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Transit of Venus: Class of 1957’s Exceptional Reunion

  • Nancy DuVergne Smith
  • slice.mit.edu

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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.
Using an 8 inch Dobsonian Reflector Telescope, classmates Paul Carr (from left), Lee Lancaster, Nelson Disco, and Darrell Briggs enjoy the Transit of Venus. Photo: Kim Balkus.

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.

Venus transiting the Sun photographed at the Stage Neck Inn at 7:31pm, Tuesday, June 5 through the Dobsonian telescope. The small specks are sunspots. Photo: Lee Lancaster.
Venus transiting the Sun photographed at 7:31 p.m., June 5,  through the Dobsonian telescope. The small specks are sunspots. Photo: Lee Lancaster.

"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."

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