Reno and Carson City Observatories Offer Venus Transit Viewing

Two area observatories will offer the public an opportunity to see a celestial event with the planet Venus taking center stage in front of the sun. Just weeks after the solar eclipse, another adventure is unfolding in the sky, and the Jack C. Observatory at Western Nevada College in Carson City and the MacLean Observatory on the Redfield Campus at the University of Nevada, Reno will again offer front row seats to the show.
The planet Venus will pass directly between Earth and the Sun on Tuesday, June 5, beginning at 3:09 p.m. and continuing for almost seven hours. According to WNC's Observatory Director Robert Collier, visitors can watch the event through telescopes at the observatory from the start until sunset. The public is strongly advised to not to stare at the sun without eye protection. Because Venus is so small against the Sun (1/32 the size), a low power telescope is recommended.
The Carson City observatory will open its doors at 2 p.m. for visitors to view the transit on screen inside the observatory or through filtered telescopes just outside on the observation deck. The event is free and open to the public. The observatory is located at 2699 Van Patten Avenue on the northern end of the Carson City campus.

Meanwhile, the rare event will best be viewed through a filtered telescope rather than the cardboard viewers that tens of thousands in the Reno area donned May 20 for the annular eclipse, astronomers at the University of Nevada, Reno said. The University is hosting a telescope viewing event Tuesday at its observatory at the Redfield Campus in south Reno during the Transit as Venus passes between the Earth and sun, from 3 p.m. to sunset.
Far fewer people are expected to view the Transit of Venus than the solar eclipse, according to David Bennum, chair of the Physics Department and an astronomer and astrophysicist, because it’s just not as visually exciting as the eclipse. The next Transit of Venus, which occurs in pairs about eight years apart every 100 years, will be in 2115. The last transit was in 2004.
“Venus will look like a small dot, like a solar flair, passing very slowly across the face of the Sun – if you are looking through a filtered telescope,” Bennum said. “You may not be able to see it all with the viewers used to watch the eclipse because Venus is so small.
“The viewers could work to watch the Transit, but this is really a telescopic event, not a naked-eye viewing event,” he said. “We’ll be hosting a viewing event that afternoon so people can watch through filtered telescopes, and of course people should not look at the sun without the solar viewers.”
There will be several telescopes available for viewing, including the 14-inch-diameter telescope in the Fleischmann Planetarium dome at Redfield, three 11-inch-diameter telescopes as well as several more provided by the Astronomical Society of Nevada. The viewing will last as long as the transit itself, about four hours. It is free and open to the public.
“This is not as scientifically interesting as it was a centuries ago,” Dan Ruby,” associate Director of University of Nevada, Reno’s Fleischmann Planetarium said. “It was used to determine the Earth’s distance from the Sun. We have more accurate ways to measure that now.”
Bennum said the transit of Venus was first predicted in 1631, first observed in 1639 and also made it possible for the first time for scientists to calculate the size of the solar system.
The University’s MacLean Observatory, with its two 12-foot diameter computer-controlled domes, is located at the Redfield Campus off the Mount Rose Highway, 18600 Wedge Parkway.