LAST CHANCE: Watch Venus Transit The Sun Tomorrow Or Have To Wait Another 105 Years (Note: You Will Be Dead)

Tomorrow afternoon (USA time) Venus will cross transit the sun and be visible from earth for several hours. Just make sure to use the old 'poke a hole in a piece of cardboard' trick and watch the shadow on the ground so you don't go blind. Save that for masturbating.
Because Venus and the earth don't orbit the sun on the exact same plane--Venus' orbit is tipped 3.4 degrees relative to ours--most of the time it's too high or too low...It only lines up in all 3 dimensions and traverses across the sun four times during an unusual 243 year cycle, with the transits coming in pairs separated by alternating periods of 121.5 and 105.5 years.
In the United States, the transit will begin at roughly 6:04 Eastern, 5:04 Central, 4:05 Mountain, and 3:06 Pacific Time. Over the course of several hours, Venus will appear as a small dot moving slowly against backdrop of the sun.The next few transits will be in December 2117, December 2125, June 2247 and June 2255.
So yeah, if you want to see it get out there tomorrow afternoon, because there's no way you're gonna be alive in 105 years. "But what if they cryogenically freeze me and then bring me back to life?" Please, nobody's gonna pay to have you frozen.
Thanks to bb, who made me promise to catch her a star in a net even though she knows my good star-catching net has a hole in it and I'll have to sew the legs shut on the boxers I'm wearing and use those. Don't look at my butt!
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Because you missed it, here are several shots from NASA's Solar Dynamics Laboratory telescope highlighting Venus' transit of the sun yesterday afternoon/evening. "Where were you when Venus transited the sun in 2012?" people will ask in the future. And how -- how will you resp... / Continue →
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Remember last week's crazy-ass sun picture and video? Well here come some more shots from the recently launched NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory. Just look at that! Amazing, isn't it? So majestic. So powerful. I mean, that's our sun right there -- tooting flames. God what... / Continue →
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Astronomers have discovered what they believe is a five-planet solar system orbiting Tau Ceti, a star with very similar luminosity to our sun. And one of those planets is the proper distance away from its sun "to sport mild temperatures, oceans of liquid water, and even life." ... / Continue →


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