Transit of Venus

[RUTHSINGS at aol.com]

Though not lucky enough to be in Valletta, I do have the good fortune to live 
a block and a half from the Hayden Planetarium, where at 6:30 this morning, 
on the plaza to its west, a crowd of roughly 300 gathered to observe the 
transit. Volunteers handed out cardboard solar viewers, and several telescopes were 
set up on the plaza.  We had to a wait a few minutes for the sun to rise a 
little higher, just to the left of the glass box of the planetarium, but then we 
could clearly see the dot of Venus at 4 o'clock, very near the end of the 
transit. I had never looked at the sun through filtered lenses before, an amazing 
experience. One telescope was a Sunspotter, a small contraption that projects 
an enlarged image onto a piece of paper--useful at the end as Venus was 
exiting the disk of the sun.  Phenomenal.

R.