Shortly after 6 p.m. on Tuesday, a small black dot will begin moving
across the face of the Sun, an event that is turning New York City — not
usually an epicenter of astronomy — into an interplanetary kind of
town, with astronomy buffs and telescope jockeys in parks, on street
corners and along piers. The rare astronomical event, known as the
transit of Venus, comes in pairs about once every century, with the
previous one occurring in 2004. The next one will not take place until
2117, making the event on Tuesday truly a last-chance opportunity.
Unless, of course, it rains.
Despite the forecast, which is for clouds and possible rain, astronomy
groups are setting up viewing sites around the city, including Union
Square, the High Line, Riverside Park South and 125th Street in Harlem,
where the temporarily star-struck can go to see the transit safely. It
occurs when the orbits of Venus, Earth and the Sun put them into
alignment along the same plane. Watching it with the naked eye is
dangerous, and all but impossible, given the Sun’s blinding glare.
At the viewing sites, amateur astronomers and academics will have
telescopes with special solar filters, as well as projection devices and
solar glasses, available to the public. “In a sense, it is an eclipse,”
said Summer Ash, director of outreach for
Columbia University’s astronomy department,
who will be stationed in the southeast corner of Union Square. “It’s
the same phenomenon. It’s just that Venus is so much farther away than
the Moon.”
