The Planet In Front Of The Sun

The Planet In Front Of The Sun, A Once-In-A-Lifetime Event!
Wed Apr 25 03:23
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On June 5th, 2012, the planet Venus will pass in front of the Sun as seen from Earth in what for many will be a once-in-a-lifetime event: a transit of Venus.
The transit will be visible across Canada and in other parts of the world, and is already garnering global attention.
But should you care?
The next transit of Venus will be in 2117
Photo of Venus
Image courtesy of Antonio Cerezo, Pablo Alexandre, Jesus Merchan and David Marsan
“The last transit of Venus occurred in 2004. If you missed it, this year’s event will literally be a once-in-a-lifetime experience as the next transit of Venus won’t occur until 2117,” said ProfessorMichael Reid, Director of Education & Public Outreach at the U of T’s Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics.\
“What’s more, transits have great historical and contemporary significance,” said Reid. “In the 1700s and 1800s, transits of Venus gave astronomers their first accurate measurements of the distance to the Sun and Captain Cook observed the 1769 transit from Tahiti. Today, astronomers use transits to find planets outside our Solar System, known as exoplanets.”
Reid is one of the speakers at U of T’s Transit of Venus symposium April 28, 2012, organized by the University’s Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics and Institute for the History & Philosophy of Science & Technology, and with the support of the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics. Keynote speakers will be: Jay Pasachoff, renowned researcher, astrophotographer, science communicator and transit expert; and Professor James Graham, director of the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics.
“Given the widespread interest in this rare event, we’re bringing together experts who will present talks on a wide variety of transit-related topics of interest to scientific and academic communities, educators, as well as journalists planning on covering the June 5th spectacle,” Reid said.
Topics include: the centuries-long history of transits and the expeditions to observe them; how to view the transit safely; incorporating the transit into school math and science curricula; and the connection between the transit of Venus and the search for planets around distant stars.
“When an exoplanet passes between us and its parent star—when the planet transits the star—the star appears to dim slightly,” Graham said. “By measuring the amount and duration of the dimming, and the interval between subsequent transits, astronomers can determine the size of the unseen planet and its orbital distance from the parent star.
“This allows us to determine whether a planet is small, like Earth, and whether it orbits at the right distance from the star so that it is neither too hot nor too cold for water to exist in liquid form and hence whether it might support life.”
Many researchers at U of T are involved in the search for exoplanets. Dunlap post-doctoral fellow Quinn Konopacky was part of a team that, in 2009, discovered a fourth gas-giant planet around a star in the constellation Pegasus, making that planetary system similar to our own. Dunlap post-doctoral fellowNicholas Law leads a variety of projects to detect transits of M-dwarf stars. And Graham is Project Scientist for the Gemini Planet Imager which will survey roughly a thousand of the nearest stars in order to record images of any Jupiter-size exoplanets in orbit around them.
The U of T symposium will be held in Alumni Hall of St. Michael’s College on the University’s St. George Campus, 121 St. Joseph Street. Sessions begin at 10am and end at 5pm. The symposium will also include a tour of a new exhibit of astronomical instruments as part of the University of Toronto Scientific Instrument Collaboration. Symposium attendance is free and no registration is required.

Before It's News
http://beforeitsnews.com/story/2068/867/The_Planet_In_Front_Of_The_Sun,_A_Once-In-A-Lifetime_Event.html

Solar Poles To Become Quadrupolar In May , 2012

Solar Poles To Become Quadrupolar In May
Sun Apr 22 02:46
The Yomiuri Shimbun

Before It's News
http://beforeitsnewhttp://beforeitsnews.com/story/2055/580/Solar_Poles_To_Become_Quadrupolar_In_May.html










Magnetic field polarity at the solar poles will reverse and become quadrupolar in May, meaning positive fields will emerge in the North and South poles and negative fields will emerge on the equator, according to the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan and other institutes.
When a similar phenomenon occurred about 300 years ago, the Earth's average temperature fell slightly.
A research team led by Saku Tsuneta, a professor at the observatory, analyzed solar magnetic fields data using Hinode, an observational satellite, and confirmed that the polarity of the magnetic field at the North Pole began to reverse in July last year.
The researchers also found the magnetic field at the South Pole, which was expected to reverse along with the North Pole, maintained a positive polarity, ensuring the formation of a quadrupole magnetic field.
The cause behind the shifts in polar fields is not understood. However, it is known that the shifts coincide with the increase and decrease in the number of sunspots over an about 11-year cycle.
The current sunspot cycle has stretched for close to 13 years. A similar situation occurred in the 17th to 18th century, when the average temperature of the Northern Hemisphere decreased by 0.6 C. The research team believes the quadrupolar pattern also emerged at that time.
www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/features/sci...005829.htm
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DisClaimer:
I just stumbeled on this and I can not confirm this source's credibility

Before It's News
http://beforeitsnewhttp://beforeitsnews.com/story/2055/580/Solar_Poles_To_Become_Quadrupolar_In_May.html

Note / An Episode In Solar Activity

P. Gosselin: Scientists Say A Grand Episode In Solar Activity Started in 2008 - But No Support For A Grand (Maunder-Type) Minimum | Solar Cycle 25

Solar Cycle 25
http://www.cdejager.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/2012-sudden-trans-JSWSC-2-A073.pdf






P. GOSSELIN
P. Gosselin: Scientists Say A Grand Episode In Solar Activity Started in 2008 - But No Support For A Grand (Maunder-Type) Minimum
Wednesday, July 4th 2012, 9:18 AM EDT
Co2sceptic (Site Admin)
Cornelis De Jager of the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research and Silvia Duhau of the Departamento de Fisica, Facultad de Ingenieria, Universidad de Buenos Aires have published a new paper in the Journal of Space Weather and Space Climate titled:
Sudden transitions and grand variations in the solar dynamo, past and future.
I’m not sure if other bloggers have written about this. If so, here it is again. The paper forecasts solar activity for the current Solar cycle 24, which they expect will peak in May, 2013 with a maximum sunspot number Rmax of 62 ± 12.
More importantly, the authors write (emphasis added):
The subsequent analysis, based on a phase diagram, which is a diagram showing the relation between maximum sunspot numbers and minimum geomagnetic aa index values leads to the conclusion that a new Grand Episode in solar activity has started in 2008.”
…we predict that this Grand Episode will be of the Regular Oscillations type, which is the kind of oscillations that also occurred between 1724 and 1924. Previous expectations of a Grand (Maunder-type) Minimum of solar activity cannot be supported. We stress the significance of the Hallstatt periodicity for determining the character of the forthcoming Grand Episodes. No Grand Minimum is expected to occur during the millennium that has just started.”
That of course is good news, as the world can ill-afford climate conditions like the ones we saw during the Maunder Minimum - especially with governments racing to prepare for the exact opposite.
The full paper is available here.

Solar Cycle 25
http://sc25.com/index.php?id=395

Cornelis De Jager
http://www.cdejager.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/2012-sudden-trans-JSWSC-2-A073.pdf