|Clea Home Page|| (Please scroll down to see all the
instructions) |Please sign our mailing list| Required
SoftwareClick Filename to Download Or Icon to Go to FTP Site,
These are self-extracting files and will install themselves when
you run them on your computer. |Purpose: A bit of history and a
bit of science! To introduce students to the rare phenomenon of
planetary transits (of Venus and Mercury) and to demonstrate the
concept of parallax. Using modern methods---digital images from
sites at various locations on the earth---it is possible to
measure the length of the Astronomical Unit with a precision
barely attainable by much more complex means during the previous
transits of Venus in the 19th century. This exercise enables
students to observe images of the transit of Venus of June 8,
2004, and use measurements of those images of the sun from three
terrestrial sites to determine the number of kilometers in an
Astronomical Unit. The exercise uses images obtained by the GONG
project . Software provided enab