Earth's moon to be used as mirror to see Venus transit
Washington, May 5 (ANI): NASA's Hubble Space Telescope will
observe the transit of Venus across the sun's face on June 5th
and 6th. Since Hubble cannot look at the sun directly,
astronomers are planning to point the telescope at the Earth's
moon, using it as a mirror to capture reflected sunlight and
isolate the small fraction of the light that passes through
Venus's atmosphere. Imprinted on that small amount of light are
the fingerprints of the planet's atmospheric makeup. These
observations will mimic a technique that is already being used
to sample the atmospheres of giant planets outside our solar
system passing in front of their stars. In the case of the Venus
transit observations, astronomers already know the chemical
makeup of Venus's atmosphere, and that it does not show signs of
life on the planet. But the Venus transit will be used to test
whether this technique will have a chance of detecting the very
faint fingerprints of an Earth-like planet,