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Well as if my day wasn’t long enough with the adventure with the Defense Force ship, yesterday I was scheduled to host a star party here at school to view the last Venus Transit in this century.
The Transit of Venus is when the planet travels in front of the face of the sun and for a few brief minutes you can see it eclipsed as a round ball over the burning surface of the sun. These kinds of transits happen often with the planet Mercury, but only in one 8-year interval that happens every 120 years or so.
A friend of mine helped coordinate an official Star Party here at the school with tickets and refreshments and an audio/visual presentation and everything. As I was rushing from dropping off the Defense Force it was looking like the sky was cloudy and we wouldn’t see the transit. We’ve had 2 weeks of rain and hot humid hazy weather, and for a few clouds it appeared that we’d miss out on this celestial event.
Thankfully, however the skies cleared for the major portion of the inferior conjunction and we were reward with an amazing view of the sun. We had approximately 10 individuals come out to see the celestial show and everyone was amazed. Dale helped me affix some wax paper to my binoculars so that you could view the sun enlarged with the naked eye and everyone could see at once without peering through a telescope.
The planet was beautiful. Its roughly the same size as earth and the most noticeable attribute as we watched the transit was the speed by which the planet is hurtling through space. As it comes between us and the sun, you can almost visibly watch it race across the face of the sun and its staggering to grasp the gigantic distances of our solar system and the precision of its fine-tuning for God to have given us love and life on this planet.
The star party went off without a hitch and after about 1 hour of view the clouds returned and we were finished, but not after I had snapped some amazing pictures with my camera in parallel to my scope.
What a grand spectacle to see, and a reminder of our place in this vast world, that God has chosen to reveal Himself through the heavens as they pour forth speech declaring His glory – Psalm 19.