VenusTransit

by Astronomers Without Borders (AWB)

This app will be of great help in your observation of the transit of Venus (ToV) on June 5 and 6, 2012, when the planet Venus is seen in front of the Sun for the very last time this century.

Before the transit, you can find out what part of the transit will be visible from your location, and at what time the transit will start and end.

Also, you can practise measuring the times of contact (when the limbs of Venus and the Sun seem to touch) using a simulation of the transit.

During the transit, the phone app enables you to participate in a world-wide experiment; when the measurements of the times of contact from across the world are combined, the distance to the Sun may be found. This experiment was also performed during the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century transits of Venus, and is now repeated with the tools of our modern age.

Using the timer, when you touch the phone’s screen at the moment of internal contact (when Venus appears within the Sun, just touching the Sun’s edge), the app will record the exact GPS time and your location, which will then be sent to the global database.

After the transit, you can access your submitted data on a map on our website, edit the entry, and upload descriptions, text, images, or movies. Through this means, an interactive depository of our collective transit experience is created; the one place to look for results, pictures and personal stories of the 2012 transit of Venus, and a unique tool for science classes as well! At the same time, it will provide a time capsule for our descendants to discover when the twenty-first century’s transits of Venus are taking place.

Best of all the app is free!

Visit the app store

or the Android Market  to download your ToV app today!