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Wednesday, Jun 09, 2004

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National

Where weather played spoilsport

By P. Sunderarajan

NEW DELHI, JUNE 8. They came. They saw. But, they could not conquer. A team of astronomers, who had flown in from the United States specially to view the rare transit of Venus across the Sun, were in for some disappointment as the weather suddenly turned inclement a little past noon and remained so for over two hours.

The team from the University of New Dakota and the Pennsylvania State University had come equipped with the latest instruments, as Delhi offered one of the best sites for the viewing and recording of the rare celestial event.

The entire transit, spread over six hours, was expected to be visible from Delhi. In the U.S., on the other hand, the transit was visible only for about half-an-hour and that too at its fag end.

Led by Timothy R. Young, Assistant Professor of Physics at the University of New Dakota, the scientists had pitched their tent on the lawns of the U.S. Embassy since early morning.

As expected, they got a very good picture of the beginning of the transit and all went fine till a little past noon, when all hell broke loose.

Even as the sky turned brown and then grey, high-speed winds suddenly swept across, bringing down a makeshift canopy and threatening to topple the carefully placed telescopes and other equipment.

The main aim of the scientists was to track the changes that took place in the brightness of the Sun because of the movement of Venus in front of it, with a view to help detect planets outside our solar system, particularly those that were similar to the Earth in size.

Talking to reporters, Mr. Young said the study was expected to be useful, since planets outside the solar system were too dim and therefore it was very difficult to detect them directly.

The phenomenon of transit can help overcome the problem in an indirect way. After all, when a planet passes in front of its parent star, it blocked a part of its light.

The dimming of the star is detectable, though barely; just one per cent for a giant planet such as Jupiter and 0.01 per cent for a planet of the size of the Earth.

Understanding the pattern of changes that took place in the brightness of the Sun because of the Venus transit is, therefore, expected to provide a useful tool while analysing the patterns of changes observed in other stars when their planets cross their path.

In 2007, NASA has proposed to launch a mission named after renowned astronomer Keppler, under which a space telescope will search for planets similar in size to the Earth in space. The telescope will keep a watch on about 100,000 stars similar to our Sun with the aim of detecting their planets.

The results of the study conducted today could help in that mission.

Mr. Young said though it would have been good if the weather had remained fine, the disruption would not affect the study, since what happened at the beginning and end of the transit was more relevant and there were no problems then.

Also, similar data was being collected at a site in Greece and with the help of the SOHO satellite launched jointly by the European Space Agency and NASA in 1995.

Transit witnessed in Guwahati

PTI reports:

Barring a three-hour interruption due to a cloud cover, sky-gazers in Guwahati witnessed today the rare celestial phenomenon.

The atmosphere was festive as more than 2000 people, mostly students, queued up in front of the four telescopes fitted with solar filter at the Guwahati planetarium to witness the rare event occurring after 122 years, the Pragjyotish Amateur Astronomers Association secretary, U.N. Deka, said.

The event started here at 10.46 a.m. but unfortunately there was a thick cloud cover from 12.45 p.m. to 3.05 p.m. when the event was not visible, Mr. Deka said.

However, from 3.05 p.m. the clouds cleared to enable a full view of the transit which ended at 4.50 p.m., he said.

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