[Chaos-l] Fwd: Transit of Venus Project

[Jayme Hanzak]

Hi everyone! 

The following message just came through on the History of Astronomy 
listserv I subscribe to. 

I thought CHAOS members would be interested in it as well. 

all the best, 

Barbara Becker 
======== 

Message from Bill Sheehan: 

From: Bill and Debb <sheehan41 at charter.net> 
Subject: Transit of Venus Project 

Date: Sunday, March 6, 2011, 12:02 PM 


Dear Colleagues, 


   A number of us, following the AAS meeting in Seattle, have become 
interested in coordinating efforts internationally for purposes of 
observing the transit of Venus in 2012, the last to occur during our 
lifetimes.   We are attempting to organize ourselves under a common 
umbrella organization tentatively called "The Transit of Venus 
Project" (until a better name can be found). 


   As all of you are aware, the 2012 transit will be extremely 
advantageous for observers, since almost all the most populated areas 
of the Earth will be able to see at least some of the transit (the 
only land masses excepted are the tip of Spain, the western part of 
Africa,  the eastern part of South America  and Antarctica).  In 
addition to high-tech observations of the transit (including some 
from space) such as were made in 2004, we wish to emphasize the 
singular importance of the transits in the history of astronomy and 
in the geographical exploration of the Earth, which led to massive 
preparations and daring expeditions in the Eighteenth Century in 
pursuit of the Halleyan project of determining the solar parallax. 
 The level of interest and commitment at the time was comparable to 
that of the Race to the Moon in our own recent history.   


   We are hoping that any of you who are interested in becoming 
involved-whether as a planner and coordinator or as a participant or 
both-will apprise us of your level of interest and the status of your 
personal preparations and plans to observe the transit.  We would 
also ask you to suggest the names of others who may be interested in 
participating.  Our goal is ultimately to have observers stationed 
throughout the world, and are especially eager to have observers 
stationed at sites important historically during past transits 
(Steven van Roode's web page on this subject is extraordinarily 
complete) and those who are able to emulate past observations using 
historical instruments.  Your response to this e-mail will result in 
your being kept in the loop-and  future communications will probably 
include a regular (monthly, bimonthly?) organ for coordinating these 
activities. 




   Sincerely, 


   William Sheehan, on behalf of the "Transit of Venus Project" 
-- 
Dr. Barbara J. Becker 
History Department 
200 Murray Krieger Hall 
University of California, Irvine 
Irvine   California   92697 
http://eee.uci.edu/clients/bjbecker 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://rtpnet.org/pipermail/chaos-l/attachments/20110307/6bcc85bd/attachment.html>