Wednesday, May 30, 2012

SDO Venus Transit Website is Looking Good

Next Tuesday SDO will witness a transit of Venus across the disk of the Sun. We will be producing a special set of data during the transit that allow us to check out the instruments on SDO, look at the Black Drop effect is several wavelengths, and see the atmosphere of Venus. AIA, the EUV telescopes on SDO, will see Venus against the corona about an hour before it touches the limb of the Sun.
We have started showing test data on the SDO Venus Transit website. There is no disk in the test data but you can see what the movies will look like. Use your imagination to see the disk! Then come back next Tuesday (June 5) at 2100 UTC (5 pm ET) to see the real transit.