Romantic Geek Girl

Danielle Monsch takes you through the softer side of geek

Archive for the tag “Fun Facts”

Transit of Venus happening tonight!

I am not the most astronomical of people – I just like looking up at the sky and going, “Ooh, pretty.” Still, I thought this was way too cool not to share.

 From Wikipedia:

A transit of Venus across the Sun takes place when the planet Venus passes directly between the Sun and Earth, becoming visible against (and hence obscuring a small portion of) the solar disk. During a transit, Venus can be seen from Earth as a small black disk moving across the face of the Sun. The duration of such transits is usually measured in hours (the transit of 2004 lasted six hours). A transit is similar to a solar eclipse by the Moon. While the diameter of Venus is more than 3 times that of the Moon, Venus appears smaller, and travels more slowly across the face of the Sun, because it is much farther away from Earth.

Pretty awesome! Of course, I live in the Pacific Northwest where this “sun” is a mythical body only told of in stories and the skies are grey, grey, and grey, but for those of you in other parts of the country, feel free to share how amazing this experience was!

 

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