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Stare At The Sun Tomorrow Morning

NYTimes.com - Venus Eclipse ScheduleBut not without your protective eyewear. Venus will be crossing in front of the sun tomorrow morning for the first time in 122 years. The orbits of the Earth and Venus line us all up in a row where Venus comes in front of our view of the sun. It happens twice, 8 years apart, about every century. And while the last time it happened, it helped calculate the Earth's distance from the sun, this time it's just cool. We won't get to see the whole event but we'll catch the last 2 hours of it (the last 2 hours are the best anyway).

The Hayden Planetarium will be setting up a bunch of telescopes with solar filters for the public to view the event and will also be projecting the images onto white screens. If you cannot make it to a viewing point or don't have protection, (seriously, protect your eyes. Sunglasses, squinting, and Pop Tart wrappers will not protect you and you can do serious damage staring at the sun), Space.com has an impressive informational section of their website with histories, images, video, and webcasts for you to view the dot.

What does this have to do with weather? Well, it's supposed to be sunny tomorrow morning which will be the key to seeing the eclipse. "Venus will appear as a small black dot." Awesome.

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Comments [rss]

  • Hoofin

    Ah! Here it is.

    Anyone up at 6:30 am with a good set of filtered binoculars and a clear view of the sun could see this.

    Rain date was June 5, 2012, about 4 pm on the East Coast.

  • I guess a few people did: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/09/science/09venus.html

    On the news they said it will happen again in 2012. Guess I'll try to set my alarm next time...

  • I heard you had to wake up at like 5AM to bear witness. Did anyone see it?

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