Parents brought their infants (one of whom promptly let out a wail to the amusement of all), toddlers and teenagers. Several grandmothers in saris and flowing dresses lined up like kids to peer through the telescopes.
Inside the dome was the 7-inch refractor telescope that Dr. Celso
Batalha, professor of astronomy at EVC, fitted with an H-alpha filter to let in
only the red light (wavelength of about 656 nanometer) emitting from the sun. Outside
the dome, he had also set up four 8-inch portable, parabolic Dobsonians
with clear filters. He was wise to do so because the space around the dome
was soon milling with eager and curious visitors.
My first view of the transit was through the refractor telescope. The
dark, perfect circle of Venus making its shy entrance at the lower left edge of
a crimson sun was wondrous, simply wondrous. I looked for as long as I could
before the next person in line gently nudged me to remind that there were
others waiting for a chance to glimpse the wondrous sight as well.
Last night I read a piece in the New York Times by a professor of astronomy named Jay M. Pasachoff
who wrote that “people on Earth can see with their own eyes the beauty spot —
as beautiful as Marilyn Monroe’s — bestowed by Venus on the Sun.”
The imagery seemed perfect as I was viewing the transit: Venus was
indeed a beauty spot on the sun, and its changing location only enhanced the fierce
beauty of the duo. I also reminded myself to look up a picture of Marilyn Monroe.
The sun as MM? I bet no poet ever thought of that. Kudos to Dr. Pasachoff.
If there was a hush of awe inside the observatory, outside was noisy
celebration. Kids and grandmothers gave running commentaries on the
minute-by-minute progress of Venus’s journey from left to right as they squinted
through the Dobsonians. Of course, the experience had to be preserved for
posterity, and so everyone (and I mean everyone) brought out their iPhones, Androids and SLRs and tried to capture the celestial scene. It was no simple point-and
click, though. Only at certain frustrating angles could the view be captured and
that required endless trial-and-error.
A teenage girl grew impatient with her father who kept fiddling
with his camera for the perfect shot. Finally she could stand it no longer. “He
will be doing this until Venus has completed her journey in six hours,” she
said to everyone around. “He will still not be done.”
The girl’s mother, also getting angry at her husband, corrected the
daughter. “No, Casalco will still be looking for the perfect
picture when Venus returns again in one hundred years.”
As laughter erupted, the otherwise-imperturbable Mr. Casalco
sheepishly withdrew.Through the Dobsonians, we viewed the bright-yellow sun and the backlit Venus in the clear California sky. There were clouds but they were near the horizon. I helped Dr. Celso adjust the eyepieces as excited kids kept moving them.
The atmosphere was festive and yet there was an undertone of sadness. This was it for us. No more view like this in our lifetime. I felt the chill of mortality.
Scientists have correctly predicted the transits of Venus that come in pairs of 8 years: 1761 and 1769, 1874 and 1882, 2004 and 2012. What will the earth be like in 2117 and 2125? Will we still be fighting wars? Will there still be 1-percenters and 99-percenters, tyrants who indulge in unimaginable luxury while the rest survive on crumbs? Or will our succeeding generations conclude that our ways were unimaginative and untenable, and after much sacrifice and soul-searching, design a peaceful world where everyone led a reasonably good life?
Who can say? The thought that I came away with from the celestial drama was that we were a part of what we had witnessed, no more and no less, and that the fate of our earth was entwined with the fate of the big, beautiful star and the planet moving across it, not only in a scientific but also in a transcendental sense.
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