Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 29, Number 6, 1 June 2012 — Transit of Venus intertwines with Hawaiʻi history [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Transit of Venus intertwines with

Hawaiʻi history

By Karin Stanton Hawai'i residents ean look to the skies June 5 for a rare view of Venus passing across the face of the sun. The Transit ofVenus occurs every 120 years and Hawai'i, along with Alaska and mueh of the Paeihe, will be the prime viewing loeation this time around. It begins at approximately noon and lasts six hours. "This is an important and very rare astronomical event," said Gtinther Hasinger, University of Hawai'i Institute for Astronomy director. "And it has an interesting history in Hawai'i." The sun, Venus and the people of Hawai'i have crossed paths over nearly four centuries, and may have indirectly led to Hawai'i's discovery by Capt. James Cook. Astronomers in England first predicted the transit in 1639 and used their observations to gauge the distance between the Earth and sun - the elusive astronomical unit, or AU. "This was a real math problem in the 17th century," Hasinger said. "They didn't know how far away the sun was and everything was based on what was in the Bible. They couldn't understand how this big ball of fire in the sky had burned so long." European astronomers did understand they could use triangulation theory to calculate the distance if they had enough data from different parts of the world. For the 1769 event, Cook was dispatched to the Paeihe Oeean aboard a boat filled with scientists. They landed in Tahiti in time to track Venus' path across the sun. Although it is not recorded in history, Hasinger said Cook likely heard of the Hawaiian Islands from the Tahiti natives. On a subsequent voyage to find the fabled Northwest Passage, Cook and his crew heeame the first Westerners to set foot on Hawai'i's shores. Skip forward a century and King Kalākaua, who delighted in all the experiences life could serve up, welcomed astronomers for the 1874 event. The first telescopes arrived in Hawai'i with a host of British scientists, who set up viewing stations on Kaua'i, Hawai'i Island and O'ahu. Before he set off for meetings in Washington, D.C., the king peered through a telescope, whieh prompted him to invite the British Royal Society to build an observatory in Hawai'i. The arrival of the telescopes created great excitement and Hawaiians clamored for a tum at the opheal wonder. "But the British astronomers regarded the Hawaiians as something of a nuisance," Hasinger

said. "With the king in Washington, D.C., it got bad and poliee were called in. It was a great disappointment for the Hawaiian people." This century, Hasinger and his colleagues are determined to make the Transit of Venus more accessible. "We want to do better than the British did 120 years ago," he said. Puhlie viewings are planned at Waiklkī Beach, Ford Island, Ko 'Olina, Haleakalā and at the Mauna Kea visitor center. Some 30,000 solar viewing glasses will be distributed across the state. The value of the astronomical unit, meanwhile, is now well known and "continues to form the basis of astronomical distance measurements," author Miehael Chauvin writes in his book Hōkūloa: The British 1874 Transit ofVenus Expedition to Hawai'i. The transits eome in pairs, with the last one occurring in 2004. That was not visible from Hawai'i as it was after sunset. The next events are in December 2117 and December 2125. ■

Kann Stanton, a former reporter/editor at West Hawai'i Today, works for the Associated Press and Hawai'i 24/7.

viewings The lnstitute for Astronomy warns viewers to never look directly at the sun without proper eye protection. Sunglasses do not provide enough protection. More information on the Transit of Venus, puhlie events and live streaming is available at the following websites: ifa.hawaii. edu, imiloahawaii.org, bishopmuseum.org, keckobservatory.org

The Transif of Venus - fhe apparenf crossing of Earfh's planefary neighbor in front of the sun - as seen in ultraviolet by NASA's sunobserving TRACE spacecraft in 2004. - Courtesy: NASA/LMSAL