Transit of Venus

Seeing as how this started as an astronomy blog, it would be wrong not to write about Venus transiting the sun tomorrow.   This link is quite handy, but if you don't feel like clicking it, just know that Venus will be moving in front of the sun as seen from Earth on June 5, 2012.  Venus transits come in pairs, with eight-ish years between each transit within a pair, and a hundred or so years between each transit.  So you ought to try and catch this one!  It will be visible from around 3:00 pm to sunset in the Pacific time zone.  Just like the solar eclipse earlier this year, don't look directly at the sun without some sort of protective eye gear.

I used to look at solar eclipse pictures, and similar phenomena, as if the object being eclipsed was a circle that was becoming a crescent or just losing a piece of itself.  But for this past solar eclipse, I was able to think about what I was seeing in three-dimensions rather than two.  This made it more obvious to me that the moon was actually orbiting the Earth and it was blocking out of the sun's light.  It was way cooler to look at the eclipse this way.  I'm hoping to do the same thing when I observe Venus's transit.  It kind of gives you a sense of scale of the solar system.  The Earth and Venus are similar sizes, so when you see how small Venus is in comparison to the sun, that's how small Earth is too.  Incredible!