Yesterday, as a temporary volunteer to help the Von Braun Astronomical Society promote the joy of observing the cosmos (in this case, seeing the silhouette of the transit of Venus across the surface of our local star), I observed us.

By the hundreds.

Young, single men and women.  Families.  Divorcees.  Single moms.  Weekend dads.  Widow(er)s.

Dressed in business clothes and casual summer attire.

Using solar filtered, paper framed glasses to look at the tiny orange ball heating the air and ground around us, squinting to see the even tinier black dot traversing the surface.

Thank goodness we had telescopes a-plenty and a video broadcast to the nearby big screen TV to share larger images of the planetary alignment.  A tabletop sun magnifier that showed sunspots on a piece of paper.

Jeff, Debbie and other VBAS volunteers were wonderful.  The teacher who dropped off 50 paper solar glasses we thank, too.  The folks at the Davidson Center on the grounds of the US Space & Rocket Center performed their usual duties flawlessly.

Hopefully, a few young people were inspired to pursue a career in science, technology, engineering and/or math, applying future skills one day in areas as diverse as sewer/chemical remediation and planetary exploration.

I hope it inspires someone to create a kid-safe high-powered telescope because telling children, “No!  Don’t touch the telescope!,” “Don’t lean on the table!,” and “Don’t point those binoculars at the Sun!” probably turned some children off from the fun of looking at stars, galaxies and planets at night rather than grabbing their easily-acceptable, childproof video gaming equipment.

A nod to local news broadcast crews for their remote setups to help promote the Venus transit event.  Without your interest and time on the air, many not have known what was going on — education is a culturewide participatory subject.