Transit of Venus

They are standing across the street from the house of six nuns and he’s wondering if the copper beech tree that people come from all over to admire will lay a branch or sheaf of leaves across the narrow passage between it and the next one that the woman he’s about to leave (though she does not know this yet) won’t be able to see Venus transiting the sun in the short time she’s willing to devote to observation.

She’s wondering why she left her coffee and makeup to see something she has little interest in except that she’s heard about on the TV. But it will go down well with her friends if she can say she’s seen it, because they know she’s married to a guy who does stuff they never heard of. They will shake their heads, Wow, how about that. You actually saw it. Whatever it was, really.

He’s wondering why she agreed, because seeing Venus transit the sun is only interesting if you know why it was important historically. Like in the eighteenth century. And he knows she won’t ask to have it explained to her. She and her friends like to know the names of things, whatever they are, but that’s it. He’s been coming to terms with being the person whose activities are noted but are not worthy of inquiry, and the final result of that coming-to-terms-with is that he’s going to leave.

While he’s setting up the tripod and levelling his theodolite he realizes he’s sorry he asked her to come out and look. He isn’t sure why he did it. Maybe setting up something to use as a defense when things get rough, as they’re going to? Will he find himself saying, Well, I offered to show you the transit of Venus, surely that counts for something?

He hasn’t had his theodolite out of its case in years because there’s no work for it, except once he used it to level a brick patio. Talk about overkill. In the old days he shot the sun with it; to learn his latitude and longitude long before GPS he measured the sun’s altitude at noon, looking through the darkgreen sunfilter. He’s remembering the first time he screwed it to the eyepiece and wondered if he should test it first, realized what the hell could he test it on except the sun, and quickly swung the theodolite around and up and looked. And didn’t burn out his retina, and saw the sun’s disk moving. Except of course it wasn’t actually moving, as it won’t actually be moving this morning, although Venus will be.

She knows that the only way to see what she, yes, sort of wants to see is to block the sun’s fierceness enough to see Venus transiting. For her transit has to do with the name of a road in the suburbs, but here’s her husband with a surveying thing that is not a transit but can show her a transit. She knows the thing is very old and wonders if there’s any danger. Or maybe he’s the danger? If he looks first she should be OK, unless he shuts his eye, meaning to trick her into burning hers out. Be sure he looks first.

He’s thinking about how Captain Cook, James Cook, sailed to Tahiti to observe the transit of Venus on June 3rd, 1769 so that astronomers could work out how far it was to the sun. Other telescopes would be looking from Europe. Parallax. It was all about parallax.

In the vernacular of 2004, it was a ballsy thing Cook did: sail from England into 17 degrees south counting on clear skies and a solid viewing platform. Joseph Banks drew observing plans marked with the appropriate words Zenith and Nadir. Cook and Green observed the exterior ingress to the sun’s limb at 9 hours 21 minutes local time, and exterior egress at 15 hours 29 minutes, also local time.

This is only the third transit of Venus since then. He knows all this because he looked it up last night, pleased to encounter new usages of ingress and egress. He knew the technical usage of zenith but not of nadir, a fine coincidence considering that his nadir appears to be now, local time, and his exterior egress lies not too far in the future, also local time.

He looks through the eyepiece at the sun, which is not obscured by the copper beech, and as usual does not burn out his retina. The sun’s disk nearly fills the field of view and he has to turn a knob to track it, because it’s moving faster then he remembered from thirty years ago, the last time he shot the sun. At the same time he’s scanning the whole field looking for a dark spot moving, which is hard, because the sun itself is moving relative to all the dust and dirt and fungus inside the theodolite and he has to watch that it doesn’t leave the field of view before he turns that knob. So he’s juggling three levels of perception and movement, four if he counts that the eyepiece is an inverting one. But since he doesn’t know whether Venus is transiting the sun’s top or bottom, he doesn’t have to adjust. Ah, slow movement. There it is.

Here, he says, stepping away, Go ahead and look. It’s that little dot towards the top, which is really the bottom.

She says, What?

He says, It’s an inverting eyepiece.

She says, What the hell is that?

Upside down, he says, Nevermind, just look for the little black dot moving.

Jesus, she says, I have to go to work. You said this would be quick and there are who knows how many little black dots.

Yes, but only one is moving.

I don’t see it. What a waste of time. I’ll catch it on TV tonight, they probably have a better whatever than this one.

Fine.

He picks up the theodolite and its heavy tripod and packs it down the corner where there’s a better view. While he’s setting up again her car hisses by. He doesn’t wave.

Here it’s good, a clear sightline. He knows he should have come here first, but the lure of looking for Venus up the nun’s passage was too great.

All in focus again, very nice, the dot’s moving. He steps away from the theodolite to take in the entire scene. Has anybody in the entire history of the world ever observed the transit of Venus on a sidewalk bordering a famous Frank Lloyd Wright house? No. Surely no. Does anyone care? Again no.

A woman walking her dog comes up the street and gives him a quizzical look which seems reasonable since presumably she’s not used to seeing a guy out at 7 AM standing at a painted tripod looking through what only sort of looks like a telescope.

Transit of Venus, he says, If you’d like to look you may. It’s quite safe. And it’s transiting the top it looks like, but it’s really the lower part of the sun because this has an inverting eyepiece.

Oh, she says, So maybe I should stand on my head to look?

They laugh. The dog barks. She looks.

He wonders who she is. She’s pretty and has no wedding band but he doesn’t hold onto that thought because he feels himself and his theodolite and tripod already in motion in his own sea, tacking, tracking away from nuns, copper beech, wife.