Hubble to Use the Moon to View Transit of Venus

It’s one of the first things kids learn when they start to turn their heads skywards: never look directly at the sun. Even if there’s a solar eclipse you’re dying to see, don’t do it.

It turns out the Hubble Space Telescope operates under the same guidelines –- it can’t look directly at the sun.

This isn’t normally something astronomers want to do, but the upcoming transit of Venus is too exciting to miss with Hubble’s amazing eyes in the sky. So to protect its cameras, the orbiting telescope is going to use perhaps the neatest way to observe the transit. It’s going to use the moon as a mirror.

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