Not the same old thing as yesterday

I had an amazing day today. I woke up to rain clouds. I told people about the transit of Venus but was skeptical if I would see it myself. Then when I got out of class it was sunny. I was more excited than a kid on christmas. I was running and singing Sting lyrics. Latter it snowed.

I didn't have any kind of filter to view the sun with, so I thought I would go to OMSI to watch the transit. On their website I read that eclipse shades will be sold in the gift shop for $2. Being transportationaly challenged I walked there. Rather than sticking around with the middleschoolers on fieldtrips I grabbed my cool shades and split.

When I got back to my room I took one of the paper glasses and cut it up. I tapped one of the mylar lenses to the inside of the lenscap on my telescope.

I headed outside to a public location and got to do some amazing sidewalk astronomy. I got to see first and second contact, totality and most of the rest of this long transit. An opportunity that will not come again till 2117.


Venus is roughly the same size as the earth and a little over a quarter the distance from the earth to the sun. One solar astronomer named Ace snapped the photo with a cellphone held over the eyepiece. Venus is the spec in the lower right part of the blue disk.