Transit of Venus

Did you see it?  We did.  On Monday the last transit of Venus in our life times occurred, and we saw it!  What?  You don’t know what a transit of Venus is?!?!?  It’s when Venus passes between Earth and the Sun, and you can see (through the appropriate filters of course) a tiny black spot slowly move across the Sun where Venus blocks the light.  Next one is going to be in 2117!  The astronomy folks at the university where M works set up a highly filtered telescope and passed out eclipse glasses.  We hung out and watched for a couple of hours.

The Sun kept ducking behind clouds, but we got lots of chances to see it.  It was almost impossibly small to see through the eclipse glasses, but the telescope was nice and clear.  The photo below is one that I took with my point & shoot camera through the telescope lens.  (It was very tricky to get those two gadgets to work together.)  Big orange blob = Sun, tiny dark spot in big orange blob = Venus, black all around = telescope eye piece.  Trust me, it was way cooler in real life