Transit of Venus: Class of 1957’s Exceptional Reunion
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![Using an 8 inch Dobsonian Reflector Telescope, 1957 classmates Paul Carr (from left), Lee Lancaster, Nelson Disco, and Darrell Briggs enjoy the Transit of Venus. Photo: Kim Balkus.](/sites/default/files/slice/uploads/2012/06/transit-Kim-crop-300x300.jpg)
The Class of 1957 staged a fabulous pre-reunion gathering in Maine that featured the viewing of the rare Transit of Venus. Here’s the story from Martin Zombeck ’57, PhD ’69, who retired from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics where he was a senior physicist working in X-ray astronomy. He is author of the Handbook of Space Astronomy and Astrophysics.
"Our MIT Class of 1957 held a reunion at the Stage Neck Inn Monday, June 4–Thursday, June 7. I arranged with the Astronomical Society of Northern New England in Kennebunk to send two amateur astronomers to set up a telescope at the Inn to view the transit of Venus, Tuesday, starting at 6:09 p.m. As a back up, they set up an Internet video feed from one of the observatories on Mauna Kea in Hawaii.
"Tuesday was completely overcast for most of the day. Miraculously, the clouds parted a few minutes before the start of the transit and we could view it for almost two hours whereupon the Sun set and it rained.
"My classmates think that I arranged the dramatic parting of the clouds. George Moy suggested that I be nicknamed "Moses." The next transit of Venus will not occur until 2117. None of us had ever witnessed a transit of Venus before this one."