Ten years ago, I married a woman who was not only a physicist like myself, but had shown, through years of testing, that she could tolerate with a smile my worst trait: an astronomy habit. Even though we were both scientists, I have to wonder when she realized that I arrange dates around astronomical events and that most of my gifts to her featured a space theme. What seemed like a romantic night under the stars sometimes was accompanied with my semi-portable telescope or coincided with a meteor shower.

One of the first times I brought my future bride to my small hometown in Illinois to meet the family, it just so happened to be on the weekend of the great 1994 annular eclipse. To make sure I didn’t let time get away from me during the five or so minutes of maximum coverage, I found a song of similar length I could play on a cassette player; when Pachelbel’s Canon was drawing to a close, so was the event. Three years later, it should be no surprise that I was dancing to the same piece at our wedding.

As the years rolled by, we covered everything from lunar eclipses to planetary conjunctions. Her family did not bat an eye on Christmas Day 2000 when I handed out safety glasses, so we could all go outside and view the partial solar eclipse. At that moment, I knew I was either fully accepted or else they had given up all hope on me.

Sometimes she stayed behind. She once took an early flight back to our North Carolina home leaving me in Illinois so that I could view the last full moon to rise on New Year’s Eve in our lifetime. Oh, if only she knew the view she missed from my telescope set up on my dad’s frozen pond in sub-zero temperatures! I still don’t know why she chose not to go with me to that country hilltop cemetery in western Pennsylvania to view the transit of Venus with the rising sun in 2004. I am sure that she will be available for the next transit of Venus in 2012.

Gifts usually have an astronomical theme to them. On our tenth wedding anniversary it was a necklace that featured a star with ten points and the custom-made card was a picture of the constellation Eridanus whose fifth-brightest star, epsilon eridani, is ten light years away. For our ninth, I gave her a charm that featured a Mercury dime to represent the fact that the planet Mercury transited the sun’s disk on our wedding date that year. For a birthday, she once received a bracelet with an assortment of moons, stars and Saturns hanging off of it.

Of course, being in astronomy means being a night owl and our daughter has learned to appreciate/exploit that to her advantage. She is always “eager” to view the planets, the moon or even Comet Holmes … especially if it takes place after her bedtime. If I let the back-porch door slam while setting up my equipment, I can always rely on her getting up to help me out. It’s the least I can do for her as I accidentally taught her to say the word “galaxy” before she could say “Mommy”.

Unfortunately, astronomy has also solidified my procrastinating ways. Astronomical events fall into two classes in regards to a time frame. Either something pops unto the scene and immediately needs attention (such as Comet Holmes) or else it lies years in the future. Hence, I generally attack all problems in life with instant panic or glacier-like sloth. Those distant events that are known give me plenty of time to plan family vacations decades ahead of schedule.

What’s also out there for the Brown family for the next 17 years: