THE SOUTHWORTH PLANETARIUM
207-780-4249       www.usm.maine.edu/planet
70 Falmouth Street  Portland, Maine 04103
43.6667° N,                    70.2667° W
Founded January 1970
            "Keeping a watchful eye on a complex sky."




THE DAILY ASTRONOMER
Wednesday, March 23, 2016
If you Love Astronomy,

you might want to delete this,


...because astronomy doesn't happen here.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is the secret.    We offer seashells that we
pick and polish from the shore whilst the great toss and tumult of the
cosmos roars at our edges.

Read an astronomy article, or sit in the dark planetarium confines and you
behold the machinations of admirers: the real astronomy happens beyond all
boundaries.

So, follow me...


First thing you'll notice upon venturing into Earth's shadow is the
darkness, itself.   Yes, first note: we spent our nights nestled at the
base of a planet's shadow cone, one that gradually tapers down to a point
nearly 820,000 miles away. (This value varies, like everything else in this
restless Universe.)

Second is the air.  Fantastic.  Feel it?     Choose whatever descriptive
adjectives you want for the bracing chill of these early spring breezes.
(In places like Arizona, where all children are nourished with ambrosia and
hardship is an 18th century curiosity, such chill is merely theoretical.
For us hardy folk consigned to northern climes, the Arctic-sweetened wisps
and stings are all too commonplace.)      Yet, think but this and all is
mended, that we inhale the exhalations of the world.  Caesar and his ilk
and Charlemagne and all the other historical figures constantly inhaled
oxygen and exhaled carbon dioxide which the planet's plants reprocessed
back into 02.   Mixing and turning and diving from Himalayan summits to
dessicated valleys...passing for an instant before your breath dissolves
into the night.

Even before we peer up, we experience the dynamism of an unquiet world.
Behold Orion descending toward the west.   The real Orion:  the Egyptian
Osiris, Gilgamesh, Long Sash, and the myriad other characters that
star-adorned rectangle has assumed through the ages.   Its component stars
move with furious inexorability through the galaxy's vacuums, but they are
so distant, their proper motions are subtle and the constellations retain
their shapes over thousands of years.    The Orion that stepped over
pyramids now reclines on roof tops.

Describing a diffuse arc to Orion's west is the thin galactic arc.  The
cross-section view on the Milky Way Galaxy extending this evening from the
northwestern to southeastern horizon.    We once described this galaxy as a
whirlpool of stars and now it is a self-contained Universe of solar
systems.      There was a time even in this last generation when we
wondered if our planetary system was unique. A  quirk of fate in a
planet-poor star field. (Such an attitude is a residue of the myopic
self-centered philosophy that is exceedingly difficult for us to abandon.
)  Now, we realize that our solar system is just one of billions: a retinue
of spheres tucked away in the galaxy's wilderness.       We admire the
galaxy's arm segment traversing our sky and now wonder how many others on
remote surfaces are beholding the same.     The abyss looks back at us.

The crescent Moon growing each night and moving eastward.     The closest
orb to Earth is the fastest traveler:  completing a circuit in less than a
month.   More compelling than its speed is it's proximity and
illumination.  We see it because it reflects Sun light.  So, when we behold
the crescent's silvered bow and horns, our eyes are actually receiving
photons that literally touched the lunar surface less than 1.5 seconds
earlier.

That was the International Space Station serenely sailing through the
firmament, teasing the Big Dipper's handle: receding specter-like into the
blackness.     A moment before, it passed a few hundred miles above Cape
Cod, and as we see it fade toward the horizon, it hangs above the distant
Atlantic and in a blink, over Iceland.    When it happens by again, the Sun
will be too far to touch it and it shall fly above us invisibly.
However, it is but one of thousands: a swarm of satellites passing above
and below each other as though meandering through layers of catacombs.

Astronomy is the act of engaging:   lying on the ground and knowing that
you breathe the planet's air, absorb the moon's reflected light, and
recline in a shadow extending from soil to vacuum.      No planetarium can
compete with that.