I had been hoping all day that I'd get to see today's transit of Venus.
On the way home from work, about an hour before the transit would begin, I saw some tantalizing patches of blue sky. I also saw rain occasionally splattering on my windshield.
I killed some time with a walk through a local park before going home. During that walk I got drizzled on a bit, I didn't see any more patches of blue sky, but the sky did brighten a bit now and then, enough so that I could vaguely tell where the sun was. Prospects did not seem great, but a little hope was warranted.
My wife was already home when I got back from the park, just a couple of minutes after 6:00 (Eastern Daylight time, just about when the transit began). We were going to go out to eat, and (not that it isn't a typical destination for us on Tuesdays) I decided Friday's sounded like a good choice for where to eat -- mainly because we'd be driving west most of the way there, and I was pretty sure there was a good view of the western sky, low to the horizon, from Friday's parking lot.
I drive 98% of the time when my wife and I go out anywhere together, but tonight I asked her to drive so I could look for breaks in the clouds (and not kill us while doing so) during the drive to Friday's. I took my binoculars with me. I saw some thinning of clouds along the way, a few patches of blue sky here and there, and I could almost make out the disk of the sun through the clouds occasionally, but not brightly enough to see anything through the solar filters on my binoculars.
When we got to Friday's I made sure we were seated so I could look out the window toward the direction of the sun, ready to spring from my seat and run outside if I saw the sky brightening. I mentioned something to our waitress about hoping to see the sun break through the clouds, but she merely thought that I was expressing general disgust with the weather we've had around here lately.
In fact, like our waitress, most of the people around us were pretty obviously unaware of, or disinterested in, the once-(or-twice)-in-a-lifetime event that was taking place.
Just about a quarter after 7:00 I saw a promising brightening of the sky. I hurried outside with my binoculars in hand. What looked like a bright sun to my naked eye was still fairly darkened by streaky clouds when viewed through my filtered binoculars. At first those streaks were in all the wrong places, but I just had to wait a few moments for the upper edge of the sun to come into view, with a slightly obscured but clearly recognizable silhouette of Venus plainly visible.
Call me a geek, but I was elated! Many people never get a chance to see a transit of Venus even once. Now I'd seen my second!
I realize in hindsight that I failed to note the exact time when I got this brief glimpse. Geeky but not geek enough, I guess.
I hurried back into the restaurant to tell my wife the good news, then I went back outside to try for an even better look. While the view never completely cleared up, it did get much better for a few moments now and then, with plenty of sunspots to see as well.
A man with his two sons in tow asked me what I was looking at. I explained the transit to him. He had his sons take a look, then he took a look for himself. I don't think the younger son (probably just four or five years old) ever figured out what he was doing with the binoculars or where to point them, but at least the father and the older son got a good look. I hope this event becomes something they remember many years from now.
The view soon after got much worse, but I was very satisfied with what I had gotten to see, even if I saw no more than that. On the way home from the restaurant, however, the sky did clear up again, and at 7:44 (yes, I did check the time that time) I got a great cloud-free view while standing in the parking lot of a Dairy Queen. My wife got her first and only look at that time -- not as much of an enthusiast as me, she hadn't been quite up to leaving her seat at Friday's before to go out to the parking lot for an off chance at the cloud-streaked view that I had seen.
Closer to sunset large patches of blue sky appeared, much larger than the tiny breaches in the clouds we had depended upon earlier, but by then we were in an area with too many buildings and trees blocking the view to the low horizon. I didn't mind too much, however. I had already seen more than enough to make me quite happy.
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