Get ready for a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event: the Transit of Venus is set to take place this June. The transit occurs when the planet appears to pass across the surface of the sun and won’t happen again until 2117. And oddly enough, the researchers behind the Hubble Telescope are preparing for the feature by keeping their eyes on the moon.
According to information from Space.com , the sun’s bright light would damage the telescope if it were pointed directly at the star, so scientists will attempt to use the moon as a mirror to observe the transit. Apparently, their goal is to determine the details of Venus’s atmosphere by observing the sunlight that passes through it.
Astronomers also plan to use the information they gather to analyze other celestial objects. Because they already know quite a bit about Venus, researchers will be able to compare data gathered with the new technique to previous findings.
Discovery News reported that for the most part, “scientists learn about exoplanets by spectroscopic analysis of the star’s light passing through a planet’s atmosphere.” Basically, if they are able to get an accurate read about Venus through the reflections, they’ll likely to able to use similar methods to learn about exoplanets.
The Transit of Venus is slated to take place June 5 and 6 and should be at least partially visible from most places on Earth. If you’d like to see the 6-hour event in entirety, be prepared to travel: Space.com suggests the whole transit will be visible from eastern Asia and eastern Australia, New Zealand, the western Pacific, Hawaii, Alaska, northern Canada and most of Greenland.