Venus Transit of 1882, II
[Music starts after twinkles]
125 years ago this week, a tiny black dot moving across the face of the Sun caused quite a stir. Youngsters in New York sold glimpses through small telescopes for a dime a head. And crowds at a larger telescope in Central Park became so pushy that a policeman had to keep order.
The event was a transit of Venus. The planet crossed the face of the Sun, forming a dark silhouette. Scientists traveled around the world to view the transit, which helped them calculate the distance from Earth to the Sun.
The leader of the U.S. Marine Band noticed, too. John Philip Sousa was writing a march to honor Joseph Henry, a scientist who had died a few years before. Henry was helping plan American efforts to study the transit. So Sousa called his composition the "Transit of Venus March."
Working with NASA, the Virginia Grand Military Band resurrected the piece in 2003 -- the first known public performance in more than a century.
The next Venus transit is coming up in 2012. But astronomers are using transits today to look for planets in other star systems. Kepler, a spacecraft scheduled for launch in early '09, may find hundreds of them -- discoveries that may inspire their own tributes -- musical or otherwise.
[More music]
Script by Damond Benningfield, Copyright 2004, 2007
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