Exiting astronomical event of the Venus transit across the solar disk on 8th June 2004 attracted a lot of public interest including the European education project 'The Venus Transit 2004'. Our institute - Astronomical institute of SAS - has taken part in the project as national node for the Slovak republic. The national local organizing committee led by my colleague Dr. Julius Koza, has prepared a lot of activities : public relations of the project for schools, public observatories and in community of amateur astronomers in Slovakia, educational workshop for organizers of observations on schools and public observatories, preparation and printing of the booklet (>160pages) about the transit (history, measurements,...), press conference, a lot of interviews in media including Slovak TA3 channel, local TV Poprad, etc.. Indeed 69 school and 53 public observatories and amateur astronomers have registered in the project in Slovakia. A lot of things around the project can be found on the web page of the project I have prepared.
Besides of this our institute has performed some public outreach as well as scientific measurements during the transit. Pupils from 3 schools in 5 groups have observed the transit using small telescopes in front of the institute's headquarters or using our fixed instruments in our domes. In particular, my duty was to manage measurements at our Horizontal solar telescope (D=50cm, f=35m, solar disk diameter=33cm) in cooperation with my colleague Dr. Jozef Ziznovsky and a group of pupils from the basic school in village Spissky Stiavnik led by the schoolmaster Mr. Gomory. We have observed the transit visually and at the same time all members of the team have made their own drawings of the Venus transit and the digital recording of the transit was made using a handy camera. Moreover some visitors has joint us for some minutes as the Venus as well the solar disk was the biggest one in our area! Also the director of our istitute, Dr. Jan Svoren has hoint us for a couple of minutes (see us at the left photo below, myself only near the focal plane of the telescope in the middle panel, while moments around the T2 contact on the right photo - all photos are kindly provided by Dr. Ziznovsky).
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I have already sent my results of the time of the T2 and T3 contacts to the project calculation web page and I have got some results on the derived parallax and distance between the Sun and the Earth. My timings for contacts from visual observations were : T2 = 5 h 38 m 45 s and T3 = 3 11 h 3 m 30 s. The resulting values of the astronomical unit and the parallax are 149310024 km and 8.8111'' with difference of 287846 km and 0.0170'' what is an 0.192% error and 149605251 km and 8.7937'' with difference of 7381 and 0.0004 what is an 0.005 % error for T2 and T3 contacts respectively. (See more details taken from the project calculation web page.)
Besides of this I have used my drawing of position of the Venus and list of their timings to calculate motion of the Venus across the solar disk - see pictures of Mr.Fedorcak and copy of my drawing below).
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Least squares fitting of the relation between data of timings and positions has provided the coefficients of their optimal fit. This relation was used to extrapolate the timings of the T2 and T3 contacts from positions of the T2 and T3 contacts, which were derived as 6mm and 222mm on the drawing using the shape of the solar limb and diameter of the Venus.
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Least squares fitting of the relation between data of timings and positions has provided the coefficients of their optimal fit. This relation was used to extrapolate the timings of the T2 and T3 contacts from positions of the T2 and T3 contacts, which were derived as 6mm and 222mm on the drawing using the shape of the solar limb and diameter of the Venus.
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From polynomial fitting the times of T2 and T3 contacts are 7 h 39 m 31 s and 13 h 4 m 49 s respectively. Using these data from project calculation web page I have got again results on the derived parallax and distance between the Sun and the Earth. My timings for contacts from drawings gave the following results: 149685455 km and 8.7890'' with the differences 87585 km and 0.0051'' what is an 0.059 % error and 148966347 km and 8.8314'' with the differences 631523 km and 0.0373'' (0.422 % error) for T2 and T3 contacts respectively. (See more details from the project calculation web page.)
Below you can find comparison of our results with the rest of the determinations of the astronomical unit derived from measurements of timings of contacts acquired in frame of the VT 2004 project, where left panel gives the comparison for result from our visual observations and the right one from the drawing of positions (status for 11/6/2004).
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As you may noticed from the drawing there was not clear sky all the day, but nevertheless weather was exceptional comparing to other days before and after 8th June. We have spent some nice time with pupils at the telescope and I hope that some more than just these numerical results was achieved...