(meteorobs) Me and the paper guy again - end of a driveway, Medford, Massachusetts, USA

[Lewis J. Gramer]

At 4am this morning, I turned off an alarm on my bedside table and
another on the shelf - which was quite a feat, as I was not in fact
awake at the time. :(

At 4:45 this morning, a person who will remain nameless, awoke me from
another sound sleep, with a snore which sounded remarkably like a
garbage truck stopping inside my house - every 5 seconds or so. This was
a blessing...

Peering bleary eyed from the kitchen window, I saw the sky alight with
dawn and diffused with light golden fog - and me with no time to get
presentable and call that cab to the Harvard CfA that I had planned on
taking!

I wolfed down some Chips Ahoys (breakfast of champions), and rolled into
the bare requirements of decency and protection against the humid
morning chill. Grabbing my handy "sun viewing glasses", I stumbled down
the stairs and onto the sidewalk in front of our house as quietly as I
could... to find the fog had descended. The sun might be rising, but on
the streets of Medford there was only the vaguest hint of it.

But undaunted, I took the poor disoriented chihuahua for a walk (that is
our dog, by the way). And sure enough, by about 5:20, I could see the
sun well enough to try on those "glasses". :) It was a good thing I had
not prepared for any sort of enhanced optical observing - any piece of
equipment I had tried to use other than my own eyes, would have been
very cumbersome indeed to get into the spots I found I had to get into,
to get a good view of the ever-rising sun! Still, I could get to where I
could see it - and I thanked my stars, for once, to be living in the
place I happened to be living...


Memories came back to me (or maybe they were dreams?) of 1997, and
viewing Comet Hale-Bopp on that self-same street, in the early grey of
dawn. My only occasional companion on those vigils had been a paper
delivery guy - driving down the street a house at a time, and stopping
off to see what I was doing. Once he had convinced himself I was no
burglar, he had stopped to look through my telescope at the celestial
interloper more than once.

And what do you know? The early grey of dawn in February is about the
same time as the bright gold of sunrise in June: here was this self-same
paper guy again, a bit older, a few years on. He recognized me - even
without my telescope - and we got to share a "view" through my solar
viewing glasses.

Venus was a small dark spot, just as expected - though in fact, for a
naked eye view, it was a remarkably LARGE dark spot! This was quite
eerie - I have never been privileged to see a sunspot of such size
against the surface of the sun (do they ever get that large??). This
"visual realization", coupled with my lack of sleep at the time, caused
quite a sense of disorientation while looking at the solar disk: I
enjoyed this for all it was worth, though I suspect my friend the paper
guy did not entirely share in this experience... Soon he had to complete
his appointed rounds, and he said he'd "see ya next time". I didn't have
the heart to tell him the "next time" was eight years in the future, and
probably a half a world away! Perhaps some new comet will invade the
early morning some time soon, before my friend the paper guy finally
decides to retire?

In any case, without magnification, I had no hope of observing the
"black drop effect" - or even of getting a good view of Third Contact.
Or so I convinced myself at any rate, as the air warmed up and my
eyelids drooped low... So with a last longing look all around the misty
morning horizon, I stumbled back up the stairs whence I had come, and
back into the cool quiet (no more snoring!) of my own bed.

Clear skies to all, and looking forward to 2012 in the Pacific!

Lew "Sandpaper Eyes" Gramer