Next Transit of Venus (5/6 June 2012) - not that long away

Wow, 5 years ago already!?

John,
I had exactly the same thoughts as yourself,
check and see are there any other events such a solar eclipses
happening and try and maximize the benefits of any trip.
As for solar eclipses, the odds of clear sky are of utmost importance.
I'd base my trip on that.

Yannis - midnight sun, yes! interesting,
definatly a natural event which I would be interested in seeing
- but
maybe not most astronomers whom crave the dark!
:silly:

yiannis_ef wrote:

I would like Svalbard islands and midnight Sun!

Funnily enough I was also looking up the Northern Norway areas, Svalbard would be a good but tough destination. Average temperatures would be around 5-6 degrees, fine for us Irish, it would be like a cool winters day but the wind chill could freeze you if it was bad.
It's more northern then Alaska and would be completely iced in except for one influence, the north astlantic drift and all of us here knows what that means, clouds!!
Fantastic scenery, but watch out for polar bears. : blink:
wikitravel.org/en/Image:SvalbardView.jpg

For me, I'd figure it would be like the Russian eclipse trip, more of an expedition then a holiday.
Anyone see cloud prediction maps for the area.??

Would the Southern Hemisphere be the best location?
I suppose you could look at a few kinds of trips,
short haul, medium & long.
Let me put it to you this way,
if you had time & a budget where would you go to see it?

According to the maps, eastern Australia is the only real option for seeing all of it if you want to go south.

By complete chance, I was watching a channel called Eden (sky channel 532) this morning and there was a program with Joanna Lumley doing a trip along northern Norway going through Alta, Tromso and ending in Slavbard, what are the odds!. She went in March/April and man o man!, what a landscape! It reminded me of how the astronauts described the moon, a "beautiful desolation".

Slavbard was a cool -26 Celsius, clouds at times but when the sky was good, it looked pristine.
She went there to catch the northern lights and they cought some great time lapse sequences.
She went through what she wore for the aurora observing and you could fit out a shop with it, it was that much.

I saw that a few months back.
Good programme in it's own right -
she got a bit overwhelmed when she finally saw them didn't she?

The area looked amazing alright,
so that's the best place eh?

Time to start looking for snow shoes then?
:silly:

If you have Google Earth someone has kindly made a transit overlay:
services.google.com/earth/kmz/transit_venus_n.kmz

Somewhere in Norway would be the place so if you were not going long haul.
The Weather is not so great though.
(I'm thinking in terms of eclipses where by you'd want as close to
100% clear skies to make it worth while)


average June cloud cover