2004 SPACE SCIENCE VIDEOTAPES |
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Tape Title | Record ID | Date Produced | TRT: |
Synopsis |
| VENUS' HISTORIC RENDEZVOUS WITH THE SUN | G04-025 | 6/7/04 | 21:24 | June 8 marks a rare twice-in-a-century event as Venus crosses the face of the Sun. No one alive has ever seen one - the last two were in 1874 and 1882. Venus will be visible with the naked eye (proper eye protection required) against the Sun's disk from the U.S. east coast and Alaska for about an hour after local sunrise. Transits held massive significance in the past when scientists sought to measure the solar system and led grand expeditions around the world to make momentous (and competitive) measurements. The next transit of Venus will be visible throughout the U.S. in 2012; after that Venus won't pass our way again until 2117 and 2125. The event is an important one to the NASA Education community as thousands of schools will make observations and explore other aspects like American history, math, and astronomy. Besides seeing the real thing, observations of the event as it progresses will be available on the Internet and on a live television feed from Athens, sponsored by NASA and the Exploratorium.
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TAPE CONTENTS: |
| ITEM (1): Venus Transit Preview - The most well known transit is a solar eclipse, when the Moon passes between the Sun and Earth, but transits also occur from moons or lunar shadows on other planets like Jupiter and Saturn. Planetary transits like that of Venus are incredibly rare due to the degree of tilt in Venus's orbit, which means it usually passes by the Sun above or to the side of Earth's periphery. The best views of the 2004 transit are from Europe, Asia, and Africa.
Courtesy: NASDA/NASA
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| ITEM (2): 2003 Mercury Transit From Space (SOHO) - May 7, 2003 was a sort of preview for the Venus Transit. Mercury transits are more common but considerably less spectacular than the view of Venus - it appears 30 times smaller and is too small to be seen with the naked eye (it was about 1/160 of the Sun's diameter). NASA spacecraft were able to observe all six hours of the event, though. Mercury transits occur about 13 times per century. This collection of images is from the MDI instrument on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). Courtesy: NASA/ESA
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| ITEM (3): Mercury Transit Seen in Closeup (TRACE) - NASA's Transition Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE) got a closer view of the Mercury Transit. TRACE orbits Earth at a height of about 600 km (373 miles). Like SOHO, TRACE's science goal for the transit event was to prove that cool material exists much further above the solar surface than theory predicts.
Courtesy: NASA/LMSAL
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| ITEM (4): 1882 Transit Observations - The U.S. Naval Observatory and Transit of Venus Commission sent eight parties around the world to observe the 1874 and 1882 transits in order to determine the scale of the solar system. Eleven of the 1,700 dry collodion emulsion exposure plates still survive from the 1882 American expedition. That same year the French organized ten expeditions to places as disparate as Mexico, Haiti, Florida, Chile, Cape Horn, and Martinique.
Courtesy: U.S. Naval Observatory
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| ITEM (5): Transit's Role in History (reporter pkg. from JPL) - In 1716, Edmond Halley realized that Venus Transits could provide the size of the solar system. If two observers at different points on Earth could follow the transit, the distance between the Sun and the Earth could be calculated by comparing the angular differences of Venus's path with the geographic distances between the observers. A sort of 'space race' emerged for the 1769 transit with various international expeditions including Captain Cook's to Tahiti. His led to the first approximate distance to the Sun and by extension, to the rest of the planets. The number was later refined to today's measurement of 93 million miles.Ê
Courtesy: NASA
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| ITEM (6): B-Roll of Venus - Venus and Earth are similar in size, mass, composition, and distance from the Sun. But Venus has no ocean, and its carbon dioxide atmosphere traps heat creating a greenhouse-like world with temperatures hot enough to melt lead and a surface pressure 90 times that of Earth. It completes one rotation every 243 Earth days and orbits the Sun every 225 days. Over 1,000 volcanoes dot the surface and lava flows create channels that extend for hundreds of kilometers. The U.S. and Russia have observed it sporadically since 1962 with orbiters and landers.
Courtesy: NASA
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| ITEM (7): Transits & Planet-Hunting - Transits still have important scientific implications. NASA's 2007 Kepler mission hopes to discover smaller Earth-like planets outside our solar system by looking for tiny dips in the brightness of a star when a planet crosses in front of it. Periodic brightness dips will signal the presence of a planet in orbit around the star, even if the planet itself is not directly visible. Kepler will observe about 100,000 stars in a patch of sky in the direction of the constellation Cygnus for four years, making brightness measurements every 15 minutes. As many as 100 such planets could exist.
Courtesy: NASA
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| ITEM (8): Spacecraft B-Roll (TRACE spacecraft) - While two spacecraft observed the Mercury Transit in 2003, only TRACE will be in the right position to witness the historic Venus Transit. Sensitive to ultraviolet and extreme-ultraviolet wavelengths of light that are invisible to the human eye, TRACE scientists are given dynamic views of solar explosions and coronal mass ejections (CMEs). Images of the event from TRACE will be uplinked to NASA TV as soon as they're obtained and processed.
Courtesy: NASA/ LMSAL
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| ITEM (9): Soundbites: Fred EspenakK, NASA Astronomer
Courtesy: NASA
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| ITEM (10): Soundbites: Dr. Sten Odenwald, NASA Astronomer
Courtesy: NASA
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