The Secret Astronomer's Other Ball

There are a series of celebrations and jamborees scheduled for the 5th and 6 June 2012 to commemorate a last in your lifetime event, lasting 6 hours and 40 minutes1, called the Transit of Venus 20122.

For the children born after 8th June 20043 this is a once in a lifetime event because the next cyclical pair4 of transits are scheduled for the 2117 and 2125, while the previous pair occurred during the Victorian age in 1874 and 1882.

Image Credit: NASA5

For astronomy the Transit of Venus 2012 is a wonderful opportunity to celebrate some magnificent scientists and their science.6

Johannes Kepler 1751-1630 7 Determined the relative distances of the planets from the Sun in astronomical units (AU).

Johan Philip Lansberge 1561–1632 8 Published astronomical tables that predicted planetary positions.

Jeremiah Horrocks 1618 – 1641 9 Achieved a triple first by predicting, observing and recording the Transit of Venus in 1639.

William Crabtree 1610–1644 10 William Crabtree worked with Jeremiah Horrocks to estimate the size of Venus and the distance from the Earth to the Sun.

James Gregory 1638-1675 11 James Gregory published an improved technique for observing the transits of Venus.

Edmond Halley 1656–1742 12 Edmond Halley advocated13 that the techniques of James Gregory used to observe the next transits of Venus in 1761 and 1769.

Guillaume Le Gentil 1725–1792 14 Le Gentil was unable to make astronomical observations of the transit of 1761 while his vessel was rolling about in the Indian Ocean. However, he decided to build a small observatory in Pondicherry and waited patiently for the 1769 transit. Unfortunately, on the day of the transit an overcast sky day prevented him from making any observations.

Charles Green 1735–1771 15 On June 3, 1769 Charles Green observed and recorded the transit of Venus, on behalf of the Royal Society, from Venus Beach in Tahiti during Captain James Cook’s16 first voyage around the world in the ship Endeavour.

Thomas Hornsby 1733–1810 17 Thomas Hornsby calculated in 1771 (based upon the solar parallax values obtained from the 1769 transit) the mean distance from the Earth to the Sun to be 93,726,900 miles18. This is remarkably close to the radar based value used today of 92,955,807.3 miles19.

Whilst the modern generation of astronomers bask in this reflected historical glory they promote the forthcoming transit of Venus as a rare opportunity to develop techniques for detecting extrasolar planets in the future20. However, whilst settled science focuses upon this historic legacy and dreams of future discoveries, this paper focuses upon some of the outstanding issues they are avoiding. Welcome to The Secret Astronomer's Other Ball.

Magnetic Mysteries In 1997 the planet Venus was described as having practically no intrinsic magnetic field21and is now generally described as lacking an intrinsic magnetic field22. However, Venus does manage to support a magnetosphere and this is generally classified as an induced magnetosphere because the solar wind appears to directly interact with the ionosphere. The magnetotail is permeated with structured magnetic fields and exhibits a 'double-lobed' structure like an intrinsic planetary magnetotail23.

Illustration Credit: Wikipedia

Another surprise is that the magnetosphere of Venus sports a giant, ion-packed tail24.

Europe’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) Satellite showed that the tail stretched some 45,000,000 kilometres into space, more than 600 times as far as anyone had realised and almost far enough to “tickle” the earth when the two planets are in line with the sun.25

Marcia Neugebauer of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California suspects the tail is “a lot of little stringy things” like those of some comets, which can have several ion tails. If so, says Neugebauer, “the theorists are going to have fun trying to explain why they're as narrow as we saw them”26.

The ion tail of Venus. Credit: Jeff Hecht, New Scientist Magazine May 31, 1997.

Holoscience.com further comments that “Standard physics says that narrow plasma streams are unstable and should dissipate fast. No one can yet explain how they hold together over tens of millions of kilometres. This surprise has since been repeated for comet Hyakutake with its tail stretching half a billion kilometres across the solar system!”27 Miles Mathis also highlights some interesting questions and contradictions regarding the settled science of induced and intrinsic magnetospheres and leaves you to decide whether magnetospheres are fundamentally electrical or magnetic phenomenon28.

Solar System: Wed 6 June 2012 01:29 UTC

Image Credit: Fourmilab’s Solar System Live Fourmilab’s Solar System Live system29 indicates that Venus will only be 0.289 AU (43,233,785 kilometres) from Earth during the Transit in June. Therefore, the transit appears to be once in a lifetime opportunity for the blogsphere to observe the magnetotail of Venus tickling planet Earth.

Plasma density, velocity and magnetic field - north-south cut (SWMF, T. Gombosi et al.)

Image Credit: NASA30

Perhaps, with an apparent 2,000,000 kilometre overlap, there is a possibility that Venus may give planet Earth a slap during the transit. Albeit a light slap because there are other times when Venus is only 41,840,000 kilometres away from Earth31.

In the above diagram it is assumed that the magnetospheres of Earth and Venus tend to retain their structural integrity in a manner similar to magnetic repulsion. However, observations may confound this assumption and the magnetospheres could have a tendency to merge in a manner similar to magnetic attraction. This would undoubtedly change the nature of the planetary interactions and would probably delay the Post Transit “Snap” until the planets were more spatially separated in their orbits.

Lunar Unknowns Our frequently overlooked twin planet, the Moon, is said to have no dipole field, no magnetosphere and a superficial magnetic field a hundred times smaller than Earth’s32. Therefore, the Moon’s slight magnetic field is roughly equivalent to that of Mercury which is said to be about 1.1% as strong as the Earth’s33.

Mercury’s Magnetosphere. Image credit: Wikipedia

Mercury’s extended, tear-dropped shaped tenuous exospheres is, unsurprisingly, referred to as a magnetosphere.

The Moon’s extended, tear-dropped shaped tenuous exospheres34 is, surprisingly, referred to as a tenuous sodium tail35. Unsurprisingly this tenuous sodium tail looks exactly like a magnetosphere.

Moon's tenuous sodium tail Image Credit: NASA

The Moon (plus tenuous sodium tail) takes six days to traverse Earth’s magnetotail and during those six days strange thing can happen36:

"Earth's magnetotail extends well beyond the orbit of the Moon and, once a month, the Moon orbits through it," says Tim Stubbs, a University of Maryland scientist working at the Goddard Space Flight Center. "This can have consequences ranging from lunar 'dust storms' to electrostatic discharges."

Anyone can tell when the Moon is inside the magnetotail. Just look: "If the Moon is full, it is inside the magnetotail," says Stubbs. "The Moon enters the magnetotail three days before it is full and takes about six days to cross and exit on the other side."

It is during those six days that strange things can happen.

During the crossing, the Moon comes in contact with a gigantic "plasma sheet" of hot charged particles trapped in the tail. The lightest and most mobile of these particles, electrons, pepper the Moon's surface and give the Moon a negative charge.

On the Moon's dayside this effect is counteracted to a degree by sunlight: UV photons knock electrons back off the surface, keeping the build-up of charge at relatively low levels. But on the nightside, in the cold lunar dark, electrons accumulate and voltages can climb to hundreds or thousands of volts.

Walking across the dusty charged-up lunar terrain, astronauts may find themselves crackling with electricity like a sock pulled out of a hot dryer. Touching another astronaut, a doorknob, a piece of sensitive electronics—any of these simple actions could produce an unwelcome zap. "Proper grounding is strongly recommended," advises Stubbs. …… The best direct evidence comes from NASA's Lunar Prospector spacecraft, which orbited the Moon in 1998-99 and monitored many magnetotail crossings. During some crossings, the spacecraft sensed big changes in the lunar nightside voltage, jumping "typically from -200 V to -1000 V," says Jasper Halekas of UC Berkeley who has been studying the decade-old data.

Unfortunately, I have been unable to discover what happens to the Moon’s tenuous sodium tail during this six day crossing. There are suggestions that earthquakes are more prevalent around Full Moon and New Moon37.

Given that there is a full Moon on March Nineteenth which coincides with the closest Lunar perigee in 18 years (closest approach to Earth) to within the hour, and Jupiter is also at Perigee at the same time, I would not dismiss Ken’s warning out of hand.

Perhaps these peaks of disturbance are associated with the Moon entering and leaving the Earth’s magnetosphere.

Transit Forecast The Moon has a busy schedule for early June so there is a potential for the Earth to experience more disruptions compared to the 2004 Transit of Venus:

3rd June 2012 - Lunar Perigee at 358,482 kilometres38 4th June 2012 - Partial lunar eclipse39 4th June 2012 - Full Moon40

Lunar eclipse chart Credit: Wikipedia

Having checked a couple of Tide Tables it appears that regular Perigee High Tides are forecast for during early June. Inspecting your local Tide Tables may provide different results and there is a possibility that reality may exceed these predictions.

Therefore, any disturbances experienced during Transit of Venus in 2012 are more likely to be geomagnetic / geo-electric, and are unpredictable based upon our current level of knowledge unless you use Solar-Lunar techniques to forecast the weather.

The Transit of Venus organisation advises us to be more concerned about climate change because there is a preponderance of scientific evidence.41 I think it is safer to be concerned about modern science and their scientific evidence.

References 1 Earthsky.org - Last transit of Venus in 21st century will happen in June 2012 http://earthsky.org/astronomy -essentials/last-transit-of-venus-in-21st-century-will-happen-in-june-2012 2 Wikipedia: Transit of Venus, 5th – 6th June 2012 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_of_Venus,_2012 3 Wikipedia: Transit of Venus: 8th June 2004 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_of_Venus,_2004 4 Nick Anthony Fiorenza: The Pentagonal Cycle of Venus http://www.lunarplanner.com/HCpages/Venus.html 5 NASA: The 2012 Transit of Venus http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/OH/transit12.html 6 Dr. Sten Odenwald (NASA / ADNET): The Mathematics of the Transit of Venus http://sunearthday.nasa.gov/2012/articles/ttt_75.php 7 Wikipedia: Johannes Kepler 1751-1630: German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler 8 Wikipedia: Johan Philip Lansberge 1561–1632 Dutch astronomer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Van_Lansberg 9 Wikipedia: Jeremiah Horrocks 1618 – 1641 English astronomer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremiah_Horrocks 10 Wikipedia: William Crabtree 1610–1644 English astronomer and mathematician. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Crabtree 11 Wikipedia: James Gregory 1638-1675 Scottish mathematician and astronomer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gregory_%28astronomer_and_mathematician%29 12 Wikipedia: Edmond Halley 1656–1742 English astronomer, geophysicist, mathematician and meteorologist. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmond_Halley 13 Wikipedia: Astronomical unit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_unit 14 Wikipedia: Guillaume Le Gentil 1725–1792 French astronomer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Gentil 15 Wikipedia: Charles Green 1735–1771 British astronomer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Green_%28astronomer%29 16 Wikipedia: James Cook, 1728-1779 British explorer, navigator and cartographer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Cook 17 Wikipedia: Thomas Hornsby 1733–1810 British astronomer and mathematician. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hornsby 18 Wikipedia: 1769 Transit of Venus observed from Tahiti http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1769_Transit_of_Venus 19 Wikipedia: An astronomical unit (AU) is equal to 149,597,870.7 kilometres - 92,955,807.3 miles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_unit

20 TransitOfVenus.org: Hubble Space Telescope to Target 2012 Transit of Venus http://www.transitofvenus.org/education/new-discoveries/296-hubble-space-telescope-to-target-2012-transit-of-venus 21 J. G. Luhman and C. T. Russell - VENUS: Magnetic Field and Magnetosphere http://www-ssc.igpp.ucla.edu/personnel/russell/papers/venus_mag/ 22 Wikipedia: Venus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus 23 J. G. Luhman and C. T. Russell - VENUS: Magnetic Field and Magnetosphere http://www-ssc.igpp.ucla.edu/personnel/russell/papers/venus_mag/ 24 New Scientist magazine: Science : Planet's tail of the unexpected http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg15420842.900-science--planets-tail-of-the-unexpected.html 25 Thunderbolts.info: Venus' Tail of the Unexpected http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2008/arch08/080220venustail.htm 26 Holoscience.com: Do we have any proof of interplanetary electric currents? http://www.holoscience.com/news/balloon.html 27 Holoscience.com: Do we have any proof of interplanetary electric currents? http://www.holoscience.com/news/balloon.html 28 Miles Mathis: The E/M Fields of Solar System Bodies http://milesmathis.com/venus.html 29 Fourmilab’s Solar System Live system http://www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/Solar 30 NASA: Magnetosphere http://ccmc.gsfc.nasa.gov/awareness/mag.html 31 .thesolarsystemplanets.com: Interesting Facts About Venus http://www.thesolarsystemplanets.com/interesting-facts-about-venus/ 32 J.B. Zirker: The Magnetic Universe 2009 – page 142 33 Wikipedia: Mercury (planet) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_%28planet%29#Magnetic_field_and_magnetosphere 34 Wikipedia: Moon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon 35 NASA: The Moon is heading for a close encounter with a Leonid debris stream on Nov. 17, 2000. http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2000/ast26oct_1/ 36 NASA: Earth's Magnetic Field Does Strange Things to the Moon http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2008/17apr_magnetotail/ 37 Tallblokes’s Talkshop: Ken Ring: Earthquake predictions in Christchurch NZ http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2011/03/10/ken-ring-earthquake-predictions-in-christchurch-nz/ 38 moonphasecalendars.com: The Lunar Perigee and Apogee Table for 2012 http://moonphasecalendars.com/Lunar_Perigee_and_Apogee_Tables.php?MoonPhaseYear=2012 39 Wikipedia: June 2012 lunar eclipse http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_2012_lunar_eclipse

40 moonphasecalendars.com: New and Full Moon Data for 2012 http://moonphasecalendars.com/Yearly_Lunar_Moon_Events_Tables.php?MoonPhaseYear=2012 41 TransitOf enus.org : 2012 Doomsday and Solar System Alignment http://www.transitofvenus.org/component/content/article/170-2012-doomsday-and-solar-system-alignment