Manufacturing Smiles: remembering the Transit of Venus one week later

On June 5, 2012 a community of Chicagoans gathered at Adler Planetarium to witness an event that will not take place again until 2117. Chances are, only 1-5 people currently alive will be alive for the next Transit of Venus, and they are currently less than 6 months old.  The following is a happy story about the Transit of Venus as Tom saw it via his Canon Rebel T3 and the Twitter hashtag: #AdlerTOV.

Adler reported an estimated 6,000 people showed up on their doorstep to witness the transit which received press from Huffington Post and every news station in Chicago.

With 6,000 people and only a handful of telescopes, lines were longer than Six Flags on a busy summer day. Fortunately, NASA provided Adler with NASA-approved Solar Viewing Glasses; no need to wait for the telescope, when you have a pair of these epic glasses:

Meet Sara(h). Tom noticed her walking around with a HUGE smile. He asked, “Either you just received some very good news, or you saw Venus. Which?” To be a part of something so rare, and spectacular, the Venus transit was a smile manufacturing hot spot.

The Transit of Venus wasn’t the only rare event. Conglomerations of humans are a magnet for hungry sea gulls.

As the sun set behind the Chicago skyline, this photo is one of the last images of Venus any living human will see with the naked eye. See it? The little black dot on the homemade solar-viewing apparatus…

A joke from the Jonathan Brandmeier Show:

And finally, where there’s a collection of people, there’s a pair of interesting shoes. Tom satisfied his shoe fix by finding a woman wearing these Most Interesting Shoes at #AdlerTOV. Thank you for reading, chase the smile and letUbeU.

Related articles

• 3 Photos & Words To Describe #AdlerTOV (letubeu.com)
• Transit of Venus – Incredible Images (the2012scenario.com)