Dear Colleagues,
The Venus transit was without any doubt a resounding success. Reports
received testify to an extremely large numbers of public events spread
over all continents and it appears that even the VT-2004 National Nodes
are struggling to get the full picture in their own area.
There are several indicators of this trend, the most obvious one being
perhaps the number of Web hits. Following the record impact of the
Mercury transit last year, the present one was more than ten times
higher, with more than 54 millions hits on the VT-2004 website and 1.75
terabytes of data delivered during an 8-hour interval, covering the
transit period. Thanks to good preparation, the VT-2004 website with
its hundreds of Akamai mirrors did not suffer the fate of several
smaller servers which collapsed under the load as was reported in the news.
Another way to measure the big success of the Venus transit is the
number of images which have appeared on many web sites: those from the
members of the VT-2004 Network, the listed webcast sites, the websites
linked directly from the National Nodes pages, etc. Particularly
welcome has been the large number of drawings made by children who
witnessed the Venus transit. These drawings are now deposited at the
VT-2004 Gallery and come from many different places, including, e.g.,
the Czech Republic, Luxembourg, Greece, Hungary, Portugal, Slovenia or
the United States. All drawings entered into the Gallery before June 30
will have a chance to win one of 25 unique VT-2004 T-shirts. And apart
from photos or drawings, the event has also inspired poetic expression
and a new section has been opened on the VT-2004 web site.
Another feature of the VT-2004 web site is the archive of the Central
Display which ran live for the full duration of the celestial event
with many timely photos and comments from professional astronomers.
Anybody who was unable to follow this, can still see the evolution of
the Central Display in this comprehensive archive.
Measuring the Earth-Sun distance in real time
An additional aspect of the VT-2004 programme, the real-time
measurement of the Astronomical Unit - that is, the mean distance
between the Earth to the Sun - was also a great success. More than 2500
observing teams have registered and at this date, almost 1300 have
already entered their observations of the times of the contacts, with a
total of 3700 timings so far. This exceptional enterprise - a
coordination of a large number of telescopes and instruments all over
the world - has never been attempted before and proved very successful.
During the event, and after, a real-time display showed the measured
astronomical unit as more data came in.
As could be expected, some contacts were easier to measure than others,
and in particular, the data concerning the first contact were rather
far off and the computed AU-value fluctuated as more and more
observations were entered in the database. In retrospect, it appears
that some observers posted their first contact measurements as if they
corresponded to the third contact, making the dispersion larger than it
really was. As soon as the second contact was measured, the measurement
of the astronomical unit stabilized pretty close to the real value,
149.6 million km, with a dispersion of about 2 million km. It is
perhaps somewhat surprising that the obtained value is so close to the
real one, therefore largely beating the uncertainty which plagued
historical measurements of this fundamental unit. One reason is most
certainly that in order to ensure maximum stability in this real-time
calculation, it was necessary to introduce - for this particular phase
of the project - scientifically more rigorous computations, within
which it was assumed that the initial value of the astronomical unit
was not too far from the real one. This rigorous mathematical method
apparently stabilized the solution faster than anybody expected.
In a next phase, a solution according to Delisle's or Halley's method
will soon be attempted once more timings have been received. This will
reflect in a more realistic way the errors by individual observers.
Further calculations will include the determination of the size of the
Sun, of the size of Venus, etc. by means of other algorithms. This will
allow gaining a complete picture of the characteristics of this large
and absolutely unique database collected during this exceptional
exercise. Observers have still until July 10, 2004 to send in their
timings in the VT-2004 database. A database which will also soon be
opened for everybody to use and apply their own tools or methods.
The Programme goes on
Finally, if the Venus transit is over, the VT-2004 programme isn't, and
by far. Apart from the living photo, drawing, writing and music
galleries, a video contest is being launched. In this, members of the
public - either as individuals or in teams - are invited to present a
video of maximum 8 minutes (in any European language but with an
English transcript of the manuscript) in connection with the Transit of
Venus on June 8, 2004. The video could either present the astronomical
event, the local event that was witnessed, including preparations for
the observations, reactions of participants and on-lookers, ... or it
could try to demonstrate sociological or historical aspects, or wider
scientific or philosophical issues, etc.
An international Jury will select, from all the entries received, 12
laureate videos which will be shown during the VT-2004 Final Event, to
take place in November 5-7, 2004 in central Paris (France), and made
available to the media. Two members of each laureate team will be
invited to this Final Event, during which the Jury will award the
prizes. The first prize of the video contest is a free trip for two to
the ESO Paranal Observatory in Chile. The VT-2004 organisers have
already received many expressions of interest in this contest from
different places.
The Final Event, which will take place during the European Science
Week, will be a true encounter between Science and Society during which
the VT-2004 programme and the public impact of the Venus Transit will
be discussed. No doubt this pilot project will serve as a very useful
guide to future ones whenever opportunities again present themselves.
The full text of VT-2004 Press Communication 07 (June 21, 2004), with
all the links, is available at
www.vt-2004.org/Media/vt-comm-07.html
Kind regards,
The VT-2004 International Steering Committee
  