Father Sky

Most of my blog entries have been rather light-hearted tidbits of historical trivia with a slant toward cultural astronomy. Today I thought I’d share something a little more personal. Besides being an amateur astronomer I also have a spiritual side. Some may see those two endeavors as being in conflict but as long as we don’t think of the bible as a historical archive in the 21st century sense, the two can exist in harmony.

With that in mind let me share something I’ve read which sheds a clearer light on perhaps the most famous puzzle in astronomy and religion… just what WAS the Star of Bethlehem?

Like many astronomers who have poked at this, I’ve come across countless theories ranging from comets to supernova’s to planetary conjunctions… all with some credence but also with very little in the way of evidence.

I have to say, this has been a special quest for me. Is there some link between the astronomy I love and spirituality which gives me a reason for being?

I happened upon the book, “The Star of Bethlehem” by Michael Molnar. What is unique about his approach is that he attempts to do what the best archaeologists do, and that is think like the people you are investigating. In this case, a first century BC Magi.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in this subject so I won’t reveal his findings, but I will share he does a thorough job of laying out what the belief’s were in that age, what they mean and even how to interpret the few written records we have. And yes, to the dismay of my fellow astronomers, much of that includes astrology. But I assure you, if we are to understand this story in the way it was written and for the time it was written, we must understand historical astrology.

Thema Mundi by Meredith Garstin

The above chart is suppose to represent the positions of the 7 planets at the beginning of the universe, not when the “star” of Bethlehem was up, but it does show the simpler style of charts used at the time in question.

Let me close by saying I am not a believer of modern astrology but I do embrace any and all clues into understanding how we humans made sense of our world long ago so we have a better understanding of who we are now. Mr Molnar adds a big piece to my puzzle.

If anyone hasn’t heard of SETI, it stands for “Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence”. Despite the somewhat “fringe” impression one gets any time you hear the word Extraterrestrial, there are a good many amateur and professional astronomers who take this quite seriously. I’ll let you do your own on-line search into everything the SETI Institute does but will share their mission here.

“… is to Explore, Understand and Explain the Origin, Nature and Prevalence of life in the universe.”

And as an amateur astronomer myself I too often wonder who else is out there and what are they like.  Surely, with all those billions of stars in our galaxy and all those other galaxies each with billions of stars themselves, there’s got to be a few with planets like ours and life, even intelligent life on some of those. It would be great to know that.

But there’s one aspect of SETI that worries me, making contact.

I am reading The Last Days of the Inca’s by Kim MacQuarrie, an excellent but tragic account of what often happens when two very different cultures meet and one has something the other wants. If this was an isolated story I might not be as worried. But anyone who follows history knows this is anything but an isolated event.

So after we’ve made contact with the Alpa Centaurian’s what then? Are we mature and evolved to the point where it truly is an intellectual exchange of idea’s and philosophy? Or would it end as something more, something quite different but tragically familiar? And what is in it for them?

So by all means, let’s keep our eye’s and ear’s open. But please, let’s keep our mouth shut.

Hi everyone,

Just wanted to drop a quick line about the Cultural Astronomy section of the International Year of Astronomy (IYA) website:

http://astronomy2009.us/storytelling/sky-stories-stellariums-collections-of-celestial-lore/

Under each cultural section there are links for a number of fascinating stories. Guaranteed to educate and inspire.

Enjoy!

Almost a month late, but I finally have a photo of the serpent heads mentioned in my “Why Equinox” post of March 20th. They can be found at the foot of the stairs. This one also from jimg944. I really hope to see this site myself someday!   Then I’ll try to take a photo of the full effect, shadows and heads.

Serpent heads at foot of stairs

There are many questions for which we have no real answers, especially questions of early humans who are no longer here to ask nor written record to decipher. So here’s another, knowing full well the only answers will be just speculation.

Today we celebrate Equinox, the half-way point in the Earth’s journey from Winter to Summer, (or Summer to Winter for our Southern Hemisphere friends). In fact there’s no shortage of journals and websites that will tell you the precise moment the Sun crosses the equator, (11:44 GMT). But other than being the “official” start of Spring and an interesting tidbit of planetary dynamics, so what? Today will have a little bit more daylight than yesterday but it’s been progressing like that for 3 months and will continue for another 3. Unlike the Solstice’s which mark a significant turning point in the Sun’s journey as well as signal a reversal of recent weather trends, the Equinox’s are just another bump on the horizon, (see my “Calendar” post of June 13 ‘08 and “Let’s make our own” of June 26 ‘08).

So why do we care? Or better yet, why did early humans care?

OK, so here’s where the speculation comes in. The Equinox may or may not be the best day to sow or harvest, may or may not be the day the herds migrate or fish run. That all would depend on latitude, terrain and probably a dozen other considerations. But if we remove the Earthly impacts and just consider the Sun itself it might make more sense. If the Sun were a deity or at least something, (someone?) with tremendous influence on our lives, we would be sure to follow and even honor them out of respect or maybe even fear. Anyone who tracked the Sun’s progress throughout the year would care about the halfway point between the Solstice’s, not because of any impact here but more likely to honor the traveler and the journey, (how many times have you noted you’re “halfway there” when on a long journey?).

To the left is a photo of El Castillo, a Mayan structure at Chichen Itza on the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico by jimg944

What is significant about this structure is that only on the evening of the Equinox, the Sun rays hit those step-like stones on the right side of the pyramid and illuminate the short wall on the side of stairs coming down the face of the pyramid. Due to the jagged outline the wall takes on a slithering snake appearance which is certainly intentional. At the bottom of the stairs, halfway out of the field of view is a stone snake head to complete the effect!

So as I said, this is just speculation. But how would you explain it?

Happy Equinox!

Don’t worry, this post isn’t about that nutty definition the IAU came up with a year and a half ago. If you’ve followed this blog at all you know I’m really only interested in the early history or even prehistory of man’s relationship with the sky. And as fascinating as those NASA photo’s of our neighboring planets are, let me see if I can provide some planetary thrills without a spaceship or even a telescope!

Tonight, (or whenever your next clear night happens), take a step outside and see if you can find the constellation Leo. Here in March it will be somewhat high in the east/southeast after it gets dark (for those of us in the northern hemisphere). It’s one of the few constellations that actually (somewhat) look like the figure for which it is named. A large curved arc of stars for the large head and mane and front legs to the west and a somewhat narrow triangle of stars to the east for the lion’s hindquarters. If this constellation is at all familiar to you, you’ll notice an “extra” bright star a little below the hindquarters. This is the planet Saturn. But unless you had very good binoculars or a telescope you would never know it was anything more than a bright star.

That is, unless, you are very familiar with how the night sky is suppose to look night after night, year after year. For you see, from a naked eye perspective the stars appear “fixed”. That is, as the seasons go by the same grouping of stars pass overhead that went by last year, and the year before that, and the year before that. In fact, when your great, great grandparents were young and if they looked up on a clear March night they would have seen the exact same stars of Leo that you will tonight.

But this year, there is something different. There is that extra “star” we talked about earlier. As I’ve shared many times in this blog, early man was very observant, both of the sky and the world about him. He had to be in order to survive. That is why our earliest written records already knew all about these planets. They had names and they even had personalities. Mythology often had Saturn represented by someone old, some referred to Saturn as Father Time or even the Grim Reaper! Why? It moved the slowest against the backdrop of fixed stars compared to all of the other planets. Today we know that of the naked eye planets, Saturn is the furthest from the Sun. That is why Saturn is the slowest.

But all early man knew was that this particular “star” moved and that it moved slower than the other 4 wandering stars, (Jupiter, Mars, Venus and Mercury). But why? Well, that gets to the ultimate question of this post. What did early man think these wanderer’s were? Visually, there really is no difference between any of the 5 wanderer’s and all of the other “fixed” stars. (Actually, Venus is brighter than any star from our perspective but that will be the subject of a different post).

Humans are always trying to make sense of their world. Rather than just accept the fact that 5 stars move we had to come up with a reason. But how do you find a reason for something going on up in the mysterious realm where sudden storms, rainbows, eclipses and any number of other bizarre events happen? The sky it truly a wondrous yet frightening place.

I really don’t know what early man pictured these 5 special stars to be but it wouldn’t surprise me if it played a hand in the development of our early spirituality. What do you think?                                 (Venus at Dawn photo by Frames-of-Mind)

Perhaps in honor of the 400 year anniversary of the first publicised use of the telescope, I picked up a translated copy of “Sidereus Nuncius, or, The Sidereal Messenger” by Galileo Galilei. This copy has been translated with a number of notes by Albert Van Helden. It’s a short, fascinating read which I hope to delve into in subsequent posts, but for now I just had to share one impression that I felt noteworthy.

As the subtitle to my blog implies, whenever time allows I am either researching or contemplating ethnoastronomy. Often in my research I bump in to star charts drawn by various groups such as the Pawnee Star Chart. Usually, wrong conclusions are drawn from these charts because they do not precisely depict real star patterns in our night sky.

Well, take a look at this sketch of the moon by Galileo (on the left, with actual moon photo to the right):

As you can see he’s captured much of the essence of the moon, yet you really can’t say it’s an accurate “map”.

But that wasn’t his intention. With one look through his telescope, Galileo knew the cosmology of Aristotle was wrong. The perfection of the heavens was just a theory and this was the first piece of evidence that the prevailing theory of the day was incorrect. The moon, like all of the heavenly bodies, was suppose to be “perfect”, that is, perfectly smooth, perfectly round and travel in perfect circles.

Galileo was fully aware of his challenge. He needed to make his sketches emphasize the imperfections of the moon… even exaggerate features to clearly show it is not the smooth sphere that everyone believed.

Perhaps it is no accident he titled his first book, The Sidereal Message, (yes, the latin Nuncius can either mean “message” or “messenger”. perhaps Galileo meant message?). He was sending a message that we needed to change our view of the world.

Now what do you suppose the message was for the Pawnee (and others) with their star charts?

(photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Have you ever wondered why you can’t feel the pull of the moon? Well, OK, probably not tops on your list of things to ponder. But how is it that this tiny ball so far away can pull our great oceans into a rhythmic tidal dance? It barely takes up half of one degree of the sky yet clearly can shake things up down here.

Actually, I didn’t think of it much either until a few weeks ago my daughter and I were playing around with acting out Newton’s three great laws. The third law states, (I’m sure you all have it memorized but I’ll repeat it just for content sake), “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction”. To demonstrate it I had us stand facing each other and asked her to give me a push. The intent was for her to not only push me back a bit but to also feel herself be pushed back at the same time. The funny thing was, it didn’t work. I quickly concluded she was subconsciously compensating and leaning in to the push, ever so slightly. It wasn’t until we were standing toe-to-toe that she got the expected “opposite reaction” to pushing me.

That’s what got me thinking. Are we actually feeling the pull of the moon every time it passes overhead but over the hundreds of thousands of years of human existence have we developed a “lunar compensation”?

Lune

And perhaps that pull influenced our development in some way. Is this beautiful neighbor more than just something to howl at or stare at in our lover’s embrace? Does it also provide a daily tug that “re-boots our hard-drive”, re-sets our hormone balance, or some other affect at the micro level. One that is so natural, so ingrained that we don’t feel it anymore. Something that is so “human” that we don’t even know how to test for it.

Perhaps silly speculation after too much turkey. Or just being “Loony”.

Photo courtesy of ComputerHotline