It was a beach party the likes of which no one had seen for more than a century. On the eastern edge of Nantucket Island on June 8, more than 100 sky watchers waited in the gray predawn light. Clouds hid the first rays as the sun rose over the ocean, but then the clouds parted, revealing a slowly moving beauty mark, the silhouette of Venus passing the face of the sun for the first time in 122 years.
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