The Transit of Venus is a rare astronomical event. During a transit, Venus's orbit passes directly between the Sun and the Earth. This blocks some of the light from the Sun, causing Venus to look like a shadow on the disk of the Sun as seen from Earth. These transits occur in pairs, with Venus crossing the disk of the Sun twice, 8 years apart. The first transit of this pair occurred in 2004; This was truly a once in-a-lifetime chance to see this rare astronomical event!
The Caltech Astronomy Outreach group organized a large "star party" for the transit event. We broadcast feeds of the transit from the solar telescope on top of Linde+Robinson on Caltech campus, as well as live web feeds from telescopes on Mauna Kea, Hawaii and from NASA headquarters.
In addition, we had three small telescopes set up on the athletics field behind the Cahill Center with special solar filters installed so guests could view the transit directly through the eye piece. Two of these telescopes were reserved for guests who RSVP'd for a telescope reservation on our website. The third was open to guests who did not RSVP.
We also had projections through several telescopes as well as special "eclipse" glasses that allowed visitors to look at the transit without magnification. In addition, several faculty members gave short talks in Hameetman auditorium inside Cahill on astronomy research being done at Caltech - including talks about the Sun and how transits of planets around other stars (exoplanets) allow astronomers to find and characterize other worlds.
This page shows an image of the sun taken by the department's 14-inch Celestron telescope, located on the rooftop of the Cahill Center on the Caltech campus. Starting at approximately 3:07pm on June 5, 2012, the planet Venus was seen to transit the face of the Sun.
