Tripping Through Time

 This post will also be found in Tehachapi's The Loop Newspaper. 

We are all the product of our times and cultures. But our ability to read and write, both history and fiction, gives us the opportunity to look back at other times and cultures. The presuppositions we have come from our culture, but these are always in flux. There is a constant struggle between change and stasis. 

Patris Dies

 This post will also be found in Tehachapi's The Loop Newspaper. 

 

Sometimes I seem to have vast holes in my memory. But with Father's Day coming up I've been thinking back to some of the events my Dad and I have shared. My Dad has always had a wide variety of interests. And he helped me develop my wide variety of interests too. 

Venus Transit

The Transit of Venus took place June 5th. A transit is where a planet goes between its star and the observer. So Venus was going to go between us and the Sun.

I still had available the solar observing telescope that was used for the eclipse a couple of weeks ago. This time set up in my backyard here in Tehachapi.

The transit started in the mid afternoon and continued through early evening. The usual Tuesday Poetry group gathered in my backyard and watched the transit. Then went inside and created poems inspired by the event that won't be seen again until 2117.

Here is an image of the transit, projected through the telescope onto the white metal screen of the solar observing system. The black dot on the image of the Sun is Venus.

 The citizen science group planethunters.org uses changing light levels as a way of detecting transits of extra-solar planets, that is, planets around other stars.