Transit of Venus

I had planned to be more prepared for this, but when the beautiful clear afternoon finally got here, I was still bogged down with phone calls and equipment that would not work, along with people who seem to be being paid to be useless at troubleshooting scanner problems. So I figured I had time for a run, then I would drive up to the lake to see what I could see with the pinhole setup I had put together. But on my run over Cobbs Hill, there were already many people set up for the event, and as I stopped to talk, they showed me the very first of the transit.

I could not do any better than this on my own, so I finished my run and came back in dry clothes. There was an enthusiastic crowd of those who had anticipated the transit for months, along with those who first heard of it as they walked by this evening. Several members of the Rochester Astronomy Society had their telescopes set up and were offering views to everyone who came by. The old timers gave advice to novices, and were interviewed by Fox News. Us novices, from age 3 on up, took it in with amazement and pleasure. These are the people I should have called with my scanner problems. Shown here is an impressive range of technology, from simple viewers to portable observatories.