What Does "Venus in Transit" Look Like?

A little after 6 p.m. Tuesday, residents in the metro Atlanta area will have an opportunity to witness one of the rarest celestial events: a transit of Venus - when the planet is backlit as a dot moving across the surface of the sun.

One of the best seats in the house is at the Georgia Perimeter College observatory. The Dunwoody Campus is at 2101 Womack Road and the domed-shape observatory is located just west of the campus.

The event is free. That is, if the weather cooperates. The local observatory will cancel the event if the skies are too overcast. An accuweather.com forecast predicts storms this afternoon that could give way to partly sunny skies by 5 to 6 p.m.

There are an array of other sky watching events in the area and, below, are links to live video streams of the event, which will be especially useful if it can't be viewed here because of the weather.

Stone Mountain will hold an event from 5-8 p.m. The park has partnered with the Atlanta Astronomy Club to give folks a chance to see it. There will be ten large solar-filtered telescopes set up on top of of the mountain. Participants will hear Atlanta Astronomy Club members describe the event.

Additionally, the Grant Park Conservancy also is having a Transit of Venus viewing party, and the Astronomy Club of Atlanta will be at the Fernbank Science Center.

Often referred to as the "Evening Star" or "Morning Star," Venus is the brightest natural object in our sky after the Sun and the Moon. As the second planet from the Sun, it's closer to the Sun than the Earth is. 

A "transit" of Venus occurs when Venus passes between us and the Sun in such a way that we can see Venus's silhouette backlit by the Sun's brilliant light. It last happened in 2004, but it won't happen again until 2117. Unless you plan to shatter some human longevity records, this is your last chance.

Were Venus either large enough or close enough to block out the Sun's light as it passed, we would call this event an eclipse, as we do when the Moon passes between the Earth and the Sun. Venus, however, is a little bit smaller than the Earth and about 27 million miles away. When its tiny silhouette is viewed against the Sun, which lies another 66 million miles beyond, it can offer viewers a dramatic sense of the solar's system's vast scale.

Assuming sufficiently clear skies, the transit will be visible for us starting at about 6:04 p.m. on Tuesday and will remain so until the sun sets. Those in the central and western U.S. will be able to enjoy it longer, while viewers in Alaska, Japan, and large sections of Australia, China, and Russia will be able to see it in its entirety. By the time the Sun rises on the East Coast on Wednesday, Venus will have completed the transit.

How to watch
Never look directly at the sun with your naked eyes. You can damage your eyes. Likewise, viewing the sun with either binoculars or a telescope can direct the sun's magnified rays directly into your eyeball and cause serious injury ― think about what happens to ants under a magnifying glass.

Sunglasses do not provide sufficient protection. If you know someone who works in plumbing or construction, ask them if they have any  No. 14 welder's glass. You can look directly at the sun through this material without risking injury.

If you have a tripod or a partner and a pair of steady hands, you can use binoculars to project an image of the Sun onto a white piece of paper. Remember, don't look through your binoculars at the sun!

There are several places to watch the transit of Venus online:

• The Slooh Space Camera will offer an eight-hour webcast of the transit that includes real-time video feeds from 10 telescopes around the world.
• Astronomers Without Borders will carry a video stream of the transit from the Mount Wilson Observatory in California.
• NASA will offer a live video feed from Mauna Kea observatory in Hawaii with expert commentary.
• The San Francisco Exploratorium will host an online video stream from the Mauna Loa telescope in Hawaii.

Lastly, there's Don Pettit, an astronaut currently aboard the International Space Station. Pettit's not doing a video feed, but he will become the first person to ever photograph a transit of Venus from outer space.