Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Watch the 2012 Transit of Venus Live!

Transit of Venus by NASA's TRACE spacecraft Image credit: NASA/LMSAL
Transit of Venus in 2004 by NASA's TRACE spacecraft. Image credit: NASA/LMSAL

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Venus will make a rare transit across the face of the Sun on June 5/6, 2012 and for this historic event, Universe Today will be coordinating unprecedented live coverage. Starting at 20:00 UTC (2:00 p.m. PDT, 5 pm EDT) on Tuesday, June 5, a live 8-hour webcast will provide views from around the world using multiple telescopes along with commentary from astronomers, space scientists and other special guests.

Viewers will also have the chance to interact and ask questions about this uncommon event to learn more about its significance in aiding our understanding of the Solar System.

Universe Today’s Fraser Cain will be teaming up with astronomers Dr. Pamela Gay, Dr. Phil Plait (the Bad Astronomer) and many more special celebrity guests. During this 8-hour marathon, they will provide information on how you can safely observe this event for yourself, as well as sharing telescope views from around the world (New Zealand, Canada, California, Nevada, Arizona, North Carolina, and more). These experts will be discussing why these transits are so rare, how they’ve been used to explore the Solar System, and what astronomers can learn from this event.

The transit will be broadcast as a live Google+ Hangout on Air, and on YouTube live. It will also be embeddable on any website that wants to share live coverage of the transit.

We’ll also be showcasing photographs and other coverage from the public, astronomers and even space telescopes.

To participate, share your views or ask questions, go to the coordinating page on Universe Today, UniverseToday.com/transit.

You can also view it on the Virtual Star party Google+ page, or on Universe Today’s YouTube live feed.

You can also follow the action via Universe Today on Twitter @universetoday and use the hashtag #venushangout

A transit like this occurs when Venus passes directly between Earth and the Sun. Viewers will see Venus as a small dot gliding slowly across a portion of the Sun. Historically, viewed by Captain James Cook and other famous astronomers from days gone by, this rare alignment is how we originally measured the size of our solar system.

There have been 53 transits since 2000 B.C. but only six transits of Venus have been observed since the invention of the telescope more than 400 years ago. There were no transits of Venus from 1882 to 2004, and the next one won’t take place until 2117. The last time the event occurred was on June 8, 2004, and was viewed by millions worldwide. This year, observers on six continents and a small portion of Antarctica will be in position to see at least part of it.

But no matter where you live or what sky conditions are in your area, you can watch live with this special coverage!

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Weekly Space Hangout for May 31, 2012

In this episode of the Weekly Space Hangout, we’re joined by special guest Robert Nemiroff from Astronomy Picture of the Day. We also talked about the return of the SpaceX Dragon capsule, a manned mission to Venus, nomadic planets and the announcement of the Square Kilometer Array. Our team included: Amy Shira Tietel, Jason Major, Alan Boyle, Nicole Gugliucci and Robert Nemiroff.

We record a new episode of the Weekly Space Hangout every Thursday at 10:00 am PT / 1:00 pm ET. You can watch us live and ask us questions, right on Google+. Circle Fraser on Google+ to see when the recording starts.

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Weekly Space Hangout – May 3, 2012

Here’s the May 3, 2012 edition of the Weekly Space Hangout, where we were joined by our usual cast of space journalists, including Alan Boyle, Nicole Gugliucci, Ian O’Neill, Jason Major, Emily Lakdawalla and Fraser Cain. We were then joined by two new people, Amy Shira Teitel from Vintage Space and Sawyer Rosenstein from the Talking Space Podcast.

It was an action-packed episode talking about asteroid mining, SpaceX delays, Shuttle retirement, killer black holes, supermassive planets (aka brown dwarfs), Enceladus/Dione flybys, and a new mission to Jupiter.

Want to watch an episode live? We record the Weekly Space Hangout every Thursday at 10:00am PDT, 1:00pm EDT. The live show will appear in Fraser’s Google+ stream, or on our YouTube Channel. You can also watch it live over on Cosmoquest.org.

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Astronomy Cast Episode 259: Exploration of Venus

Mars gets all the attention, but you might be surprised to know how much Venus has been explored. From initial telescope observations and the early flyby missions, to the landers… yes landers and orbiters. We know quite a lot about Venus, but the planet sure didn’t give up its secrets easily.

You can watch us record Astronomy Cast live every Monday at 12:00 pm PDT (3:00 pm EDT, 2000 GMT). Make sure you circle Fraser on Google+ to see it show up in the feed. You can also see it live over on our YouTube channel.

If you’d like to be notified of all our live events, sign up for our notification email at Cosmoquest. You can check out our calendar here.

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Astronomy Cast, Ep: 258: Viking Landers

Last week we talked about the orbiter portion of the Viking Missions. But that was only half the adventure. Each Viking spacecraft carried a lander as well, which touched down on the surface of Mars, searching for evidence of past and current life. And what they discovered is still up for debate.

We record Astronomy Cast live every Monday at 12 pm PST / 3 pm EST / 2000 GMT. If you want to join in our recording, just make sure you’ve got Fraser circled on Google+, then the show will show up in your stream. You can also watch us live at Cosmoquest.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Watch Live Webcast of Venus-Pleiades Conjunction April 4, 2012

Venus on April 3, 2012, when it last passed over the Seven Sisters cluster. Credit: Bob King

There’s a nice meetup in the heavens tonight: bright Venus is snuggling up to one of the most famous star clusters, the Pleiades. The Slooh Space Camera is broadcasting a live, real-time feed of the most famous star cluster in the heavens, the Pleiades, meeting up with our nearest and brightest planetary neighbor, Venus. Slooh’s coverage will begin on Wednesday, April 4th starting at 1:30 PM PDT / 4:30 PM EDT / 20:30 UT. (This was originally scheduled for April 3rd, but was rescheduled due to high humidity at Canary Islands observatory off the coast of Africa.) The broadcast can be watched here, or accessed at Slooh’s homepage or by visiting Slooh’s G+ page, where you will be able to see the panel interact live via G+ Hangouts On Air.

If skies are clear, you can see the conjunction for yourself by looking toward the west in the constellation Taurus, after sunset, using binoculars. If you can get images of the event, we’ll post views of them. Share them on Universe Today’s Flickr page.

Continue reading “Watch Live Webcast of Venus-Pleiades Conjunction April 4, 2012”

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Weekly Space Hangout — March 29, 2012

Pamela Gay hosts (with a still photo because the Internets were not with her) the Weekly Space Hangout featuring Emily Lakdawalla, Ian O’Neill, and Alan Boyle talking about results from recent science conferences including mountains on Mercury, metal exoplanets, and rain on Titan, as well as other fun stuff like Jeff Bezos finding Apollo 11 engines on the ocean floor.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Join in the Discussion of the Future of Human Spaceflight, Live from SEDS

What’s the latest on the future of human spaceflight and exploration? Join in on the discussion with a live videostream event from the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS) Spring Space Forum, taking place this week at Purdue University on March 29, 2012, starting at 8:30 am EDT.

You’ll hear from the leaders in commercial space endeavors, such as former NASA space shuttle manager Mike Moses, currently VP of Operations at Virgin Galactic and former astronauts now working in commercial space, such as Chris Ferguson now at Boeing and Garrett Reisman from SpaceX.

Every spring, SEDS hosts the Spring Space Forum, inviting prominent members of industry, academia, and other space-related fields to discuss a current relevant issue. This year, representatives from major aerospace companies will be giving short talks on the future of human space flight and exploration. There will also be panel discussions and other events.

The Spring Space Forum can be watched via UStream at this link, and the schedule of events can be seen here.

For more information on SEDS and the Spring Space Forum, see the Purdue SEDS website.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Watch the ATV Launch Live

UPDATE: The ATV launched successfully and is now on its way to the ISS, and we’ve switched out the live feed with a video replay. It will take about 6 days for the ATV 3 to rendezvous with the ISS and docking will take place on March 28th at 10:34PM UTC (06:34PM EDT).

The new ATV Edoardo Amaldi launched on its mission to the International Space Station early March 23/late March 22 at 4:34 UTC, (12:34 am EDT on the 24th). Europe’s third Automated Transfer Vehicle was launched on an Ariane 5 from the Spaceport in French Guiana to bring 7 tons of supplies to the space station.

Below is a short video shows the latest ATV’s construction all the way to the pre-launch preparations.

Continue reading “Watch the ATV Launch Live”

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Watch Our Live Interview with Climate Scientist Michael Mann

If you missed it live, here’s the replay of our live interview this morning with climate researcher Michael Mann. We discussed his new book, “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines,” his experiences — good and bad — of being one of the leading paleoclimatologists and dealing with deniers of climate change, as well as talking about the science being done by Mann and his colleagues.

Thanks again to Michael Mann for taking the time to join us for the latest in our series of live interviews via Google+ Hangouts On Air.