Venus transits the Sun

In an astronomical occurance that hasn't happened in 122 years, Venus transited the Sun this morning. That means that it moved between the sun and Earth, but it's not big enough (or close enough to Earth) to have "eclipsed" the sun.

Or so they say anyway. I was outside standing in a field with 50 or so other people at the Crystal Spring farm in Brunswick between 5:30 and 7:00 this morning, and all I saw was fog. Oh, yeah, horses, cows and the like. But a lot of fog. No sun. No Venus. No "once-in-a-lifetime" spectacle. (Actually, it's twice in a lifetime. It'll happen again in 2012, but won't be visible in Maine). Fog. And it was chilly out there, too.

The host of the event, Robert Burgess, a lawyer from Brunswick and a NASA Ambassador, couldn't have been a nicer guy. Real intelligent and informative. His telescope never got out of his car.

A couple of telescopes did make it out of the car, to give the news guy some footage of people looking at fog. A bunch of folks from the Astronomical Society of Northern New England brought them. These are impressive machines, let me tell you. Dr. Keith Quattrocchi and Dr. Richard Kahn, who run the Maine Astronomical Society brought some honkin' equipment. In addition to the big scopes, Dr. Quattrocchi brought recording equipment to record and project the transit on both a TV screen and a laptop. Alas, this equipment stayed in the cars, too.

The doctors were very nice people too. Apparently, Dr. Q. has a computer-controlled observatory in his home - with which he can control the scope and see the results from the comfort of his living room. Now THAT is cool!