The Venus Transit

A period of unemployment has its rare perks.

6th June 2012 was an exciting day for all astronomy enthusiasts, Shu included! Planet Venus transited between the Sun and the Earth and Singapore was fortunate enough to fall within the areas of visibility for this rare astronomical event. Since the next Venus Transit happens in the year 2117 and I'll be long gone from the face of the Earth by then, I decided to make the most of this day.

The transit across the face of Sun lasted nearly 7 hours, from around 6 am to 1 pm. I was up by 5:20 am (I had to slap myself awake a few times and remind myself that I won't live to see the next one and that's when I stopped snoozing the alarm) and as a result of bad route planning and unaware that certain buses were not in service at that time of the morning, I took an extra 1.5 hours to get to the National University of Singapore football field. The skies were too cloudy and the Sun was not yet up over the high rise buildings, so we had to wait.

After absorbing the nostalgic sights of the campus, loitering around the all-too-familiar Science Faculty and buying some unsatisfactory breakfast, I found a nice spot on the stands to sit and read my new favourite book, Pride and Prejudice. It took me 27 years to finally start reading the book. It was on top of the list of highly recommended classics during my school years, but I wasn't the biggest fan of literature then and there was little motive for reading these when it was mostly for 'exam purposes'. Anyhow, I am glad I picked it up - admittedly, I was only attracted to it by the highly discounted price. My own feelings have been rising and falling quite strongly as the story is unraveling. So far, I have already called Mr Darcy a dick jerk and wanted to shove a toilet brush down Mr Collin's throat and felt very angry about the way Mr Collins tried to force a proposal on Elizabeth (relax, Shu). Though the story is set in 19th century England and the language is at times difficult for me to grasp, the characters are very relatable and the descriptions of their interactions by the author seem to elevate the reader to an extra dimension for observing and understanding human nature in general. It's quite hard to explain. Maybe it's a good thing I picked it up late - I understand and relate with the story better now than I would have when I was a teenager.

The Sun was not yet up and it was already nearing 9 am.

Soon, a plain looking man in jeans and a T-shirt came up to the stands, where I was seated with three others and calls us "Come, come, you must attend the lecture that is starting in a bit!!". I looked up and immediately recognised him as Dr Phil Chan! He was my lecturer for a module I took over 5 years ago called "Einstein's Universe and Quantum Weirdness". As he was walking back to the lecture theatre, I raaaaan up to him and made small talk (very un-Shu-like, but I did!) and told him I was one of his students long ago and in all that excitement I forgot to mention how much I enjoyed his module but I think he figured. He didn't have the slightest air of pride or arrogance about him, just like I remembered him. It was one of a handful of modules that I thoroughly enjoyed and studied very proactively during my undergraduate years. And this guy was a remarkable teacher, he hardly stood still during lectures. His face usually lit up and his arms waved around with much animation when he spoke of certain topics in astrophysics. He went off syllabus most of the time to show us fascinating things, he liked combining bits of philosophy into the lecture slides in a very thought provoking manner, he went through great pains to combine theory with practicals for a large class of students and his assessments were actually enjoyable. I was smitten by this guy's passion and knowledge of the subject back then, so being reminded of it once again was certainly a highlight on this day.

My hopes of seeing the spectacle dwindled as the sky was too cloudy. I sat through lectures by two famous visiting physicists, Prof Roy Kerr and Prof Richard Strom. The former spoke mainly of his work on black hole theories and the latter gave an entertaining account of the expeditions undertaken by astronomers of the early centuries to study the previous transits of Venus, risking their lives even to add to the growing knowledge of astrophysics at the time.

Post-lectures, the day went well. The sky cleared, the sun was up and several telescopes were set up for the viewing pleasure of the public and my mission for the day was eventually accomplished. 

Set up of telescopes for the public

Venus, appears as a tiny round speck against the background of the Sun, as seen through one of the smaller telescopes

Realising how modern science is rapidly expanding the map of the Universe as we know it, unfolding newer mysteries faster than resolving the older ones, I can't help but wonder how insignificant we on Earth are and how very unlikely it is that we are alone in this Universe.