Venus will make a cameo on the sun’s face tomorrow around 3:06pm for us valley dwellers.

You only get one chance in your lifetime to witness this celestial phenomenon, so leave work early and look towards the heavens. The next time this spatial event will happen is in 2117.

It’s a good idea to wear sun glasses to protect your retinas. You can use a telescope with coronagraphs (special lens that blocks out the sun) to see it better but if you are an adamant space lover, you should probably hit up a museum or the Griffith Observatory to get a good look.

The Venus’ passage across the sun is a rare event, mostly because Venus is off-kilter from the sun’s orbit. Venus’ misalignment with the sun causes it to pass too high or too low. But tomorrow it will be just right, enough for a 6 hour and 40 minute window of time to witness it LIVE. The time you can witness Venus passing across the sun differs by where you are on planet Earth.

Back in the day, the Transit of Venus was mapped-out by scientist on different places on earth. The passage enabled them to triangulate the position of the earth and calculate the measurements of the entire solar system with an unprecedented level of certainty.

Before this phenomenon, the distance between planets and the sun was based on the fractions of the Earth’s distance to the sun.  By capturing the distance of Venus through different positions on the planet, scientist were able to figure out the absolute  distance within the solar system. Watching this heavenly body pass through the sun’s disk enlightened the entire scientific astronomy field with crucial measurements.

Tomorrow evening, Venus will appear as a black dot on the sun’s surface. 

I will be kicking it old-school, with my lovely companion, beholding this celestial passage with mine very humble eyes by peering through a $20 telescope I recently bought at the Santa Clarita Outdoor Swamp Meet. This event can be experienced traditionally, a la Mayan, no need for costly telescopes, just a decent set of eyeballs and a searing curiosity.

Make what you will of it: predict the apocalypse, calculate the distance between planets in the solar system, expand your experience of space, see Venus’ beauty mark from the West Coast– whatever you choose, definitely don’t miss out!

For your viewing pleasure, here is a picture of the magnetic tug war happening on the sun in 3-D art (the Sun is a busy star):