Sky-gazers witness transit of Venus across India

A woman watching at the transit of Venus
through a telescope at Manipur University on Wednesday.

New Delhi/Kolkata / Imphal, June 6 (IBNS): India woke up a bit earlier on Wednesday to witness one of the rarest celestial phenomenon as planet Venus moved between the Sun and the Earth.

The phenomenon is known as transit of Venus and it occurs when the planet passes directly between the Sun and the Earth, becoming visible against the solar disk.

On Wednesday, sky gazers across the country saw Venus, that looked like a a small black disk moving across the face of the Sun during the transit.

Large numbers of excited sky watchers that included scientists and common people woke up early in different parts of India to experience the phenomenon.

In Manipur , the transit began visible from around 5.30 to 9.30 am. A large number people were seen in Manipur University complex where the Department of Physics had made elaborate arrangement for observation of the transit of Venus across the face of the Sun.

In Kolkata the transit became visible from around 4:52 am and people witnessed it till 10.21 am.

People were seen queuing up on their roof tops to catch a glimpse of the event.

"I loved it. I will not be able to see it again in my life so I looked at it over and over again," said school student Anup Roy.

"My father told me this is going to be a rare event and I was really excited about it," said another school student Reshmi.

"I woke up early today to see the phenomenon. I am feeling lucky that I will belong to a generation that has witnessed this rare celestial phenomenon," said Tanmoy Ghosh, a software professional from Kolkata.

The picture was similar in other parts of the country like Chennai, New Delhi and Lucknow, where people woke up early to witness the spectacle either from their homes or went to planetariums or other places where special arrangements were made for it.

However, cloudy sky in some parts of north India including Delhi reportedly restricted visibility on Wednesday.

The rare celestial phenomenon was observed from different corners of the world on June 5 and June 6.

The transit of Venus was witnessed from countries including Japan, Hong Kong and New Zealand.

"Throughout history, astronomers have creatively used nature's coincidences as opportunities to learn something new about the universe," said Natalie Batalha, Kepler mission scientist at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.

"Today is no different. As Venus crosses the disk of the sun, her shadow sweeps across the face of Earth in the same way that the shadows cast by distant exoplanets sweep across the face of the Kepler photometer."

Today, transit events are used to detect planets beyond the solar system. NASA's Kepler space telescope continuously measures changes in brightness of more than 150,000 stars to detect when a planet passes or transits in front of a star.

Kepler does not directly image distant planets, as they are too far away.

Different size planets block different amounts of starlight. Kepler's exquisitely precise photometer, or light sensor, is designed to detect fractional changes in brightness. For an Earth-size planet transiting a sun-like star, the change in brightness is only 84 parts per million.

It is one of the rarest phenomena as occur in a pattern that repeats every 243 years, with pairs of transits eight years apart separated by long gaps of 121.5 years and 105.5 years.

The previous transit was seen in 2004 and it will next occur on December 2117.