Movies from the Venus transit
These movies are made from images acquired with the Swedish 1-m Solar
Telescope on La Palma, which belongs to the Royal Swedish Academy of
Sciences. They were taken at a wavelength of 705 nm which corresponds
to deep red light.
Silhouette
Venus is seen moving against the background of the solar disk.
The speckled pattern on the sun is granulation, an effect of
convective motions. The movie covers the time interval of
07:44 to 07:57 UT on 8 June 2004.
- mpg (0.7
Mbytes) To play this movie with e.g. mplayer you may wish to specify
the aspect ratio to 444:400.
- animated
gif (25.5 Mbytes)
- jpegs (~75 Kbytes/frame) These jpegs
have higher resolution than the gif and mpg versions.
- tar (9.5
Mbytes) The jpegs in a tar archive..
Egress
This movie shows the egress of Venus from the solar disk. The
shivering and occasional fuzziness is due to turbulence in the Earth's
atmosphere - what astronomers call 'seeing'. Note the moment of bad
seeing around frame 1713. You can see a hint of the notorious 'black
drop' effect that confused the observers trying to time the contact
during the earlier transits. By frame 1728 the seeing is better again
and 3rd contact is close to frame 1730. (The frame numbers correspond
to the jpeg file numbers.)
- mpg (3.4 Mbytes).
To play this movie with e.g. mplayer you may wish to specify the aspect
ratio to 606:546.
- animated gif
(206 Mbytes). Large file! Use this only if you can't make the mpg version work.
- jpegs (~10 Kbytes/frame).
- tar (9.7 Mbytes).
The jpegs in a tar archive..
Ring
This is a close up of a detail of the EGRESS movie. The image contrast
has been changed to show the elusive aureole outlining the disk of
Venus. It is caused by sunlight being refracted towards us in the
atmosphere of the planet. It has been described by some historical
observers, though the reports are mixed with spurious light effects
caused by imagination or inferior telescopes. Also here one notices
the shivering due to 'seeing'.
- mpg (0.8 Mbytes).
To play this movie with e.g. mplayer you may wish to specify the aspect
ratio to 700:250.
- animated gif
(28.5 Mbytes).
- jpegs (~12 Kbytes/frame).
- tar (1.9 Mbytes).
The jpegs in a tar archive.
Time-stamp: <2004-06-10 01:43:21 mats>
