Venus in Transit Draws a Crowd

In the large grassy field across from the on Lake Road was a gathering of four, an SUV and a high-powered telescope hoping to catch an event of a lifetime.

Telescopes pointing toward the sun were not an unusual sight on June 5, when a event—the second since 2004 and one not expected to happen again in this lifetime—occurred.

The man with the telescope though, was John Dennis of tiny Waverly, WV (population, 385) who jumped into his car at noon and made the approximately 180-mile drive to Avon Lake before setting up shop in a field near Lake Erie by Lake and Moore roads.

Dennis, a nurse, is a former science teacher who uses his Explorer Scientific telescope with a 4-inch refractor for deep sky and galaxy viewing. He said he also viewed the 2004 passing of Venus in front of the sun.

“I used cleardarksky.com, a weather predictor for astronomers and looked at the water vapor chart,” Dennis said. “This was one of the few places on the entire eastern part of the country to have clear skies.”

According to the no-frills website, the charts are based on a numerical weather model.

“Clear Sky Charts are perhaps the most accurate and the most usable forecasters of astronomical observing conditions for over 1900 observatories and observing sites in North America,” the site reports.

It didn’t steer Dennis wrong. Dennis’s telescope, equipped with a solar refractor for safe viewing, allowed viewers an up-close-and-personal view of Venus as it traversed the sun under clear skies. A similar transit is not expected to happen again until 2117.

Dennis snapped photos through the telescope's lens with a small digital cameras and charted the planet's course, and before long, found he had company.

Jennifer Lambein and Amelio Leanza of Westlake were hoping to view the event at Edgewater Park, where 35,000 were expected to gather. They had planned to watch the transit by channeling the sun's reflection off of a white piece of paper when they spotted Dennis … and got a much better view than they could have expected.

"We saw him out here and stopped," Lambein said.

Bill Rufo, a fitness instructor at Lorain County Community College was passing by on his motorcycle, saw the group and also stopped to take a look through Dennis’s telescope.

“I’ve always been interested in astronomy,” he said, adding his son is studying the field at Valparaiso University. “We’ll have something to talk about tonight.”