Major events:

VIDEOS FROM THE TRANSIT OF VENUS UK EXPEDITION This website is offering site visitors a "virtual field trip" through the videos produced by each of the three winning teams (Nelson Boys College, Pakuranga College and Tolaga Bay Area School) reporting on their experiences travelling throughout the UK on their specially designed intineraries.

VIDEOS FROM THE TRANSIT TEAM TO TAHITI Team Tahiti produced two videos as they followed in Cook's footsteps around the main island of Tahiti, and reported back to New Zealand from Point Venus on the night of the Transit, 8 June.

Winners and finalists of the Transit of Venus Expedition competition, sponsored by the Freemasons of New Zealand.

Three schools have been selected from 72 entries to go on the 2004 Transit of Venus Expedition to the UK, leaving New Zealand on May 28th. Dame Anne Salmond (University of Auckland) and co-judges from the principal sponsor, Freemasons New Zealand (Dr Alex Davidson and Mr Noel Ryan), and the British High Commission (High Commissioner Richard Fell and first secretary Paul Noon) chose the following teams from 10 finalists put forward by a preliminary judging panel. Each school team had to produce a 5 minute approx. video and supporting material in website form which are available below to be viewed

RADIO NZ TRANSIT OF VENUS SERIES. The Royal Society of New Zealand, in association with Radio New Zealand, presents a series of six lectures covering the broad themes related to the Transit of Venus. Thanks to Radio New Zealand for making these audio files available.

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1. How the land got here; the split from Gondwanaland and the development of our unique flora and fauna. Introduction by poet Chris Orsman of Wellington. Dr Hamish Campbell, Te Papa / GNS. Introduction by poet Chris Orsman of Wellington. Recorded at Nelson, School of Music, Tuesday 4 May, courtesy Radio NZ.

2. Stonehenge: How the ancients, from Babylonians to Polynesians, interpreted and used the stars. Stonehenge in Britain and the construction of Stonehenge Aotearoa in the Wairarapa. Richard Hall, Carter Observatory / Phoenix Astronomical Society. Introduction by Dr. Grant Christie, Royal Society Cttee for Astronomical Sciences, Chairman of the Auckland Observatory and Planetarium Trust Board, Director of Research at the Observatory.
Recorded at Auckland, National Maritime Museum, Tuesday 11 May, courtesy Radio NZ.

3. Pacific voyaging and navigation. Dr Peter Adds, Maori Studies, Victoria University of Wellington. Introduction by science historian, Dr John Stenhouse, University of Otago. Recorded Dunedin, Otago Museum, Hutton Theatre, Tuesday, 18 May, courtesy Radio NZ.

4. The background to the Transit of Venus: science in the Age of Enlightenment, the quest to find the distance to the Sun, longitude. Dr Duncan Steel, science historian and authority on Cook’s voyage and the Transit, formerly at the University of Canterbury. Introduction by John Hisco, President of the Astronomical Society of South Australia. Recorded at ABC studios in Adelaide, courtesy Radio NZ.

5. Cook's first voyage to record the Transit of Venus; first encounters between Maori and Europeans. Dame Anne Salmond, University of Auckland. Introduction by Professor David Mackay, Deputy Vice Chancellor, Victoria University of Wellington. Recorded at Christchurch, Art Gallery Auditorium, Tuesday 1 June, 7 p.m, courtesy Radio NZ.

6. 2004 UNESCO New Zealand Science Lecture. Voyages of the future: What are the challenges now? The search for dark matter, other life and other universes. Professor Paul Callaghan, Distinguished Professor, Massey University, with Alan MacDiarmid, Professor of Physical Sciences, Victoria University of Wellington, and Director of the MacDiarmid Institute of Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology. Introduction by historian Dr Claudia Orange, Te Papa. Recorded at Te Papa, Soundings Theatre, Tuesday 8 June, courtesy Radio NZ.

2004 TRANSIT OF VENUS LECTURE SERIES.
The Royal Society of New Zealand, in association with Radio New Zealand, is presenting a series of six lectures covering the broad themes related to the Transit of Venus. The lectures will be broadcast on the National Programme every Sunday following each lecture, at 2.00 p.m. and later made available on this website as audiostreams. This programme will also go out to the Pacific via Radio New Zealand International. The final lecture will be broadcast live at 7.05 p.m. on 8 June, while the Transit is in progress.

Maritime Museum Farewell. Thursday May 27, 5.30 p.m.
Big farewell party for the Transit of Venus Expedition winning teams at the National Maritime Museum in Auckland. The teams will receive their mission briefs from the highest authorities. The Museum has kindly given us free use of their Maritime Room and has, from the beginning, been an enthusiastic supporter of the project. Admission by invitation only.

Transit of Venus Expedition teams depart for Britain. Friday May 28.
From 1-9 June the three teams will be filing daily video reports on their visits to various people and places. These may be viewed at in the Competition section of this website.

The 19 members (nine students, three teachers, three team leaders, three journalists and a representative of Freemasons New Zealand) will be together in London for four days and then depart on three different itineraries. They will all go to Greenwich, the Royal Society of London, the Natural History Museum, and Kew Gardens, and then separately visit the Cavendish Laboratory, Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Rees, the National Space Centre at Leicester, Stonehenge, Lyme Regis (fossil hunting), Carr House in Preston, where Jeremiah Horrocks is believed to have observed the 1639 Transit, Portsmouth, Oxford University, Eton College, the Endeavour replica and the James Cook Museum in Whitby, and many other places of historic and/or scientific interest.

One team will be privileged to observe the Transit from historical Carr House and attend a banquet dinner with renowned astronomers from around the world; the other two teams will view it from Whitby, Cook's home town in North Yorkshire, where the locals have long been planning a great reception for the New Zealanders. A number of ex-pats will join them there.

Celebration of James Cook Fellows at Government House, Wednesday June 2.
To mark the importance of the Transit of Venus in New Zealand's history, the Governor General, Dame Silvia Cartwright, is hosting an afternoon function for the Royal Society at which four of the James Cook Fellows will present: Dame Anne Salmond, Professors Charles Higham, Peter Hunter, and Ken MacKenzie. Students from Wellington schools who participated in the Transit of Venus competition will be among the estimated 200 invited guests.

Opening of Stonehenge Aotearoa in the Wairarapa, Saturday June 5.
This imaginative project is part-funded by the government's Science and Technology Promotion Fund. It is located about 10mins drive East of Carterton and has a spectacular view over the Wairarapa countryside. Thousands of hours of voluntary labour have gone into the project.

"Stonehenge Aotearoa will not be a replica of the ruin on Salisbury Plain in England. It will be a complete and working structure designed and built for its precise location in the Wairarapa. It will, however, be similar in size to the original Stonehenge. Stonehenge Aotearoa will consist of a 30-metre diameter circle of 24 monoliths, capped with lintels. Each monolith will rise 3 metres above the ground. The stone circle will encompass a central design incorporating two obelisks (the largest being 5 metres high), a sundial, meridian line, and a solar and Zodiac calendar. Extending from the centre and beyond the circle of stones will be 4 causeways with additional stones that mark the solstices and equinoxes." See http://www.astronomynz.org.nz/stonehenge/stonehenge.htm One of the Transit of Venus Expedition teams will visit Stonehenge in the UK on June 3.

Tolaga Bay students visit Tahiti, late May/early June.
UNESCO is funding two senior students from Tolaga Bay School to spend just over a week in Tahiti. They will be studying the theme of Pacific voyaging, the Transit of Venus, Cook's first visit to the Pacific, and the story of Tupaia, the Tahitian High Priest who came to New Zealand with Cook, and stopped at Tolaga Bay. He made quite an impression on local Maori, with whom he was able to communicate reasonably well. Sadly, Tupaia, and his young companion Tayeto, never returned home; both died, along with nearly half the crew, after falling ill in Jakarta on the yoyage back to England. The story of Cook's stay at Tolaga Bay can be viewed on this website in Captain's Log, Ep 1. Cook's Cove.

Transit of Venus Exhibitions at Milford Galleries. From June 5. http://www.milfordgalleries.co.nz

A three venue exhibition (Auckland, Dunedin, Queenstown) is being held both to commemorate this very important event in our history and to provide leading artists with the opportunity to examine and consider this from a variety of perspectives, points of view and time-lines.

There are many subjects and narratives to be examined. For example, it reminds us that Maori as the first explorers of the south crossed the Pacific to reach these shores as much by navigation with the stars as through the use of wind, currents and tides. So the transit is a much larger event and story than merely that of science to NZ.

There is also something of an irony in the coming event in that on this occasion one of the most pivotal events in NZ's formative history will not be seen from these shores but from Britain and Europe. The world as we have come to know it will be upside down on June 8, 2004.

Dunedin 5 June - 24 June. Artists: Areta Wilkinson, Reuben Paterson, Scott McFarlane, Michael Tannock, Sarah Guppy, Darryl Robertson

Queenstown 5 June - 4 July. Artists: Nigel Brown, Peter James Smith, Garry Currin, Veronika Maser, Terry Stringer

Auckland 9 June - 28 June. Artists: Elizabeth Rees, Robert Ellis, Mary McIntyre, Ross Ritchie, Mervyn Williams, Wellesley Binding, Anna Hollings

Transit of Venus Expedition returns to New Zealand. Thursday June 10

Past event:

Live Webcast Transit of Venus from Athens, Greece June 8, 2004 (PST)
The Live @ Exploratorium crew will travel to the National Observatory of Greece, outside Athens, for a clear view of this amazing and rare occurrence. Webcasts will begin with the point of first contact. As the transit unfolds over the hours, we will revisit the phenomenon through a series of shorter Webcasts, to capture the succession of Venus across the face of the Sun. Watch as we explore the role of past transits in the history of astronomy and how the Venus Transit was used to calculate the distance from the Earth to the Sun—called the Astronomical Unit. The program will present cutting-edge research on Sun-Venus and Sun-Earth interactions, and how NASA plans to use similar transits to discover planets circling stars in distant solar systems. Go to this page to see the Transit webcast LIVE. The Transit itself will begin at approx. 5:20PM NZ time.

NASA Teleconference, US Embassy, Wellington. Friday April 16, 7.30 a.m.
NASA and the Transit of Venus website, in association with the Royal Society, organised a teleconference between New Zealand and US students, which was hosted by the American Embassy in Wellington. The four teams of New Zealand students, each presented a case for a different astronomical unit, say Pluto-Sun. See The Venus Transit: THE AU CHALLENGE for full information and links for videostreaming of the videoconference, which is dedicated to the memory of Dr William Pickering. The video conference will be available for viewing live and then as an archive video on the NASA LIVE website.

NASA Videoconference Photos. Photos of the students from Wellington who particiated in the live videoconference are now available on the US Embassy website.