Quarks to Quasars

Watch a video of the transit of Venus. From 1882.

Today is your last chance to watch Venus cross the face of the Sun before 2117, so don’t miss it. The event occurs so infrequently that the last transit, prior to the one in 2004, occurred all the way back in 1882.

Until relatively recently, the most common way of capturing snapshots the sky was by means of glass, photographic plates. In 1882, astronomer David Peck Todd used a series of these plates to capture the transit of Venus. Over a century later, astronomers Anthony Misch and Bill Sheehan recovered these long-forgotten plates from storage, and combined them to form the video below, reanimating what they call “a moving record of an event seen by no one now living, and a preview of what millions” will soon see for the last time in their lives:

Watch a video of the transit of Venus. From 1882.

Today is your last chance to watch Venus cross the face of the Sun before 2117, so don’t miss it. The event occurs so infrequently that the last transit, prior to the one in 2004, occurred all the way back in 1882.

Until relatively recently, the most common way of capturing snapshots the sky was by means of glass, photographic plates. In 1882, astronomer David Peck Todd used a series of these plates to capture the transit of Venus. Over a century later, astronomers Anthony Misch and Bill Sheehan recovered these long-forgotten plates from storage, and combined them to form the video below, reanimating what they call “a moving record of an event seen by no one now living, and a preview of what millions” will soon see for the last time in their lives:

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   Wish I saw disss

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    Time to get my telescope out:D

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