The last Venus Transit for 105 years is happening in a few minutes as I write this -- it goes from roughly 22:00 June 5 to 05:00 June 6 UTC (check your local listings). Fraser Cain, Nicole Gugliucci, Pamela Gay, and I are hosting a live video chat of the transit with many amateur astronomers across the world! I am embedding it below:
[embed width="610"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcC5iqNypj4[/embed]
If you want to participate in the chat room, you need to 1) be signed up for Google+, b) circle Fraser Cain
, and γ) go to the live video chat post
. [UPDATE (21:55 UTC): First view of Venus silhouetted against the Sun's corona are coming in!
This shot is in the far-ultraviolet, where the Sun's thin atmosphere, called the corona, glows. You can see the Sun on the right, and Venus -- which is dark in the UV -- is the dark circle ...