Clouds keep passing in front of the sun here

and it's heading towards sunset, so I'm watching the transit of Venus online thanks to NASA. Here is a beautiful picture as it nears transit taken by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (you can see more sizes of it on their Flickr page).

Venus + Jupiter + the Moon = a wonderful conjunction (that smiles or frowns depending on where you are)

This is from Thailand (I love the singing--it was fun--so I used this one). In Asia and Australia the image was of a smiley face. Here in America it was an upside down face that seemed to frown. Try AstroEngine for more information from this continent and an overview of the conjunction itself. In Western Europe one planet was occulted briefly, too (I think it was Venus being occulted by the Moon, but don't quote me.) I didn't see it last night, but I saw the moon pretty close to the planets tonight, and it was still wonderful.