SPACE NERD ALERT!

Today, the orbit of the planet Venus took it across the face of the sun.  This phenomenon is happening now.  It is visible from Earth.

This will not happen again for 105 years.  You can watch it online.  Tomorrow there will be tons of video and pictures, I’m sure.

I got two pieces of welder’s glass, one #10 and one #5 darkness, and taped them together.  I was able to see it.   I went outside and made all my neighbors look at it!  I made the ice cream man look!

A digital camera doesn’t have enough zoom to get a picture of the planet (it was just a little black dot), but I got some nice greenish pictures of the sun through the welder’s glass.

Photograph by Elizabeth West

Look, the sun is a ball.  Who knew?  :P

Psycho Kitty was not impressed.

“Yeah…so what?

Photograph by Elizabeth West

Here’s a better picture of what astronomers will see / are seeing:

Rainwater Observatory, French Camp, MS

http://www.rainwaterobservatory.org/rainwater/

I hope you got to see this once-in-a-lifetime event.   If you lived on my street, I would have made you look at it too.  Sorry about that.  You could have had ice cream.