Hi Everyone!
As you can see, the skies are anything but clear today, so unfortunately, there will be no Star Party tonight. Please read on for a message from camp director Scott Pelton.
"I just checked the 11 am forecast and it looks there is no chance to see the Transit of Venus across the Sun from the shores of St. Margaret’s Bay tonight, therefore I am cancelling the Star Party.
The 18th Century French scientist and astronomer– Guillaume Joseph Hyacinthe, if alive today, could have related us having to cancel the star party but I’m sure you will agree once you read below, had an even worse experience with a cloudy forecast.
Guillaume sailed off to far away locations of the globe so as to gain various far flung vantage points of the transit to help calculate a more accurate the distance from the Earth to the Sun. He set out on a ship from Paris in March 1760 bound for India. On June 6, 1761 the transit arrived as predicted . Though the skies were clear he could not make observations aboard the rolling deck of a ship at sea. No problem, he thought, I came this far, I will wait for the next transit, eight years away.
June 4, 1769 finally arrived and though previous weeks had offered perfect clear skies (sounds familiar), June 4th had nothing but clouds and rain ( sounds way too familiar). He saw nothing. Sad, he decided to return to France. He was delayed by an attack of dysentery that probably gave new meaning to the “poop deck” and then his ship was caught in a storm. He was dropped off at the small island of Reunion, east of Madagascar, and he had to wait until a Spanish ship could bring him back to France. He arrived in France almost 11 years after he left, in 1771, only to find he had been declared dead, removed from his position in the Royal Academy of Sciences, and stripped of his fortune by his greedy relatives. Oh yes, his wife had remarried as well. Eventually his position to the Academy was restored and he lived out the remainder of his life in France.
It would be nearly 125 years before the next transit so poor old pooped-out Guillaume never got to see the transit. However we are much luckier. One way is that we can all watch the transit live by just journeying to http://sunearthday.nasa.gov/webcasts/nasaedge/ the otheris that the IPYNC has just purchased a special filter for their telescope and 25 pairs of solar glasse. We won’t be able to use them this evening of course, however this means Young Nats will be able to observe the Sun and its solar storms at the camps this summer!
Clear skies,
Scott"
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