Transit of Venus in Muscat on a cloudy morning

One of the oldest descriptions of Oman’s coast is from the ‘Periplus of the Erithian Sea’ written by a Greek sailor, which describes the southern coast, improbably for an Arabian land, as being “wrapped in thick clouds and fog”.

So it was today, as I woke early for yet another once in a century, or so, event – the Transit of Venus made famous by another seafarer, Captain James Cook, on his voyage in 1769. To try and get above the thick clouds on Muscat’s coast I ascended a mountain and waited;

until, like Gloriana, the sun appeared through a gap in the clouds and Venus was revealed as a tiny silhouette passing over the top left of the suns face.