26 Feb 2021
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Sky at a Glance | Recent Astronomy News & Night Sky Events – Sky & Telescope
Learning is a lifelong endeavor. Let’s learn about the world around us.
Sky at a Glance | Recent Astronomy News & Night Sky Events – Sky & Telescope
The following are true and do not change perceptibly over an entire human lifetime.
Once you have some firm ground to stand on, you can start to remember some more basics and build. If you get confused, re-read the above and remind yourself that many things in the sky do not change!
Understand Celestial Movement by Knowing Less
Every movement of this clock is related to a naturally-occurring phenomenon. The sun, moon, and constellations are actually physically overhead the longitude physically shown on the clock. The only man-made concept is the unit of time: hours/minutes/seconds.
Within the constraints of being two-dimensional and using only concentric circle movement, the clock graphically displays celestial movement as accurately and with as much detail as possible in a way that promotes a practical mental model for the observer.
The horizons move to show the correct day and night length. They move in the correct direction to match the idea that the sun follows a longer path in the sky on longer days and shorter path on shorter days. In post-industrial time, noon is when the sun is directly overhead. This clock shows noon at the various world locations by being directly overhead the longitude. “Solar noon” is an industrial time concept.
The angle of the horizons does not directly correspond to the azimuth of the sunrise and sunset itself. For example, the sun being overhead a longitude location on Earth 100 degrees from your longitude when it rises does not mean the sun will rise 10 degrees north from east.
Two-dimensional is convenient for hanging on a wall, inexpensive to construct, can be displayed on a screen, and in reality people prefer 2D. 3D TVs never caught on. The outdoors is 3D enough.
Concentric circle movement is practical to construct and control. In addition, almost all the movement of the objects in the sky is due to the rotation of Earth.
Nature presents us with an infinity of detail that the clock could depict. Computers enable us to easily do this and most products show maximum detail. This clock selectively provides the user with just the basis required to comprehend celestial movement in order to inspire the user to abandon the technology for the outdoors and more fully appreciate natural reality.
On this clock, all objects are referenced to the observer as though the observer is standing aligned to the rotational axis of Earth. “Aligned to the rotational axis of Earth” sounds like an unnecessary complication, but it means all the objects move (almost) continuously and you can tell time of day, day length, night length, moon phase, moon rise and set, seasons, constellation and star positions, and even approximate world times, all using an intuitive mental model.
The observer is at the center of the post-industrial clock.
Notice, the gnomon of a sundial is aligned to the rotational axis of Earth. The ancients knew how to think about this. If you want to be familiar with the movement of the Earth and the relative motion of the sky, you must align with the Earth. If you accept the one complication of aligning with Earth, all else naturally falls into place.
You might say gravity is the biggest obstacle to aligning yourself to Earth’s rotational axis. True. To eliminate the gravity problem, just imagine you are on the north pole. If you were sitting on the north pole during an equinox, you would see all the objects on the clock rotating around your horizon just like they do on the clock.
Notice “rotate” means an individual object rotates, and “orbit” means an object moves in a path around another object. Objects can rotate and orbit in different planes, but because of the way the solar system was formed, rotation is mostly closely aligned with orbit. One notable example of misalignment is the tilt of Earth’s rotation relative to its orbit around the sun.
The position of the sun determines all time-related items.
The rotational position of Earth is shown by the sun appearing to move relative to the observer. The position of the sun in relation to the eastern horizon and western horizon tells the time of day.
Day length is determined by the distance the sun must travel through the sky from the eastern horizon to the western horizon. Day length is shown by the position of the two horizons. Night length is the remainder of the 24-hour period as the sun returns to the eastern horizon. The horizons move because of the tilt of Earth and its orbit around the sun.
The sun points to the season on the backdrop of the stars. The 12 Zodiac constellations are used because they are aligned with Earth’s equator and are visible from most positions on Earth. The Zodiac seasonal periods are named based on when the constellation is aligned with the sun. Ironically, it is exactly during a particular Zodiac constellation’s season that the constellation is not visible in the night sky because it is directly behind the sun.
The stars move around the observer because of the rotation of Earth, like the sun. Because of the orbit of Earth around the sun, the stars actually appear to move slightly faster than the sun. In a way, the stars “chase” the sun across the sky. Because of this, the constellation that is low on the western horizon immediately after sunset indicates the next season. The constellation will “chase” the sun down, setting because of Earth’s rotation and then each successive night set four minutes earlier until it sets with the sun.
Moon phase is determined by the position of the moon relative to the sun. The position of the moon relative to the sun is immediately apparent on the clock giving the user an intuitive mental model of moon phase. The moon rises and sets independently of the sun, so there are separate horizons for the moon.
The stars do not move relative to each other, so you can relate your favorite constellations to the Zodiac constellations to quickly know where they are if desired. The position of the Zodiac constellations on the clock are accurate relative to the observer. The observer need only adjust for latitude. If a constellation is directly overhead on the clock, it is directly south in the northern hemisphere or north in the southern hemisphere, or overhead on the equator.
Approximate world time is asking the question, “What time is it to other observers?” or “Where is the sun relative to other observers?” The user can look at the other cities on the clock and see where the sun is relative to them. If the sun is directly over another location on the clock, it is noon in that location. The sun is moving relative to other observers just like it is moving on the clock. If the sun appears directly to the side of another observer, it is near rising or near setting. If directly below, it is midnight to that observer.
Progress is a cycle.
Pre-history: humans evolved with celestial objects ruling our lives and became familiar with them. The sun and moon are encoded into our genes in our circadian rhythm.
Thousands of years: humans quantified the movement of the sun with sundials, and used charts for the phases of the moon and seasons.
Industrial Revolution: humans used rudimentary machines to club our minds to submit to rigid schedules.
Post-Industrial Clocks: humans use advanced machines to conform technology to nature and re-connect with our natural selves.
Like this clock, the gnomon of a sundial is oriented parallel to the rotational axis of the Earth. If you called this clock an “indoor sundial” you are not too far off. However, “indoor solar, lunar, and celestial fully-automated schedule” would be more accurate. Therefore, is this new? No, but is anything new? Not according to the Bible,
9 What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. 10 Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new”? It has been already in the ages before us.
Life is a cycle and it is time to revisit some of our past. We now have the time and resources to do it.
Knowing what the sky looks like can certainly be done with charts, phone apps, websites, maps, but to develop a useful mental model, you need to periodically and quickly see something that is practically relatable to practical day-to-day events. This is our natural ability that was erased by industrial time. Industrial time is great for rigid old obsolete machines to cheaply give us rigid schedules, but computers enable machines to imitate nature and can enable us to re-connect with nature rather than brutally beating nature out of our minds with the incessant ticking of pendulums and gears. Computers can be better, let’s use them.
history, manufacturing, time, astronomy,
Draft, working on this post.
The following is a list of historical figures, selected primarily for having been interesting. Most either were extremely successful, crazy, won or lost key battles, or committed or were victims of atrocities. The goal is to learn history by knowing the context of their lives and their contemporaries.
Also, I want to quickly summarize their lives using geographical features and cities (rather than modern national borders).
551-459, Confucius
450-404, Alcibiades, Greece, Anatolia
381, King Dao of Chu, Early ruler in the warring states period.
375-316 “Olympias, Queen of Macedonia”, Alexander the Great’s mother
350,-285, Pytheas of Massalia, “Pytheas the Greek” Explored from Greece to Britain
367-283, Ptolomy 1, “Ancestor to Cleopatra, inherited Egypt from Alexander the Great”
312-63, Seleucid Empire figure?
247-181, Hannibal Barca, Carthage, Defeated by Hublius Cornelius Scitio Africanus
~-161, Maccabean Martyrs
215,-164, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, Historical monster
106,-48,Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, Lost to Julius Caesar
5-67, Paul of Tarsus, wrote much of the New Testament, “Reading from the Letter of Paul to … ”
69-155, Polycarp
100-165, Justin Martyr
202 Irenaeus
244-311, Diocletian, Ended the 3rd Century “crisis of emperors.”
298-373, Athanasius
437, Gunther, Scandanavia, Hungary?, Killed by Attila the Hun, Norse legend.
480-575, Saint Brendan the Navigator, See also Patrick and Brigid of Kildare
500-548, Theodora, “Mabbug, Cyprus, or Paphlagonia, Wife of Justinian, convinced men to stay during Nika riot, insisted on wearing royal purple.
573-634, Abu Bakr, Muhammed’s father-in-law, Sunni leader.
686-741,Charles Martel, Stopped the Muslim advance at Battle of Tours
752-803, Empress Irene, Byzantine Empress. Killed her own son.
885-954,Erik Haroldsson, King of Norway and Northumbria, “Erik Bloodaxe”
-986, Bjarni Herjolfsson, Overshot Greenland and landed on Labrador Coast / Newfoundland
-1014,Samuel of Bulgaria, Lost to Basil II. 99 / 100 of his men were blinded after loss, brutal.
1022-1066, Harold Godwinson, Harold II, Last Anglo-Saxon King of England. Beaten at Hastings, William the Conqueror.
1215-1294, Kublai Khan, Successor to Ghengis
1304-1377, Ibn Battuta, Major traveler. Berber. Never the same path twice.
1336-1405,Tamerlane,Uzbekhyzstan,,Murderous.
1371-1433, Ma He / Zheng He, Explorer, huge fleet, did not conquer. He was a eunuch.
1450-1500, Bartolomeu Dias, Cabo de tempestade, Portuguese explorer
1485-1547, Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro Altamirano, 1st Marquess of the Valley of Oaxaca. Burned his ships and defeated the Aztecs.
1519-1589: Catherine de’ Medici – influenced by Il Principe (2nd book printed on press behind The Bible), married to King of France, instigated St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.
1583-1634: Albrecht Wenzel Eusebius von Wallenstein – Bohemian military commander influenced by Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden
1635-1695, Michael Toussaint. Became Michael of Ruffine. First Ruffing.
Like books, personal blogs seem to have an innate ability built-in to the medium to bring out the best in people.
Do not confuse blogs with social media.
I have been keeping this list of my friends’ websites for several years now. Many are small business sites (pillars of society), none are vanity-driven, and all of the information is thoughtful, meaningful work by people who care. All of it is good. It represents the cream of 100+ years of electronic communication. That’s a strong statement and it’s true.
If you became literate and started reading books 500 years ago after the Gutenberg Press, you got ahead. If you understand the power the internet brings to people by enabling blogs, you get ahead.
What do Brazil, Russian, India, China, and the United States have in common? We all have capital cities that are geographically isolated from the populace by sheer size.
BRIC-US account for five of the seven largest countries in the world by area.
Brasília, capital of Brazil. Brasília’s population of 4.3 million is just 2.1% of Brazil. Distance to other major population centers: 16 hours to Rio de Janeiro / São Paulo, 30 hours to Salvador, 28 hours to the mouth of the Amazon River, more than 30 hours to Recife, Natal, or Fortaleza.
Moscow, capital of Russia. Moscow’s population of 12.5 million is 8.5% of Russia. Distance to other major population centers: 8 hours to St. Petersburg, 45 hours to Novosibirsk. Notable quiz question: how many cities in Russia are there with population over 2 million? Just two: Moscow and St. Petersburg. Wow.
New Delhi, capital of India. New Delhi’s population of 26.5 million is just 2.0% of India. Distance to other major population centers: 24 hours to Mumbai, 36 hours to Bangalore, 28 hours to Kolkata.
Beijing, capital of China. Beijing’s population of 21.5 million is just 1.5% of China’s population. Distance to other major population centers: 12 hours to Shanghai, 22 hours to Guanzhou, 28 hours to Xinjiang.
Washington DC, capital of the US. DC’s population of 6.2 million is 1.9% of the US population. Distance to other major population centers: 7 hours to Boston, 10 hours to Atlanta, 11 hours to Chicago, 21 hours to Houston, 39 hours to Los Angeles.
What happens if you administer education out of Brasília? Favelas. Brasília does not care.
How is Beijing on human rights? Xinjiang, what do you think? Concentration camps. Reeducation. Dystopia. Beijing does not care.
What are the chances of a fair election against Putin? Alexei Navalny, would you say Moscow meddled in your election? Dictatorship. Moscow does not care.
How is Washington DC doing on health? Multi-generational obesity epidemic feeding a bloated, confusing wealth care system that even the nurses don’t respect. We have a disease management system that profits from chronic illness and lobbies DC to continue poisoning Americans with high-fructose corn syrup, GMOs, sedentary lifestyles, and television advertisements for unnecessary pills whose side effects require more pills. Washington DC does not care.
Want to give me a dissertation on why some large isolated capitals are okay and not others? Want to lecture me on why Washington DC is actually just fine? I am not a poli-sci major because I studied when I was in college and stuck with a real degree. Poli-sci graduates, your four years education is a bunch of details that cloud your common sense.
Common sense: sending tax money directly and automatically to a capital isolated from more than 90% of the population by more than an 8-hour drive is a horrible idea.
What happens if I send my tax money along with millions of other people to a city completely separated from the population it “represents,” specifically designed to distribute tax money? Corruption. Cesspool. Swamp. Career politician = dictator.
In the US, people got frustrated and elected a reptile to fight a swamp full of reptiles. The professional thieves in DC have now ejected the foreign reptile and they think their swamp is safe to continue misrepresenting Americans and selling out to corporations.
Hell no. Europeans from Dublin to Madrid to Berlin to Athens are not stupid enough to send 20-30% of their income directly and automatically to Brussels. They are paying attention. We need to.
Sounds like I support the storming of the capitol, doesn’t it? Sounds like I support Trump maybe?
Absolutely not. Debacles both of them.
There is one fundamental aspect about America that feeds the corruption. The professional politicians in the swamp of Washington DC know it. Direct income taxation. Americans’ income gets siphoned directly from our paycheck before we even see it to get mad about paying it. The professional bureaucrat thieves from DC set it up that way purposely. Even state sales taxes do not have such an insidious arrangement – we see the price we pay and then the state sales tax gets added and we notice it and bitch about it. Even foreigners visiting the US complain about sales taxes.
$3.9 TRILLION per year quietly, voluntarily, automatically gets directed from Americans to far away Washington DC to fund the embarrassing circus of corruption that we show the world. It needs to end.
To put $3.9 trillion in perspective, which is just the income tax revenue of the US government in Washington DC:
$3.9 trillion would rank fourth in the world as a country’s GDP behind only the US (of course), China, and Japan. That means $3.9 trillion is more than the entire GDP of Germany. $3.9 trillion is more than the entire GDP of the UK. $3.9 trillion is more than the entire GDP of any individual European country. $3.9 trillion is more than the entire GDP of India.
$3.9 trillion sent to one city causes corruption: Washington DC really is a swamp.
There is only one way to fix Washington DC. The bad news is it is difficult. The good news is it is straightforward and effective. We must repeal the Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Do this and America survives. Do it not and we continue to directly fund the DC swamp.
Defund DC. Repeal the Sixteenth Amendment.
The money does not disappear. DC does not disappear. The money gets directed to local and state governments where real people are paying attention. The taxes get managed by people who are not separated from their constituents by a continent that allows them to thieve at will. The taxes get managed locally by mildly shady local politicians who have to consider what their neighbors think. Local politicians are shady but get the job done. Career politicians are criminals.
Republicans, you want to drain the swamp? Do it. For real.
Democrats, you want representative socialism? Do it – but pay attention. Administer it from Boston Massachusetts, Austin Texas, Saint Paul Minnesota, Columbus Ohio.
Bernie followers, you want free universities? The systems are already in place. California public universities are already free. In-state tuition is already low in most states. Make it lower, but do it from that list of capital cities that are within a morning’s drive from all of their people who pay for it and benefit from it.
What separates the US from the BRIC countries? One thing has historically made the US the world leader and not among a list of huge countries that remain in the third world (BRIC). The one thing is our public schools. Our public schools are locally-funded and give the vast majority of Americans at least a chance at college prep. Our public schools are effective local government.
You want to tell me the US is becoming a third world country? I know. That’s the point. This is why and this is how to fix it.
You want to complain about the US and compare us to Brazil, Russia, India, or China? Sign up your 7-year-old for an exchange program to swap with a kid in any of those countries. Millions of 7-year-olds around the world would be signed up for the exchange. The exchange 7-year-olds would show up ready to wear the most restrictive uniform you could find, no cell phone, and starve his / her way through school for a chance to be educated in America. Their parents would put their 7-year-old on a plane tomorrow not to be seen until they are 18 if their kid had the chance.
Local funding works. Fund local social programs. Organize locally.
Replace DC.
Canada is probably the best example (besides the US so far) of a successful large country with a geographically isolated capital.
Australia finishes out the global top seven and might be a good counter-example but most of the population is on the east coast together with the capital. The Aussies have to stay united or they risk becoming a province of China.
Look down the rest of the list beyond India. Of BRIC-US, except for India, each is more than 3x the size of Argentina, the eighth largest country in the world. BRIC-US countries are huge. Our scales do not compare to any other countries in the world.
Argentina is the largest country in South America besides Brazil. Buenos Aires contains 34.7% of the Argentine population. If you include Córdoba and Santa Fe provinces, you already account for 49% of the Argentine population. Easily more than half of Argentines live within 8 hours of Buenos Aires. The rest of Argentina is Patagonia.
Kingdom of Denmark is high on the list only because of Greenland.
France is the largest country in Europe by area besides Ukraine. Paris contains 18.8% of the French population. Paris is not in the geographic center, and still the furthest major city is Nice at the southeastern extreme of the country, only 9 hours away. The European portion of France is the 48th largest country in the world by area. India is 6x the size of European France and Brazil is 15x the size of European France.
1564-1642: Galileo Galilei, Italian, father of observational astronomy, phases of Venus, Jupiter’s satellites, observed Saturn’s rings
1596-1650: René Decartes, French, philosopher, logical method
1623-1662: Blaise Pascal, French, fluid dynamics
1629-1695: Christiaan Huygens, Dutch, Saturn’s rings, pendulum clock
1642-1727: Isaac Newton, published Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica in 1687
1646-1716: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, French, differential and integral calculus, especially modern conventional notation
1700-1782: Daniel Bernoulli, Swiss, fluid mechanics, probability, statistics
1745 – 1827: Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta, Italian, the battery
1766-1844: John Dalton, English, chemist, physicist, meteorologist, atomic theory of chemistry
1775 – 1836: André-Marie Ampère, solenoid & electrical telegraph
1776-1856: Amedeo Avogadro, Italian, equal volumes of gases under equal pressure and temperature contain equal numbers of molecules
1777 – 1851: Hans Christian Ørsted, Danish, electromagnetism
1789 – 1854: Georg Ohm, German, direct relationship between voltage and current
1791 – 1867: Michael Faraday, English, various, electric motor
1824-1907: William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, thermodynamics, measurement of absolute zero temperature.
1831 – 1879: James Clerk Maxwell, Scottish, electromagnetic radiation
1846 – 1914: George Westinghouse, American, AC electric power
1847 – 1931: Thomas Edison, American, light bulb, various, DC electric power
1856 – 1943: Nikola Tesla, Serbian-American, AC electric power
1879-1955: Albert Einstein, physicist. Born in Germany. 1895 moved to Switzerland. 1896-1901 stateless. 1901 obtained Swiss citizenship. 1905 wrote the Annus Mirabilis papers. 1907-1915 developed general relativity. 1933 cancelled trip to Germany forever and renounced his citizenship at German consulate in Antwerp. 1939 sent the Einstein-Szilárd letter to FDR. 1940 settled in the US and became a US citizen.
Portuguese language is a must to operate in Brazil. Brazil is awesome. If you want to live in Brazil, that is reason enough. Here are some other reasons to learn Portuguese:
I scored “Advanced Low” on the ACTFL Speaking. I think “Intermediate High” in a language would be good enough to get started working in a foreign country. At my level, I can easily communicate, network, and socialize, but I should still improve to continue here. I scored Intermediate High on the ACTFL Writing.