Categories
outdoors

Transit of Venus

[Today’s run: Watson Road – 3+ miles]

We watched a little bit of the transit of Venus across the sun this afternoon.

I had been reading about it, saw the information about when it was going to happen.

And I found a web page that described how to see it.

I  put masking tape on a piece of mirror (out of an old overhead projector) so that only a little square remained, about 1/4 inch on a side.  I attached the mirror to a piece of 2×4 lumber and attached the 2×4 to a larger piece in such a way that I could hinge it around.  With that and some blocks under the larger piece we were able to point the reflection of the sun through the garage and into the house.

We had to repoint it often because the sun was moving right along.  We could see the little black dot of Venus, and lots of other dots from specks on the window.  We had some clouds roll through; our observations were broken up into 3-4 periods when the sun was completely out.

Venus got about half way across the sun’s face before sunset.