How to Have the Hottest Venus Transit Party on Earth

For all but our youngest and healthiest readers, Tuesday night will be the last chance we’ll have to see Venus transit between the Earth and the Sun. (It’s doubtful any of us will make it to 2117, when Venus makes its Sun pass again, as the human lifespan still seems to be coming up a little short.) Naturally, this makes it the social event of the astronomical year, and parties are always better when they have themes (this is why Halloween parties are so much more fun than New Year's). I’m proud to provide you with a few suggestions on how to make your transit party the transit party that people will be talking about for the next 105 years.

Here's a few "starter themes" to get your mind going. The most important thing, of course, is to have a good time. But the second (and almost as) important thing is to not look directly at the Sun. With that said, let's get started.

All the space world is a beside itself with Venus-Transit excitement. NASA plans to simulcast the event from at least 10 locations across the globe from Hawaii to the Himalayans with researchers available for questions via live web chats throughout the six-hour event.

For those who find party-hopping tiresome and always end up wishing they had stayed at the previous party, you can set your browser for the Exploratorium in San Francisco which will have a telescope feed and audio commentary every half hour during the event. After all, nothing says "good time" like spending a beautiful June day crowded around a laptop indoors.

Food: There are two schools of thought on food. For NASA fans, this transit has the added bonus of being the first one observed by a human in orbit. Astronaut Don Pettit is aboard the International Space Station with his solar filters and cameras, and will be sending back some images that are sure to blow our minds and make us wish we didn't get motion sickness so easily.

According to NPR, NASA astronauts enjoy freeze-dried shrimp cocktail, served with a freeze-dried horseradish sauce. It must taste pretty good because even sitting still on Earth with gravity, the idea of it is making me feel pretty nauseated. So if you have a freeze drier, or you live near a NASA gift shop in Houston, Cape Canaveral or Hunstville, Ala., this is a must.

The other angle you can take is celebrating the global angle of the transit. Just get on Grubhub and order ethnic food from all of the places where the transit is being observed. This has the added bonus of giving you an icebreaker while live chatting with researchers. Picture asking Dr. Karen Kinemuchi, at NASA's Ames Research Center in California, if she's also eating California rolls. Those are ethnically Californian, right?

Drinks: The Yuri Armstrong — Named for the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, and the first man on the moon, Stretch Armstrong, this "bury-the-hatchet-from-the-space-race-because-apparently-both-our-nations-are-too-tired-to-keep-going-at-it" cocktail is a surefire hit. Simply mix together vodka and Tang, and serve chilled to the temperature of the vacuum of space, in a pouch.

I know a moment ago it was advised that you not stare directly into the Sun, but you only live once, right? On the other hand, there's a lot of things to see in this world, so if you must stare, stare safely.

One simple way is to pick up some solar viewing goggles, which look a lot like 3D glasses from the ’50s. According to the Exploratorium's Paul Doherty these only cost a few dollars, but he doesn't mention where exactly one could find them. Apparently the TELUS World of Science center in Edmonton has them for two Canadian dollars — a "twoonie" in the colloquial — but transit or no, it's just not practical for everyone to go to Edmonton. Additionally, while wearing them you'll look like that bully from Rebel Without A Cause, so this isn't for everyone.

Doherty also shows how to create a more social experience by creating your own solar projector out of "a pair of binoculars, a couple sheets of cardboard and a tripod." It seems really really easy, the way he describes it, but he also epoxies a mount onto his binoculars, so, you know, ask permission ahead of time.

Food: Though we now look to Mars as a potential ersatz Earth, not long ago it seemed plausible that there was life on Venus. After all, Venus has a good thick atmosphere, seasons, and is even closer to Earth's size than Mars.

However, Venus is less our sister planet, and more our evil twin maybe?. The surface of Venus is a terrible 480 degree-Fahrenheit hellscape, and any attempts to land on its surface, by Soviet or American scientists, were brief and unhappy affairs. Unmanned spacecraft from the Soviet Venera program broadcasted for about two hours at the most, just long enough to curse their creators before succumbing to heat and pressure.

But before we knew all that, Earth's science fiction writers imagined lush jungles under Venus's thick clouds, possibly with sexy, space ladies, and possibly with a race of lizardmen. So there's some costume ideas right there.

As for food, consider that Venus rotates backwards. If you could stand on any other planet the Sun would rise in the east and set in the west, but Venus rotates the other way, which even if you don't understand, you've got to respect. So start with dessert, and move back to appetizers. Or serve your cold antipasta hot and your hot dogs cold. There's a lot of room for creativity here.

Drinks: The Bellini is Prosecco and peach purée served in straight up in a champage flute, and a popular cocktail from Venus. Or maybe it's from Venice. Anyway the transit is on a weeknight, so don't go nuts.

While this transit is sure to be an exciting event, past transits were integral in understanding our solar system. The two 18th Century transits — one in 1761 and one in 1769 — sent the astronomers of Europe all across the globe to best observe and record the event. What did they hope to discover? The mathematician/physicist/Astronomer Royal Edmund Halley (of Halley's Comet fame) had determined that by watching Venus transit the Sun and using the principles of triangulation, one could finally get an accurate measurement of the distance between the Sun and the Earth. The 1761 transit had only mixed results, as scientists couldn't determine when the transit was really beginning or ending and were baffled by the distortion known as the "black-drop effect," which would later be proof that Venus has an atmosphere. This put ever more pressure on the 1769 transit. The gentlemen scientists, mostly French and British though with representatives from many places, set off from Europe to all corners of the globe and were plagued by war at sea, illness, and misfortunes of all kinds. Jean-Baptiste Chappe d'Autreroche attempted to observe the 1761 transit in Siberia, but was waylaid by swollen rivers, which the peasants blamed on this foreigner pointing his instruments at the sky. He was lucky to escape alive. For the 1769 transit, Chappe and his crew headed to Baja, California where they got excellent data. Unfortunately Chappe himself died of a fever while out west, and all but one member of his crew died either in California, or en route back to Paris. But that sole survivor delivered some excellent data. The Pennsylvania-born astronomer and surveyor David Rittenhouse was so excited for the transit that he passed out right before it happened, but was fortunate enough to wake up and publish his calculations that the Earth was 93 million miles from the Sun. Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon (of Mason-Dixon Line fame) were attacked at sea by the French while en route to observe the '61 transit, and then had to switch venues from Sumatra (which fell to the French) to South Africa to observe the '69 transit. But no one is unluckier than Guillaume le Gentil. As Bill Bryson tells his story in the phenomenal book A Short History of Nearly Everything: bq. Le Gentil left France for India to observe the transit that was to occur in 1761. Unfortunately for him, due to problems he found himself on a ship in rolling seas on the day of the transit, which meant he was unable to take his measurements. Being a dedicated scientist he continued on to his viewing site in India to prepare for the transit in 1769. Everything was perfect until just before the transit began when a large cloud slid in front of the sun, blocking his view needed for his measurements, and stayed there for almost exactly the duration of the transit. He packed his equipment and headed home, only to get dysentery and be laid up for a year. He eventually made it to a ship and was headed home but the ship was hit by a hurricane and wrecked off the coast of Africa. He finally arrived home 11 and a half years after setting out, having achieved nothing on his trip. When he arrived home he found that his relatives had had him declared dead and ‘had enthusiastically plundered his estate’.

But James Cook, hanging out in Tahiti, was able to get excellent results as well, and it was possible to calculate our distance to the Sun at around 150 million km, which was modified in the next transit to around 149.59 million km, which is still pretty standard. So you may as well pay homage to those who have observed transits before. You could take a bunch of pictures, like Frenchman Pierre Jules Janssen did for the 1874 transit. To take "Jansssening" to the next level, you also should delete all of your pictures soon afterwards, as the best technology available at the time was impermanent wet-plate photographs.

Food: In loving tribute to the illnesses that beset those French gentlemen astronomers, I'd recommend undercooked chicken, aged for a few hours on the countertop. Sure, food poisoning is a little different from dysentery, but you don't want to get dysentery do you?

Drinks: The Le Gentil. Chill a julep cup for eleven years and serve empty.

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