Is it just me, or is this sort of image not really all that exciting:







This is the transit of Venus across the sun a couple of weeks ago. It hasn't happened in over 100 years, will happen again in 2012 (when it will be easier to view from the US) then won't happen again for another 100+ years. Other than the obvious rarity of the event, visually it's not all that spectacular, like most of the pictures from Mars lately. The June Astronomy magazine devotes quite a bit of coverage to this, and I understand its importance in history as early astronomers used events like this to try to determine with greater precision the distance between the earth and the sun (the "Astronomical Unit" or "AU"). But the images I've seen look like someone needs to clean his lens off.



Got back last night from Ohio, got lots of pictures to upload, hopefully tomorrow instead of working I can put together the travelogue.