Smitty's Synoptic Synopsis: Partly Iffy for Venusian Transit

Monday, June 4, 2012

Partly Iffy for Venusian Transit

The amount of cloudiness may actually be a benefit to observe and to photograph the transit of our sister planet on Tuesday evening. Beginning around 6 pm Harrisburg time, Venus will begin to enter the space in the sky occupied by the sun! From 6 pm until sunset, Venus will appear in front of the solar disk. This is a transit. Mercury transits about 13 times per century; Venus in a strangle cycle of 8 yrs...then over 120 yrs. So relatively safe to say that if you miss tomorrow's transit, you'll not see this exquisite event again in your earthly time. So get out and enjoy....if we are not totally obscured by clouds!

The map above depicts the worldwide regions where one can observe this celestial feast for the eyes! The picture below shows where about (and the time) the atmosphere shrouded orb will be transiting ol' Sol. The 2004 transit also occurred in June and at sunrise that gloriously "foggy" morning, the low clouds and fog provided ample screening from the intense solar radiation that observing the event was actually very easy. In addition, the fact that if you do have a good horizon with minimal obstructions, earth's atmosphere itself will provide a measure of filtering that will enable us east coasters to view with a lessen intensity of solar radiation.

As for the surface depiction for clouds and precip tomorrow evening as per the NAM, here it is...There is a lonely shower in the Harrisburg area, but trust me, to try to forecast where exactly low clouds (solid grey shading), or scattered clouds (dashed lines) or even radar echoes are located; one might have a better shot at predicting the College World Series winner this year (Stony Brook Univ)...