Kind: captions
Language: en
Now, there are very few things that will
get me out of bed in the morning before
8:00, but the transit of Venus is one of
them because this is the last time it's
going to happen in my lifetime. So, I
don't have to worry about this becoming
a regular thing. On my way to see the
transit of Venus.
Okay, so the transit is probably
starting right now. This is probably
contact one. It's 8:16 a.m. in Sydney.
My first look in it. Yeah.
Oh, wow.
[music]
Can you see it? [music]
Absolutely not.
You can't see it?
Nope.
It's like a black dot.
That's Venus. It's
beautiful. The sun is now out and uh
with these silly glasses, you can
actually see Venus on the sun.
Nowadays, I imagine most people don't
get excited about Venus passing [music]
in front of the sun. I mean, what's the
big deal? But in the old days, it was a
really important event because it
allowed us to determine the scale of our
solar system and then the scale of the
universe. Astronomers at the time knew
the relative distances between the
planets. Because of Kepler's laws, they
could calculate the ratios of the
different radi of the orbits of planets.
But unfortunately, they didn't have any
absolute measure. So, they couldn't
really say how far anything was from
anything else. Edmund Haley, the guy who
the comet's named after, was the one who
suggested that by timing how long it
takes Venus to pass across the face of
the sun from different points on the
Earth would allow us to measure the
distance between the Earth and the Sun.
That's using something called parallax.
Now, to illustrate parallax, I've
actually kind of set up a solar system
in my kitchen and living room. So, you
can see the sun there behind me. Uh,
this is Venus [music]
and over here we have the Earth.
Oh, sorry guys. Uh, I got to take this.
It's Destin from Smarter Every Day.
Hey Derek, you there?
Yo, what's going on?
Hey, what's up, dude? Hey, man. I went
up to the Space and Rocket Center. We
got the times. You said we could
calculate the distance to the sun,
right?
Uh, yeah. Because we're on opposite
sides of the globe, we're going to
compare times and calculate the distance
to the sun. Uh, my time was uh 6 hours
28 minutes and 4 seconds in Sydney.
Okay.
What time did you get?
62804, right?
62804. That's me.
Okay. Mine was 6 hours 45 minutes and 36
seconds.
Oh, a bit longer.
All right. So, do I I just go put it in
that calculator website you gave me?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's do that.
Okay. All right. Sounds good. And me
just call you back afterwards.
Sounds good. All right. Talk to you
later. Bye.
So, the plan is I'm going to shoot from
the Earth, from the top [music] of the
Earth, and see what it looks like when I
make a transit of Venus across the face
of the Sun. And then I'm going to change
my perspective slightly. So, I'm going
to go to a lower part of the Earth, and
I'm going to shoot the same [music]
thing. And then I want to overlay those
two images to see how Venus looks as
[music] it's tracking across the Sun
from those two different locations. It
should trace out two separate cords
across the face of the sun. And that is
what allows us to estimate [music] the
distance to Venus and the distance to
the sun and everything else in the solar
system because once we have one absolute
distance, [music] we can get all of the
distances. So 243 years ago, Captain
Cook was down here sent to Tahiti to
observe the transit of Venus.
And after that, he opened his sealed
papers with his secret mission. He was
meant to find the great southern land
and claim it for Britain, which is what
he did. He uh mapped and explore the
coasts of New Zealand and Australia
before returning home. This was his
first voyage to the South Pacific. So,
um pretty exciting. And then in I guess
kind of a related note, 8 years ago when
this transit was taking place, I was
actually in the air over the Pacific
flying from Vancouver to Sydney to uh
make my life here. So, you know, me and
Cook, we got something in common, I
guess. You know,
it's Dustin calling back with the
distance. [music]
What's going on, Dustin?
Hey, what's up, dude? Hey, I got it. I
am Woke. It is like It's like 2:00 in
the morning here or something. Anyway,
it's uh 93 million miles.
93 million? No, I I don't think that's a
unit. Is it miles? They got rid of that
like 100 years ago.
Used to put man on the moon.
Wow.
Inches. That's That's awesome. You want
in kilometers?
I want in kilometers. How far is it?
Uh it's about 149 and a half and some
change uh million kilometers. [music] So
that's awesome. That's like bang on.
Oh, is it?
Yeah.
Is that astronomical unit?
That is one astronomical unit. So good
observing, sir. Well done.
Thank you very much. Oh, there was Hey,
by the way, there was a a kid there
today. We did it at the US Space and
Rocket Center under the Saturn 5, but
there was a kid there that made his own
telescope out of PVC pipe. this.
That's awesome, man. I wish I could make
a telescope out of PVC pipe.
Yeah, he told me how to do it. He ground
the glass and everything. It's
parabolic.
Wow. I want to check that out. So, I'm
going to put an annotation over to that
video uh of Destin. So So, click on the
iPhone here if you want to go see
Dustin's video where uh you can make
your own telescope out of PVC.
I want an iPhone.
Yeah. Yeah. Why?
Cool. Yeah. Click the [laughter] iPhone.
There you go.
Click on it.
All right, you better get to bed.
Dude, I'm going crazy. I Yeah, I do need
some sleep, so I'll let you go.
All right, we'll catch you later. Have a
good night.