Spanish ship headed for Manila in May, 1766. Accused of
being a French spy, he managed to escape and find his
way to Pondicherry where the best transit observing was expected on French territory,
but after all this effort, the transit happened on a cloudy day. After nearly 12 years
abroad, and traveling nearly 70,000 miles, he wrote in his journal:

"I was more than two weeks in a

singular dejection and almost did
not have the courage to take up my
pen to continue my journal; and
several times it fell from my hands,
when the moment came to report to
France the fate of my operations."
Le Gentil’s journeys, carefully
documented in his diaries, are a
must-read, and recount his various
run-ins and near-imprisonment in
the hands of France’s English
enemies. He returned to France on
October 8, 1771, having been gone
for nearly 12 years.

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 Transit of Venus, December 8, 1874
Hundreds of photographs taken of this transit. This was the first use of the new
technology of photography, but few photographic plates were scientifically useful.
Congress allocated $75,000 for international scientific expeditions. Over $1 million
expended internationally. We now begin to see far more curiosity about this
phenomenon in the newspaper accounts.

December 9. The Chicago Daily Telegraph

"Hence the probability is that observations
of the transit of Venus in 1874, one which more
that one million dollars have been expended,
and involving the equivalent of not less than
200 years of labor on the part of one man, will
only reduce the uncertainty by about one-third
of its present magnitude".

December 10 Chicago Tribune. "All scientific men, and all others who are sufficiently
informed to respect scientific pursuits, will be rejoiced at the news that the transit of
Venus has been successfully observed at several stations. Fortunately the preparations
for this great event were so complete that failure was scarcely possible"

Photographic studies of the transit were extensive, but the bottom line seemed to be
that the measuring of the plates led to disappointing results in establishing the sun-earth
distance. The problem was in getting the plate scale accurately enough, and the
orientation of the plate to the sun.

December 31, 1874 Spectroscopic study of Venus first attempted, and reported in the
international journal Nature. They were unable to detect anything of interest.

Eight American expeditions were fitted out in 1874, organized by the Transit of
Venus Commission, with Simon Newcomb as Secretary. The U. S. Congress
appropriated funds totaling an astounding $177,000 for the expeditions. Although
Newcomb considered the result of the 1874 observations disappointing due to inherent
difficulties in the method, at the urging of Naval Observatory astronomer William
Harkness, in 1882 Congress once again
appropriated some $10,000 for improving the
instruments, and $75,000 for sending eight more
expeditions.

Transit of Venus, December 6

1882.
There was enormous public interest in this event.
Smoked glass and amateur telescopes abound.
Eventually, astronomers were able to get a distance
to the sun from earth of 92.4 million miles with an

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 uncertainty of about 1 million miles. Harvard Observatory astronomers tried to use a
spectroscope to identify the atmosphere of Venus but could find no spectral evidence
for such an atmosphere. A moon to Venus was also searched for but not found.
Astronomer Henry Draper died so suddenly that no one knew how to operate his transit
equipment. Among the public reactions to this event, the newspaper accounts give lots
of details:

1882 December 6 Philadelphia Enquirer.

"Scores of Columbia College students
wearing morter boards climbed to the top of
the new law-school building to catch a
glimpse."

1882 December 7. Boston Daily Globe

"Visit of Venus. She crosses the disk of the
God of Day. The spectacle is viewed through
telescopes and smoked glass'

1882 December 7. San Francisco Chronicle

"Transit of Venus: The Planet's Course
Across the Face of the Sun. A Grand Sight
From the Observatory'
- "Many of the residents of San Francisco
were noticed yesterday with a piece of smoked
glass to their eye, looking curiously at the sun,
between the hours of about sunrise and noon,
during which time Venus was visible; and even under these disadvantages without the
aid of a suitable telescope, it was still a grand and beautiful spectacle. All who missed a
view of the transit of Venus are to be commiserated, for should they live to be 100 years
old the chance will not come again occur."

1882. December 16 Scientific American "It is possibly the last time that so much
scientific stress will be laid upon the transit of Venus. For before the next one in 2004,
we have faith to believe that other and more accurate methods will be found for
computing the sun's distance"

In May, 1883 after considerable detective work, American astronomer Simon

Newcomb announced that Maximillian Hell was innocent of falsifying his data for the
1769 transit of Venus. Georgetown's Jesuit astronomer John G. Hagan, S.J. wrote to
Newcomb. "By this act you have obliged the Jesuits of all times and all places. It was
fitting that this act of justice should be reserved to an American astronomer, who stands
aloof from the petty quarrels of the old world."

In 1891, Newcomb's refined calculation of the distance between earth and sun was
finally produced, based on all of the assembled data from several transits. He concludes
that the distance is 8.79 =/- 0.051" .

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 William Harkness, an astronomer at the U.S.
Naval Observatory, also spent a considerable part
of his career analyzing the data, producing a value
for the solar parallax, and putting it in context of
other astronomical constants. This he did in his
lengthy monograph "The Solar Parallax and its
Related Constants," published in 1891 in
Washington Observations. Simon Newcomb in fact
used this value in his famous volume The
Elements of the Four Inner Planets and the
Fundamental Constants of Astronomy (1895), but
gave it a much lower weight than most other
methods. Harkness ultimately had the last, inspired
reflection about what was to come. The next transit
of Venus will occur, as Harkness put it will be
"when the June flowers are blooming in 2004,"

The transit of Venus also inspired many other creative avenues of expression at the
uniqueness of this event. John Philip Sousa (1854 to 1932) was very interested in the 1882
transit of Venus. In 1882. he wrote his 'Venus Transit March'. He didn't write it specifically to
commemorate the transit itself, but wrote it to honor the great American physicist Prof.
Joseph Henry who had died on May 13, 1878. The Smithsonian Institution in Washington
D.C. asked Sousa to write this march for the planned unveiling of the statue of Henry in
front of the Smithsonian Institution in 1883. The music was to be played while dignitaries
walked from the museum to a special receiving stand in front of the Smithsonian.

Sousa was a Freemason, as were many

'intellectuals' of that time. His march was performed at
a specific time and date: April 19, 1883 at 4:00 PM.
While 10,000 people and representatives from many
branches of government filed in a stately procession at
this propitious hour, the planet Venus, invisible to the
participants, had completed its arc in the sky and was
setting in the west. At the same time, Virgo was rising
in the east, and Jupiter was directly over head. Why
did this time and date get selected for the unveiling of
the magnificent bronze statue? In the mystical circles
in which Sousa and the event organizers orbited,
Venus was associated with the element copper,
Joseph Henry had used large quantities of copper to
create his powerful electromagnets, which at that time
operated some of America's newest technology. The
connection of the 'passing of Henry' commemorated by
the statue, and the 'passing of Venus' in the west may
have seemed like a fitting bond between two separate
worlds: human and cosmic.

Sousa's Transit of Venus March remains a

delightful, and rarely-played addition to Sousa's opus of compositions. The Transit of
Venus March never caught on during Sousa's lifetime. It went unplayed for more than 100
years after Sousa's copies of the music were destroyed in a flood. As reported in The
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Washington Post, Library of Congress employee Loras Schissel recently found copies of the
old sheet music for Venus "languishing in the library's files". In 2004, for the first time in
over a century, Souza's Transit of Venus march was re-performed in October, 2003 by the
Virginia Grand Military Band conducted by Mr. Loras Schissel. A recording of this march can
be heard on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t08ZXaA_0z0 . A detailed
description of its re-discovery at the Library of Congress can be found at their website
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/venus/venus-home.html

Sousa's March doesn't exhaust all of the musical possibilities for this event that can
be found. Other musical compositions written in 1874-1882 probably have something to do
with the transit of Venus in one way or another, especially since they 'appeared' at about the
same time as the 1874 and 1882 events! No other musical compositions with similar titles
are cataloged at the Library of Congress during the period.
Going back even earlier, at a time near the June 6, 1769 transit of Venus the British
Public Library has a copy of an old song ' Come ye lads and lasses with speed. The Transit
of Venus' published in London ca 1774 [G.307.(125.)] Although the author and
circumstances are unknown.

Considering how spectacular and mysterious the Transit seemed to most people, it's
not too surprising that some creative souls decided to capture their inspired thoughts in
poetry. Here is an excerpt of a poem reflecting on the 1769 Transit viewed during the
legendary Captain Cook Expedition.

'Welcomed the Maori, shuddered at their meat,

And in the galley watched them grill and eat.
Yet for all this, some arrow of disaster
Sped with the wisdom of that sailing master.
A paler shadow overhung the rocks,
Where Venus, still in transit, brought the pox.
Plague to the peoples, slaughter to the whales,
Bitter the fannings of Endeavour's sails!
Still, in the wake of unsought devastations,
Came the first stages of the wealth of nations.
Shepards and farmers, in their sober glory,
Began to write their unhistoric story."

Later-still, we have the charming poem ''The Flaneur: Boston Common, During the
Transit of Venus' written by American poet Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894). Here is a
short excerpt from this poem:

Grudge not to-day the scanty fee

To him who farms the firmament,
To whom the Milky Way is free;
Who holds the wondrous crystal key,
The silent Open Sesame
That Science to her sons has lent;
Who takes his toll, and lifts the bar
That shuts the road to sun and star.
If Venus only comes to time,
(And prophets say she must and shall,)
To-day will hear the tinkling chime
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 Of many a ringing silver dime,
For him whose optic glass supplies
The crowd with astronomic eyes, --
The Galileo of the Mall.

Dimly the transit morning broke;

The sun seemed doubting what to do,
As one who questions how to dress,
And takes his doublets from the press,
And halts between the old and new,
Please Heaven he wear his suit of blue,
Or don, at least, his ragged cloak,
With rents that show the azure through!

In later years, during the 20th century astronomers continued to study Venus
and found it to be a much different world than Earth. It was hardly our 'Twin' as had
been so often imagined based on its size and mass alone. In 1922, astronomers St.
John and Nicholson investigated spectrum of Venus near 5900, 6300 and 6867
Angstroms where oxygen should be detectable. No trace was found using a
sophisticated spectroscope. Twelve years later, a second team of astronomers were
able to detect carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for the first time. The reason that Walter
Adams and Theodore Dunham succeeded was that, because of the Doppler shift
between Venus and Earth, the wavelength shift between the carbon dioxide in Venus'
atmosphere and in Earth's atmosphere was so slight that only by this time were
spectroscopes sensitive enough to discern the difference in wavelength.

Radio observations of Venus during the 1960's indicated an enormous

o
temperature of 700 C, which was later interpreted by astronomers such as Carl Sagan
as evidence of a Greenhouse Effect. The atmosphere was dense (100 x Earth at sea-
level) and composed almost entirely of carbon dioxide; an effective greenhouse gas.
NASA's Mariner and Magellan spacecraft in the 1960's and 1970's eventually explored
the detail composition of the atmosphere, and using penetrating radar, created a high-
resolution map of the cloud-covered surface showing extensive volcanism and
cratering.

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 Appendix B
The Transit of Venus – June 8, 2004.
It was a long and historically eventful 122 years since it was last glimpsed by
humankind. It was a gap that was filled by technologies and scientific advancements
that could scarsely be dreamed of by the denizens of 1882 as they looked forward in
time. William Harkness, imagining June flowers blooming in time for the 2004 transit,
had long-since departed this world, as had all of the other humans who had seen this
astronomical event the last time. It is sobering to grasp astronomical times scales of this
magnitude and the flux of human events that utterly pass into history in a mere 122
years. But the new generations of observers were ready for its reoccurrence. The sheer
magnitude of this modern public event is hardly done justice in a short
recapitulation of its scope and impact world-wide. It would not be thousands of lucky
viewers who would watch it through smoked glass this time. It would be nearly 1 billion
people spanning all the major continents, and tied together by communications and
imaging technology that knit the transit of venus together into a single, global
experience.

Although astronomers had known the precise circumstances of this event for over
200 years, modern astronomical needs had long since bypassed a compelling research
focus to this modern event. There had come to pass much better technologies and
observing techniques for determining the distance from Earth to sun, to study the
Venusian atmosphere, and to determine its precise orbit around the sun. Despite the
intensive astronomical scrutiny of the past centuries, the modern scientific attitude
towards the Transit of Venus was one of jaded interest in a rare but utterly ‘mundane’
astronomical event. It would have, largely, passed unnoticed to humanity were it not for
the efforts of amateur astronomers, and a variety of education professionals across the
world who realized that there was still intense public interest in anything involving rare
planetary ‘alignments’. They also hoped that it might serve as a teachable moment for
millions of students around the world, who needed more awareness of science and
technology in a demanding world that now places a premium on ‘STEM’ careers of
every kind.

In June 2002, at a meeting of NASA educators at the Goddard Spaceflight Center,

Dr. Sten Odenwald, a NASA astronomer presented the 2004 Transit of Venus as an
opportunity for NASA to use this event to connect students and the general public to
themes in solar science and exploration. The planning for NASA's education activities
began in ernest in October 2002 with the selection of the Transit of Venus as the primier
education theme for NASA's 'Sun Earth Day' event. The program would produce an
educator resource folder containing education materials from NASA's many science
missions. There would be a series of workshops for teachers during the 2003-2004
academic year. To capture the excitement of this rare event, the Transit would be
webcast in real time from the Observatory in Athens, Greece so that millions of people
around the world could enjoy this event from their homes. Announcement of the Transit
of Venus and NASA's education intentions at the January, 2003 national convention of
the American Astronomical Society soon followed.

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 The Sun-Earth Day
program developed a number
of web-based resources to
support this event. These
resources are still available at
th NASA Sun-Earth Day
archive:
http://sunearthday.nasa.gov/2011/past
_days.php

The NASA education web-

based resources were so
heavily used by millions of
visitors that the traffic shut
down the NASA web servers
briefly!

NASA partnered with the Exploratorium

in San Francisco to conduct the webcast,
which can be found at
http://www.exploratorium.edu/venus/

The one-hour live Webcast from Athens

was viewed by over 100,000 visitors. The
program was hosted by Dr. Sten Odenwald
(NASA) and by Dr. Isabel Hawkins
(University of California) who discussed the
history of the transit, its scientific
importance, and gave a blow-by-blow
narration of the evant as it occurred.

Dr. Odenwald's colorful and illustrated

online diary of this event can be found at
the Astronomy Café website:

http://www.astronomycafe.net/Venus/VenusDiari
es.html

Plans are now in progress for NASA's Sun-Earth Day to feature the 2012 Transit of
Venus through a webcast from Hawaii on June 5-6, 2012, along with other educational
resources during the 2011-2012 academic year.

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 Appendix C
Transits in the News
The 1769 Transit of Venus.
Archived copies at the Library of Congress of The Boston Weekly Newsletter, The
Essex Gazette and the New York Chronicle revealed no articles about the Transit of Venus
for the period from June 2-5. Between June 8-15, The New York Chronicle did publish a
single drawing by Robert Harpur, which was reproduced in a letter to the Editor in the June
15-22 issue of The New York Chronicle on page 63 with the notation: "June 10 .Please
insert in your next paper the following scheme of the transit of Venus over the sun as
observed at Kings College on the 3rd xxx which will oblige your most humble servant
Robert Harpur." Following the drawing is a paragraph summarizing the contact times but
nothing more interesting.

Although the newspaper reportage of this event seemed to be non-existent or at best

brief and sporadic, this transit did not entirely come and go without leaving in its wake a
number of subtle but important changes in the way that American 'pre-Revolutionary'
science was conducted. Linda Kerber, in 1972, wrote an article "Science in the Early
Republic: The Society for the Study of Natural Philsophy" (William and Mary Quarterly 3rd
Ser. Vol 29, No 2 p. 264.) and tries to describe how....

"Conceptual changes in science were accompanied by a radical revision of possible roles

for scientists; the growth of full-time professionalism made it increasingly difficult to be an
amateur. Perhaps the last major occasion on which the advance of knowledge was seen to
depend on the contributions of the amateur was the observation of the Transit of Venus in
1769. That observation was, as Donald Fleming has remarked, "the symbolic act of
allegiance to science and learning". Those who observed the transits and made
measurements may have been amateurs, but they were not casual ones. In Providence,
Joseph Brown spent nearly one hundred pounds sterling on a telescope and other
equipment; he and Benjamin West accomplished the delicate, demanding task of calibrating
the instruments. West was primarily a bookseller and almanac maker, but he had a serious
interest in mathematics, and his reports of the transit are sophisticated. By the end of the
century, however, it was less likely that part-time participants could make contributions to
knowledge. the 'characteristic home of the American scientist' shifted from the private
laboratory or privately organized observations .. to the college."

The 1874 Transit of Venus

The impact of these transits on the average American was, however, not really made
clear until the next pair of transits in 1874 and 1882, when many domestic newspapers went
to great trouble to run detailed articles on the progress of various scientific expeditions to
distant lands. The 1874 Transit went off with barely a mention in many newspapers:

December 9 The Chicago Daily Telegraph

"Hence the probability is that observations of the transit of Venus in 1874, one which
more that one million dollars have been expended, and involving the equivalent of not
less than 200 years of labor on the part of one man, will only reduce the uncertainty by
about one-third of its present magnitude".

December 10 Chicago Tribune. "All scientific men, and all others who are sufficiently
informed to respect scientific pursuits, will be rejoiced at the news that the transit of Venus
Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov
has been successfully observed at several stations. Fortunately the preparations for this
great event were so complete that failure was scarcely possible…All scientific men, and all
others who are sufficiently informed to respect scientific pursuits, will be rejoiced at the
news that the transit of Venus has been successfully observed at several stations.
Fortunately the preparations for this great event were so complete that failure was scarcely
possible"

But by the 1882 transit, a far more rousing burst of interest seems to have been
unleashed. This sense of 'cosmic adventure' was infectious and caused many columnists
and reporters to wax poetic on these exotic events. Although articles tended to report the
details of the measurements as though the average citizen understood what these numbers
meant, occasionally articles would appear that captured some of the sense of excitement
during these events. The newspaper accounts of the 1882 transit were especially lucid and
fun to read. In the first one, from the San Francisco Chronicle (December 6, 1882) one can
almost hear the voice of Mark Twain!

The 1882 Transit of Venus

December 6 San Francisco Chronicle. "Why the astronomical community should be so

exercised over a planet's movements; why their emotions should culminate when a shadow
impinges upon or fades from the solar substance; why the transit of the planet should be
called apparent; why Professor This should perch himself upon a pile of volcanic rocks in
the Southern Pacific and Professor That shiver in the snows of Siberia to pry into an orbital
incident happening millions of miles from either - these or something like them, are
questions which the untutored many might wish to put to the erudite few."

December 6 Philadelphia Enquirer. "Scores of Columbia College students wearing morter

boards climbed to the top of the new law-school building to catch a glimpse."

December 7. Boston Daily Globe "Visit of Venus. She crosses the disk of the God of Day.
The spectacle is viewed through telescopes and smoked glass'

December 7. San Francisco Chronicle "Transit of Venus: The Planet's Course Across the
Face of the Sun. A Grand Sight From the Observatory' "Many of the residents of San
Francisco were noticed yesterday with a piece of smoked glass to their eye, looking
curiously at the sun, between the hours of about sunrise and noon, during which time
Venus was visible; and even under these disadvantages without the aid of a suitable
telescope, it was still a grand and beautiful spectacle. All who missed a view of the transit
of Venus are to be commiserated, for should they live to be 100 years old the chance will
not come again occur."

December 7 New York Times. "Across the Sun's Face. Crowds viewing the rare
phenomenon - smoked glass and telescopes in demand; 10 cents a sight. Telescopes at
every corner etc; 2000 people viewed it at the Berkeley School on Madison Ave.

In the following pages you will find reproductions of a few of the actual newspaper
articles that provide us with more insight to the way in which the coverage of the Transit of
Venus changed as time passed.

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 Appendix D
A Gallery of Transit Imagery

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 Galileo's drawing of the rings of Saturn and the phases of Venus ca 1609.

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 This is an image of an illustration of the 1769 Transit of Venus created
by Benjamin Martin. This exquisite illustration shows the part of the 1769
transit of Venus that could be seen from London. Benjamin Martin, an
eighteenth century British astronomy popularizer, highlighted the significance
of the transits in 1761 and 1769. Such texts demonstrate the public's interest
in calculating the size of the solar system and the astronomical mathematics
that made this possible.
Institutions of Astronomical Calculations Containing a Survey of the Solar
System, Benjamin Martin, London, 1773 (QB 42 .M36 1773)
(Courtesy of the Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum; Chicago IL)

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 James Ferguson's drawing of the Transit of Venus June 6, 1761 as viewed from
London. (Astronomy explained upon Sir Isaac Newton's Principle... London, c. 1764-
1773; Edinburgh, c. 1811-1841 (edited by Brewster)

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 Transit of Venus Christian Mayer
Expositio de transitu veneris ante discum solis Saint Petersburg, 1769
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 Sketch of the 1761 transit as seen by Nicholas Ypey. (Library of Congress). The
coronal details on the sun are not based on actual observations but added for
artistic impact.
Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov
 This is a sequence of observations of the 1761 Transit made by
Tobin Bergmann. It shows the 'black drop' effect in panels 4, 5 and 6.
published in the Philosophical Transactions 52, part 1 (1761), 227–228,
also reproduced in Kragh, H. The Moon that Wasn't: The Saga of Venus'
Spurious Satellite. Birkhäuser, 2008. P. 41.

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 Observations of the disk of Venus during the December 6, 1874
Transit of Venus made by amateur astronomer R. Hoggan using a 4-
inch telescope from the Hermitage Islet, Rodriguez.

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 Detailed drawings of the Transit of Venus in 1761 and 1769 by astronomer
Samuel Dunn at the Royal Greenwich Observatory, published in the Philosophical
Transactions, vol. 60, p. 65. Note the Black Drop effect in the right-hand views.

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 The cover of Harpers Weekly for April 28, 1883 showing children viewing the
1882 Transit of Venus using smoked glass.

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 An amusing cartoon of the Transit of Venus of 1882 in Harpers Weekly, The
caption reads 'Two successful observations by our artist of the Transit of Venus.
The text on the top sun reads 'Venus: How earth stares at me. It makes me feel
quite beautiful. Sol: Yes he has always been inquisitive". The lower sun disk reads
'Beauty spot on Old Sol.

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 This illustration by James Ferguson shows the locations from which the transit of
Venus could be observed on June 6, 1761, and local times at which the transit began and
ended. Engraving from Astronomy explained upon Sir Isaac Newton's Principles..., 1790.

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 Appearance of the disk of Venus as seen during the Captain Cook
expedition of 1874, published in the Philosophical Transactions, Vol. 61,
page 410.

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 The 1874 Captain Cook voyage to se the Transit of Venus, mentioned in
Harpers Weekly, December 26, 1874, including a woodcut of the ship on the
High Seas near Kerguelen Island

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Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov
 Benjamin Franklin's article on the Transit of Venus, June 3 1769. (Library of Congress)
Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov
 Sketches of the Transit of Venus, 1874, in a study of the Black Drop effect.
At the US Naval Observatory observed by astronomer Mr. Allerding.

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 First observation of the transit of Venus by William Crabtree in 1639.
Photogravure from an old etching. In "Essays in astronomy" - D. Appleton &
company, 1900. Original painting by Ford Madox Brown (1821-1893).
No actual images or paintings exist of this historic moment, and this
recreation is much-reproduced in contemporary historical treatments of the
event.

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 Artistic re-creation of Jeremiah Horrocks, who predicted the transit of
Venus. Illustration by C. L. Doughty.

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 Jeremah Horrock's observation of Venus transit across the Sun in
1639. From his work Venus in sole visa, printed 1662. published by
Jeremiah Horrocks and Jan Hevelius

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 Drawings of the Transit of Venus from Tahiti by Charles Green. The
Royal Society commissioned Charles Green, an astronomer from the Royal
Greenwich Observatory, to travel with Captain Cook to the South Seas. They
show the characteristic distortion of the image of Venus when near to the limb
of the Sun. This made the timing of the exact moment of contact difficult and
compromised the results of the observations. (Armagh Observatory 2004
Venus Transit Exhibition http://www.arm.ac.uk/venustransit/exhibit/section-
II.html )

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 Records of the Transit of Venus observed from Kew by Dr
Demainbray and members of the Royal family. They are remarkable
for their agreement, with only one second difference between all of
the observers, whereas at Greenwich, a similar set of observations
yielded a spread of times ranging over one minute. It must have been
difficult to disagree with the King. (Courtesy of Kings College, London)
http://www.arm.ac.uk/venustransit/exhibit/section-II.html

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 Illustration of the Venus transit of 1761 by Grandjean de Fouchy. Fig. 1 is the
Sun’s passage over the telescope’s field of view, Fig. 2 is the positions of Venus at
six different occasions
Grandjean de Fouchy, “Observation du passage de V´enus sur le Soleil,” M´emoire
de l’Acad´emie Royale des Sciences 63, 1761 (published 1763), 96–104, reproduced
in Kragh, H. The Moon that Wasn't: The Saga of Venus' Spurious Satellite.
Birkhäuser, 2008. P. 43

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 The location and path of the Transit of Venus in 1769 depends on your location on
Earth. This drawing by Christian Mayer shows how the position of Venus would appear
from various vantage points on Earth. (Christian Mayer, Expositio de transitu veneris ante
discum solis Saint Petersburg, 1769; Adler Planetarium Transit of Venus Exposition)

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 Benjamin Cole “Representation of the Transit of Venus over the Sun's Disk in
1761.” London 1761. Figure shows the visible path of Venus and the path of the Sun
and the Eastern and Western Limbs of the Arc. Drawn and engraved by Benjamin Cole,
a well-known engraver in 18th century London, and published in the Gentleman's
Magazine in 176161.

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 This is a detail from a large folding plate in James Ferguson's Astronomy
explained upon Sir Isaac Newton's Principles. First published in 1756, Ferguson
subsequently added material on the 1761 transit. This is from the edition of 1811,
edited by David Brewster.

The full engraving shows the geometry of the transit with the orbits of the Earth
and Venus. This detail shows Venus at both ends of its path across the solar disc, at
the two moments of internal contact with the limb of the sun. (Museum of the History of
Science; University of Oxford)

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

-

This illustration in a popular astronomy book by Richard Proctor

shows the tracks of the Transit of Venus from 1631 to 2012. It is one of
the only known drawings that connects 19th century observations with
21st century observers. Few popular science articles or books bothered to
look so far ahead!

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 David Rittenhouse's map of the transit of Venus, published in the first volume of the
Transactions of the American Philosophical Society Philadelphia, 1771. Elected to the
American Philosophical Society in 1768, David Rittenhouse led the group of astronomers
who observed the transit of Venus the following year. Rittenhouse's calculations of Venus's
transit, done with a surveying device of his own design, won him international acclaim after
their publication in the Society's Transactions, the first scientific journal published in North
America.

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 Captain James Cook's remarks on the June 6, 1769 Transit of Venus
http://acms.sl.nsw.gov.au/search/simpleSearch.aspx?authority=lcsh&ID=443572

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 A humorous cartoon by Robert Sayer's Viewing the Transit of Venus of 1793,
and one of the many satirical prints produced in England in the 18th century. It was
printed 24 years after the last Transit of Venus, so the point of the humor, though
probably obvious to the public at that time, is largely lost to us today!

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 An image of one of the 1700 plates taken worldwide during the 1882
transit, showing Venus crossing the disk of the Sun. Also visible is the
image of the ruled glass reticle mounted in front of the plate and the vertical
line in the centre is that of a thin silver plumb line that hung between the
plate and grid. The small dots on the picture were caused by defects in the
glass photographic plates.

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 A glass plate (numbered 5) from the British 1874 expedition to
Rodrigues Island. The identification has been scratched on the body of the
sun (in reverse here) and the plate also carries a paper label giving details
of the photographic process.

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 A detailed study of the disk of venus during the Transit of Venus of 1874 by
astronomer Russel, with particular interest taken in an attempt to find evidence for an
atmosphere around Venus.

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 On the 24th of November 1874 a group of Sydney astronomers landed
their pre-fabricated observatory, tents, instruments, bricks and cement at Two-
Fold Bay in New South Wales. They were their to observe the Transit of Venus
and over the next few days managed to lay down the building piers for the 7.5
inch Merz telescope and erect the wooden observatory we can see here with the
numbered planks.
Sitting in the chair is Rev. Scott Sydney Observatory’s first astronomer and
standing next to him is W. J. MacDonnell next to the 4.5 inch Cooke equatorial.
Further along we can see Mr. Watkins next to a 3.5 inch equatorial, Mr. Sharkey a
photographer from the Government Printing Office and finally, in the background,
the unnamed carpenter who accompanied the expedition.
Photography by John Sharkey, Eden, New South Wales, 1874

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 This engraving of Matavai Bay in Tahiti shows the bark
Endeavour anchored in the bay close to Fort Venus, the site from
which Captain Cook observed the transit of Venus in 1769.

The engraving is from the bestselling account of Cook's

circumnavigation that was published in John Hawkesworth's An
Account of the Voyages Undertaken by the Order of His Present
Majesty. For Making Discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere. This is
from a small format edition of 1789, much less lavish and expensive
than the original edition of 1773.

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 Top) Because of the accuracy of his charts and observations Cook was chosen
in 1769 to master the H.M.S. “Endeavour” and travel with an astronomer of the
Royal Society, to Tahiti to observe the transit of the planet Venus across the Sun.
The “Transit of Venus” was depicted on a Norfolk Island stamp issued in 1969.

Right) A modern-day artist’s impression of the observation of the 1769 transit of

Venus from Tahiti by Cook and the astronomer Charles Green on a stamp from
the Pacific islands of Tuvalu issued in 1979, the bicentenary of Cook’s death.
Green is presumably intended to be the kneeling figure looking through the
telescope.

Lower Left) New Zealand issued a set of four stamps to commemorate the
bicentenary of Captain James Cook’s first voyage to the South Pacific. The
lowest-value member of the set, pictured above, depicts Cook himself, the 1769
transit of Venus across the Sun, and an octant (a navigational instrument,
forerunner of the sextant) superimposed on the latitude line of 40 degrees.

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 The Transit of Mercury in 2003 was observed by the NASA solar
observatory, TRACE in this montage of images. The satellite orbits Earth, so its
changing parallax angle of view causes the straight path of the transit to form a
wavy line.

This dramatic photo montage is of the Transit of Venus in 2004 viewed by

the TRACE solar observatory in orbit around Earth. The images of the disk of
Venus are superimposed to show the wavy passage of Venus across the disk of
the sun as a consequence of the parallax effect. The larger diameter of Venus
compared to Mercury, along with its closer distance to Earth, makes the disk of
Venus appear noticeably larger than the Mercury Transit disks in the 2003
sequence.

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 In 2004, the 1-meter, Swedish Vacuum Telescope in La Palma captured
this dramatic image of the disk of Venus seen against the turbulent face of the
sun. With Venus in transit at the Sun's edge on June 8th, astronomers captured
this tantalizing close-up of the bright solar surface and partially silhouetted
disk. Enhanced in the sharp picture, a delicate arc of sunlight refracted through
the Venusian atmosphere is also visible outlining the planet's edge against the
blackness of space. The arc is part of a luminous ring or atmospheric aureole,
first noted and offered as evidence that Venus did posses an atmosphere
following observations of the planet's 1761 transit.

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 The Solar and
Heliospheric Observatory
(SOHO) took a series of
exposures of the 2003
Transit of Mercury in this
composite of images from 4
of its spectral bands. The
disk of mercury appears as
four exposures, followed by
a gap in time and another
series of exposures.

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 Mercury marched in front of the Sun from 19:12 UT on November 8 to
00:09 UT on November 9, 2007. Mercury was seen as a round-shaped disk
on the Sun. The Mercury Transit was observed in Asian countries including
Japan in the morning of November 9 local time. The solar space
observatory, Hinode, which is in a Sun-synchronous orbit around the Earth,
observed the event without atmospheric distortion in these x-ray images.

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 The NOAA Space Environment Center in Boulder, Colo., used the
NOAA GOES-12 satellite space weather instrumentation to observe the
passage of Venus in front of the sun. This transit of Venus ,which appears
as the nine black disks in the lower edge of the sun, is the first in 122
years.

The GOES observation, using its Solar X-ray Imager, is unique

because it records the sun’s 2 million degree, outer atmosphere in X-rays.
This observation is possible only from space, since Earth’s atmosphere
blocks out X-rays.

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 A graph of sunlight shows dips during sunspots, and the increases
that surround those dips due to plage (also called faculae). Also shown:
decrease in sunlight during the transit of Venus. The result was not a
surprise, but since Venus hadn't transited the Sun in more than a century,
the effect had never been measured. The drop in sunlight was similar to
what happens when a large sunspot crosses the solar surface.

Sunlight reaching Earth is monitored by NASA's Solar Radiation and

Climate Experiment (SORCE) satellite. The Venus transit proved to be a
good test of instrument sensitivity. "Because of its distance from Earth,
Venus appeared to be about the size of a sunspot" on June 8, said Gary
Rottman, SORCE Principal Investigator and a scientist at the Laboratory for
Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

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 In July 2008, the Deep Impact spacecraft, on its way to a rendezvous
with the Comet Hartley-2, captured these images of the Moon transiting the
disk of earth from a distance of 31 million miles. These observations allow
astronomers to get a feeling for what earth-like planets look like under
unusual observing circumstances where details about the surface and
environment are not available. (Deep Impact/EPOXI)

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 This panel illustrates the transit of the martian moon Phobos
across the Sun. It is made up of images taken by the Mars Exploration
Rover Opportunity on the morning of the 45th martian day, or sol, of its
mission. This observation will help refine our knowledge of the orbit and
position of Phobos. Other spacecraft may be able to take better images
of Phobos using this new information. This event is similar to solar
eclipses seen on Earth in which our Moon passes in front of the Sun.
The images were taken by the rover's panoramic camera.
Image credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell

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 The transit of the martian moon Diemos across
the sun as viewed from the surface of mars by the Rover
Opportunity on March 4, 2004.

In the photo, the Sun has angular diameter 20.6'

while Deimos only has 2.5'. Phobos by contrast usually
has an angular diameter of around 12' as seen from
Mars. Deimos took a little more than a minute to transit
the Sun, passing well off center and moving downward
and to the right; more central transits can take up to two
minutes from start to end

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 This image is a never-before-seen astronomical alignment of a moon
traversing the face of Uranus, and its accompanying shadow. The white dot
near the center of Uranus' blue-green disk is the icy moon Ariel. The 700-
mile-diameter satellite is casting a shadow onto the cloud tops of Uranus. To
an observer on Uranus, this would appear as a solar eclipse, where the
moon briefly blocks out the Sun as its shadow races across Uranus's cloud
tops.

This transit has never been observed before because Uranus is just
now approaching its 2007 equinox when the Sun will shine directly over the
giant planet's equator. The last time a Uranian equinox occurred, when
transits could have been observed, was in 1965. However, telescopes of
that era did not have the image sharpness required to view satellite transits
on Uranus. When Hubble was launched in 1990, the Sun was shining over
Uranus's far northern latitudes. Over the past decade Hubble astronomers
have seen the Sun's direct illumination creep toward equatorial latitudes and
the moons' orbits approach an edge-on configuration.

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 Astronomers can detect planets orbiting other stars by the dimming of
the star's light as the planet transits across its disk as viewed from Earth.

The above artist rendition shows such a planet, HD209458b which

orbits its star every 3.5 days. With an atmospheric temperature of over 2,000
K it is an inhospitable world several times the mass of Jupiter.

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 A simple geometric model based upon the ratio of the planet's
projected area and the area of its star allows astronomers to convert
the dimming of the star's light to a precise measure of the diameter of
the planet.

If the star's light dims by 1% or 1/100 of the star's normal

brightness, the planet must have a geometric area 1/100 of the star's
area so that the planet's diameter is 1/10 that of its star.

The figure above shows a planet passing across its star's

surface as viewed from Earth and causing a measurable diminution in
the star's brightness.

By measuring the brightness of over 140,000 stars every 30

minutes for 3.5 years, the Kepler Mission can detect exoplanet transits
for earth-like planets orbiting within the Habitable Zones of their stars.
During its first 40 days in orbit, it has already identified over 700
candidate planets in 2010, but at the scale of our own solar system,
most of these planets are inside the orbit of Mercury.

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 Appendix E
NASA's Kepler Mission
The Kepler Mission is a NASA space observatory designed to discover Earth-like
planets orbiting other stars. The spacecraft was launched on March 7, 2009. The mission is
named in honor of German astronomer Johannes Kepler. With a planned mission lifetime of
at least 3.5 years, Kepler uses a very sensitive instrument called a photometer developed
by NASA to continuously monitor the brightness of over 145,000 stars in a fixed field of view
towards the constellation Cygnus. The data collected from these observations will be
analyzed to detect periodic
brightness changes that indicate
the presence of planets orbiting
these stars that are transiting the
faces of these stars as viewed
from Earth.

In this area of the sky the

crowded star lanes of the Milky
Way are prominent, and among
these target stars there are literally
thousands that are similar to our
own sun in temperature (yellow)
and age, making the prospects for
discovering one of more planets
very high.

The Kepler photometer is so

sentitive that it can easily detect
the faintest stars in this survey as
they change their brightness by
only a few parts in ten thousand;
enough to catch the transiting disk
of a planet about he size of Earth.

Additional Mission Information:

Kepler main website - http://kepler.nasa.gov/

Discovery page - http://kepler.nasa.gov/Mission/discoveries/

News - http://kepler.nasa.gov/news/nasakeplernews/

Exoplanet Catalog - http://www.planetary.org/exoplanets/

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

 Appendix F
Additional Resources

NASA Sun-Earth Day – The Transit of

Venus - This NASA resource, developed for
the 2004 transit of Venus contains historical and
scientific information about the importance of
transits. Also links to webcasts and other
multimedia resources. In September, 2011 it will
be upgraded for the 2012 transit and provide
information about NASA activities

http://rst.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Chasing the Goddess of Love Across the

Sun - In this web exhibit, you can see historical
artifacts that document past transits of Venus.
http://www.adlerplanetarium.org/experience/exh
ibitions/past/goddessoflove

Smithsonian Institution Exhibition on the

Transits of Venus. Large resource of historical
information and unique books and illustrations.
http://www.sil.si.edu/Exhibitions/upcoming.htm

The Exoplanet Catalog - Detailed orbital

information and properties of over 300 known
planets outside our solar system

http://www.planetary.org/exoplanets/

NASA Kepler Mission - Latest exoplanet

Discoveries - 1200 planets detected so far!
http://kepler.nasa.gov/

Space Math http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Space Math @ NASA

Goddard Spaceflight Center
Greenbelt, Maryland 20771
spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

www.nasa.gov