a summer of cosmic events

Since at least one of these was a true "once in a lifetime" event, I figure I better write something about them for posterity's sake.

A few weeks ago, we were able to view a solar eclipse, which was only the second I remember seeing in my lifetime.  TEC's dad had purchased a few pairs of solar-filtered lenses to share with his grandchildren (and the neighborhood), and it was very exciting to see the crescent sun smiling in the heavens.

Last week, a second amazing event took place.  The transit of Venus was to be visible from around 4:00pm until sunset as a small black dot moving across the sun.  This event occurs twice (about 8 years apart) a century, and only once from our hemisphere.  The next pair of transits won't happen until 2117 and 2125.  I wanted my kids to be able to tell their kids about it.  Unfortunately, clouds covered the sky for most of the day and for about an hour before sunset.  I took a chance and loaded up the kids to drive up to my old Jr. High in hopes of catching if but a brief view of the setting sun.  TEC met us there from work.

Luckily, we still had sleeping bags in the car from our trip up to the cabin, because it was cold.

As you can see, my kids were very excited (I had to keep telling them that it was going to be a cool experience).

Finally, the sun appeared below the last layer of clouds.  It took a while to get a clear view of Venus.  A friend of ours was prepared with a solar-filter on his binoculars, which helped a lot.  Here's my not-very-clear-but-MY picture of what we eventually saw (what we actually saw was much more clear).

It really puts things into perspective, when you realize that Earth and Venus are close to the same size, to see how much bigger the sun is.  We are very small in this grand universe.

A funny side note: While we were waiting for the sun to set, a lady pulled up next to us and handed us a few extra solar-viewing lenses.  She look familiar and finally it hit me that she looked a lot like a friend I had had in elementary school and junior high.  It turned out that it was, in fact, Lisa Book, now married with kids.  We laughed about the randomness of meeting again in the parking lot of Churchill Jr. High all these years later to watch a rare cosmic event.

Maybe not so random after all.