Venus what? Did you know the planet Venus just passed infront of the Sun? If you were in America, it started in the afternoon/evening on Tuesday, and the sun set during the event. Here in Indonesia, it started on Wednesday just before Sunrise. As I tried to tell people what was happening here, I was greeted by mostly long, quizzical faces! Especially when I tried to describe it to Indonesians.
When I heard this was going to hapen two months ago from a friend of ours, I put it on the calendar and have been getting excited. It's not going to happen again for another 105 years. I also knew that it would be visible at sunrise, and sunrise is almost always clear and sunny here in central Java, Indonesia.
So I have been scheming to find a place where I can go to have a sweeping view of the sunrise for this. I decided to go explore the other side of a nearby marsh/lake called Rawa Penning. I figured from there, I would have a pretty good view of the sunrise. So I left before dawn on my Suzuki scooter to go find a spot. I found a great spot on a little dock on Rawa Penning. As it became light, this was the scene I was greeted with.....
Don't get me wrong, it was peaceful and beautiful, but cloudy. Bummer!! It's hardly ever cloudy here in the morning. So no awesome sunrise view of the Venus transition. Here were some other sights I took in though....
And as it became lighter......
As I sat, I pulled out my phone and enjoyed reading some of Psalm 119. I love that passage.
But no sun! :- ( So after waiting a while, and talking with a local boat owner/operator (who offered to take me fishing for ten bucks...bummer I had to get back to go to language school!) I got up to head back. I went a little further down the road that I came in on to explore. I saw some beautiful sweeping scenery, rice field workers working in a beautiful rice field. I had to pull over to take some pictures.
As they say, pictures don't do this stuff justice.
And here's a close up of the Padi (stalks of rice) in the Sawah (rice field). There's a fun song we learned about that in language school.
Anyhow, as I was taking these pics, I noticed all of a sudden, the sun starting to break through. I trained my camera on the sun to take some shots. I thought the pictures would never show Venus making its way across the sun since my welding glass I planned to use to lower the intensity of the sun was back in the scooter. The cloud cover, however, made it perfect! It turned out these first shots I took by the rice field were the only ones that really turned out to show Venus transitioning the sun.
For some artistic variety....
After I drove home and went to school, the sun would poke out from behind the overcast off and on. But the welding glass would not dim it enough to take any more good pictures. Here's the only welding glass pic that worked semi-OK...because I put the lense of my sunglasses infront of it too...
So you can barely see a smudge of Venus on the left.
I brought my camera/welding glass to school for others to see. With the welding glass alone, the spot made by Venus was really small and hard to see. It was easily visible through the viewfinder of the camera though (of course with the welding glass over the lens so we didnt fry anybody's eyes!).
