Saudis watch rare transit of Venus through telescopes, special goggles

Saudi stargazers trained their telescopes on the skies to watch Venus pass in front of the Sun, in an event that will not be seen again for another 105 years.
All of the Transit of Venus was visible in East Asia and the Western Pacific. Europe, the Middle East and South Asia were able to see the end stages of the eclipse with the approach of dawn yesterday morning.
Many Saudis, in Riyadh, Jeddah and other major cities, were seen with special telescope and protective viewing glasses to observe the transit of Venus. During the pass, Venus took the form of a small black dot slowly shifting across the northern hemisphere of the Sun.
At the observatory of King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, many people saw the silhouetted Venus traveling across the Sun, with the support of powerful cameras.
Hassan Basarah, head of the astronomy department, said Venus’ next transit would take place on Dec. 11, 2117. “The movement of these celestial bodies reflect the power of God,” he said.
Astronomers and novice star-gazers worldwide looked to the skies yesterday for the last chance this lifetime to observe Venus track a near seven-hour path across the Sun.
The extraordinary event, only to be seen again in 105 years, began shortly after 2200 GMT Tuesday, visible first from the Pacific and north and central Americas as a small black dot trailing across the solar surface.
Australia — for which the transit of the fiery planet carries a unique historical interest as a 1769 precursor contributed to the continent's discovery — presented one of the best vantage points.
For Europe, the Middle East and South Asia, most of the event happened overnight, and impatient planetary observers had to wait until sunrise to observe the transit's final moments.
"After today, that's it. Probably no-one alive is going to see one of these again," the Royal Astronomical Society's Robert Massey said after witnessing the event from the Cotswold hills in southwest England.
The planet only rarely moves in a direct line between the Earth and the Sun, and the next transit will be in 2117. Only six transits have been observed since the telescope was invented: In 1639, 1761, 1769, 1874, 1882 and 2004 — happening in pairs eight years apart.
Cloud cover spoiled the rare opportunity for many around the world, including parts of Australia and much of Europe.
"I saw it for about, maybe at most 30 seconds to a minute once, and briefly for about 10 seconds after that. It wasn't the best view I've ever had, so I was delighted to see something," said Massey.
To observers not using telescopes, the event would have appeared as a black dot about a 30th of the Sun's diameter, moving slowly over the star's northern hemisphere.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, which cannot view the sun directly, used the Moon as a mirror to capture reflected sunlight and study the fiery planet.
On Earth, Sydney Observatory held a sell-out viewing with 1,500 people buying tickets. About 600 people gathered at the Goddard Space Flight Center in the US state of Maryland to observe the planet also known as the Evening Star or Morning Star due to the bright sunlight it reflects early and late in the day.
And in Tahiti in French Polynesia, one of the best viewing spots, up to 2,000 people gathered on the beach at Venus Point, so named for the place where British Navy’s Capt. James Cook observed the same momentous event in 1769. Cook had charted the east coast of Australia on that same trip.
The European Space Agency’s Venus Express is the only spacecraft orbiting the hot planet at present and will be using light from the sun to study Venus’s atmosphere.