The Transit of Venus June 8th, 2004

Problems for preparation

  1. The pictures below (high resolution pictures can be downloaded as pdf file) show the transit of Venus of June 6th, 1761 as theoretically seen at 7.00 UT from Koblenz and Windhoek.

    Try to derive an estimate

    1. for the distance between Venus and Earth,
    2. for the distance to the sun.

    You will have to find out the missing parameters by yourself.

    For the first step, identify the linear distance between Koblenz and Windhoek with the diameter of the earth and suppose it to be perpendicular to the line earth - sun.

    For the second step, determine the linear distance between the cities but keep it perpendicular to the line earth - sun.

    For the, much more difficult, third step, try to determine the angle between the both lines Koblenz - Windhoek and earth - sun, respectively.

    Koblenz

    Windhoek


Prof. Dr. Udo Backhaus
last modification:  March 28th, 2008