Witnessing today’s transit of Venus might seem as simple as glancing toward the sky, but experts caution that protective glasses should be worn at all times while looking directly at the sun — similar to viewing a solar eclipse.
"You just don’t want to take a chance," Sam Rhoads, an amateur astronomer, said Monday. "To see Venus you really need to look at (the sun) carefully, and if you did that without a solar viewer … it could very easily blind you."
Rhoads, a University of Hawaii professor emeritus, said he plans to set up his telescope at noon today at a small park on Queen Street between the TJ Maxx store in Ward Centers and two nearby condominium buildings.
Rhoads said anyone interested in watching a silhouette of the Earth-size planet slink across the surface of the sun is welcome to join him, and he will also have several solar viewers available.
When the most recent transit occurred, in June 2004, Rhoads and his wife traveled with friends to Santorini, Greece, because the event was best witnessed from start to finish in the Eastern Hemisphere.
This year, however, the Western Hemisphere — the Pacific Rim and Hawaii in particular — will offer the most spectacular vantage points.
During the 2004 transit, Rhoads said, he was able to give a live planetarium show over the phone to the people attending his monthly "The Sky Tonight" planetarium show at the Bishop Museum.
"I feel privileged to be able to see them both," he said.
For this year’s event the Bishop Museum and other organizations have planned several events because Hawaii offers such a great seat for the show. For more information about Bishop Museum events, visit bishopmuseum.org/planetarium/venus.html.
The University of Hawaii-Manoa Institute for Astronomy is sponsoring free entertainment and viewing for the public at three locations around Oahu: Sunset on the Beach in Waikiki, Ko Olina Resort and the Pacific Aviation Museum Pearl Harbor. For more information visit ifa.hawaii.edu/transit.
And Chaminade University’s Wiegand Observatory, 3140 Waialae Ave., will open its doors to the public for free and safe viewing of the celestial event. Call Heidi Harakuni at 440-4204 with any additional inquiries.
Rhoads said his location is unique because it will be set up just blocks away from where British astronomers set up a small observatory to view the 1874 transit. He also said interested viewers can park in the seven-level parking structure nearby.
Transits of Venus are some of the rarest predictable celestial events. They occur in pairs roughly every 100 years and were historically used to calculate the distance between Earth and the sun.
