There’s been a lot of astronomical activity here these days. The annular eclipse we saw a few weeks back was one event, and while I originally wasn’t that interested, I’m glad I was able to see it.

Now more shows are on the way. The planet Venus will pass in front of the Sun on Wednesday morning. I had forgotten all about this but then a documentary I was watching last night about Nostradamus mentioned it. Listening to the broadcast, I reasoned that if the world really is coming to an end and this is one of the telltale signs, then I should probably try and have a look at it a few mornings from now. Tonight on the way home I stopped by a DIY store near my office a bought a couple of eclipse filters, for 500 yen apiece. They were one third the price of the ones I saw a few weeks ago so I decided to splurge and pick up two, no sense fighting over the lenses when my wife and I are both trying to see something that only happens once in a thousand years!

Tonight there was a partial eclipse of the moon, from 8:00 pm or so our time. I supposed it wouldn’t be as impressive as what we saw the other day, but was sure it still would be a pretty cool show.  I was disappointed however.  Arriving in my neighborhood at approximately 19:50, just a few minutes before the peak time to see the mood shadowed, I looked up at the sky and saw…. nothing!  Too many clouds in the night sky to see anything.  No stars, no nothing.  It was all in vain.

One thing for sure, if all the things they were saying on the Discovery Channel show are true, then at least we’ll have lots of reasons to look up this year!