Down to Earth and Looking Up

Tomorrow I'll come down from the hill to live back with the flatlanders. Which means I won't be up here for the full moon, or the transit of Venus. Transit of Venus, you say, with a note of inquisitiveness in your tone. Is Venus going someplace special? Well, clever of you to ask, because Venus is indeed going someplace special, right across the face of the sun.

It won't happen again for another hundred years, so chances are none of us will be around to see it. Of course, by then, I can't imagine what sort of devices will be used to tell information. Maybe my head chip will be tuned to yours and...no. No, that would be cruel. And I'm sure in 100 years mankind will have figured out that cruelty and war and hunger just aren't necessary and kindness will be the keyword. Am I digressing here? Yes I am.

Because I won't be here for the full moon, what I see is what you get.

The last transit of Venus was in 2004. So what's the big deal? According to EarthSky (this is a great site by the way, for things stellar):

"Why is a transit of Venus so rare?


The last transit of Venus was June 8, 2004. But don’t be fooled by that proximity in time. Transits of Venus are very rare, plus transits tend to occur in pairs. They occur in a pattern that repeats every 243 years, with pairs of transits eight years apart separated by long gaps of up to 121.5 years. Before 2004, the last pair of transits were in December 1874 and December 1882."


Now I'm sure there are some right old folk who were around for the last one scattered around the world, but I doubt they were out watching this. And they sure weren't going to watch it online. And if they did watch it, they are probably blind now and won't see this one either, because there was no Big Brother to warn them about staring into the sun. Of course, I think there was a bit more of that Common Sense thing back then too, so maybe I'm all wrong about the blind thing.

Who will be able to see this? Well, as with the last solar eclipse, we're sort of crap out of luck around here..

But at least we won't be BLIND!

For all the information on the transit you can possibly want (and more, if you follow the links), go here to an article actually called Everything You Need to Know: Venus transit on June 5-6. That pretty much says it all. I'll be quiet now while you go read.

Have a non-blinding sunshine filled Saturday! Do something safely stimulating.