Relive, remeasure
Relive the once-in-a-lifetime day, and use our online calculator to try coming up with your own figures:
Measure the AU.
The first in our series of Stardate programmes,
Stardate: Transit of Venus, beat off tough competition to win the Royal Television Society’s Life Long Learning and Multimedia Award
On June 8th 2004, BBC viewers watched a rare astronomical event unfold live on TV throughout the day as the planet Venus was seen to cross the face of the Sun in daylight. The programmes explained the significance of the event (so rare that it was last seen in 1882) and how previous observers, including Captain Cook, had used it to create a way of measuring the solar system. As well as live links from the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, there were live reports from Egypt and the North of England.
The Royal Television Society judges gave Stardate: Transit of Venus their Life Long Learning and Multimedia Award at their annual Education Awards ceremony, held at London’s Savoy Hotel on June 13th. The RTS judges remarked that it was “A difficult subject, well covered with opportunities for real experimentation” – highlighting the numerous ways in which viewers could “have a go at home”, of which Open2’s interactive How Far to the Sun? was a key feature.
Stardate returns in July 2005 to follow NASA’s bid to learn the secrets held in the heart of comets - by smashing a spacecraft into the heart of Tempel 1.
The Stardate series of programmes is made by Screenhouse Productions for the Open University and broadcast on BBC TV. The Director of the Stardate: Transit of Venus programmes was Patrick Titley and the Executive Producer was Paul Bader.
