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*Pygmalion and Galatea The first labor of love*
Although many mythographers have referred to him as such, Cypriot sculptor
Pygmalion was not a "woman hater." He was, instead, an "imperfection
hater." Being the consummate artist who endeavored to craft perfection, he
despised the human deficiencies he had everywhere observed.
This detestation for mortal imperfection induced him to sculpt what to him
was the ideal woman: impervious to time's passage and free of all blemish.
He first traveled far to obtain Pentelic marble, coveted by all
sculptors. It was so close-grained and golden tinted that one would have
thought it to have been mined on Mt. Olympus, itself. Once he accumulated
sufficient marble, Pygmalion started at once. From the very beginning he
worked so assiduously he rarely slept, ate or bathed. (One suspects that
he was quite an amalgamation of blemishes himself within the first week.)
Despite his tireless efforts, Pygmalion required the passage of five moon
cycles before the first hints of a woman took form from the carved marble.
Another five moon cycles elapsed before the sculpture assumed a true
female appearance. Although the sculpture was superior to any that had
preceded it, Pygmalion remained deeply dissatisfied. Whenever he looked
upon his own work, he saw only the flaws. He gently carved, pressed, and
lightly shaved each and every curve around his creation over and over
again. By his own estimation he must have touched and polished each
square inch a hundred times within the final month. Finally, when even he
could detect no other flaw, he ceased his work and admired his creation.
To even the tutored eye it appeared wholly human: a lovely woman frozen in
time. Right then and there, Pygmalion fell obsessively in love with what
he had crafted. He named her Galatea, meaning "she who is milk-white." (Note
for future reference: that this name almost sounds like "galaxy" is no
coincidence.) Galatea was beautifully life-like and yet lamentably
lifeless. Pygmalion soon found himself not only gazing at the sculpture.
but caring for it. He dressed her every morning and put her into bed every
night. He would passionately kiss her, but then wail in anguish because
she could not respond. Each day for many weeks passed in the same
manner for the lovelorn artist who had proffered his soul to cold marble.
Then, July came and with it the arrival of Kinyrades, the annual
festival commemorating Aphrodite's birth. As the love goddess was born
out of the sea foam surrounding Cyprus, Kinraydes was the year's grandest
and most sacred festival. Everyone desirous of Aphrodite's assistance made
a pilgrimage to Kinraydes, hence the massive crowds that always gathered
for it. In desperation Pygmalion attended the festival and offered
ardent prayers at Aphrotide's temple. "Bring me a woman like the one I
created," he begged while prostrating himself beneath the central flame.
In that position he didn't notice the flame then jump three times. He
returned home from the festival more abjectly miserable that he had been
when he left for he had hoped that Aphrodite would have arranged for him to
have encountered a woman like Galatea during his return journey.
Pygmalion walked into his bedroom and found Galatea lying there just where
he had left her. With nothing else for it, he lay down next to her and
gently kissed her lips. He then jumped up in shock. He could have sworn
that she responded to his kiss with one of her own. Breathless with
anxiety, he placed his hand on her shoulder. It was warm! He caressed her
cheek and noticed it yielding to his touch. Placing both hands on her
face, he kissed her again. She opened her eyes and embraced him. Such
was the intensity of his emotions that he was convulsed with tears. When
he recovered his speech, he professed his undying love for Galatea as she
then did for him. Aphrodite knew what Pygmalion had truly wanted and,
having admired his devotion to both his art and Galatea, imparted
animation onto what had once been just finely chiseled marble.
This famous story ends two different ways, depending on the source one
consults. In both versions, Pygmalion and Galatea produce two children: a
daughter Metharme and a son Paphos, the namesake of the coastal Cypriot
city Pafos. In one version the couple spend many happy years together
with Pygmalion the uxorious husband and Galatea the adoring wife.
However, in another version, Galatea eventually cools to Pygmalion as a
consequence of his advancing age. While she was forever ageless, he
became elderly His affection for her intensified while hers for him
diminished. He became enfeebled by decrepitude and wretched in both
loneliness and inexorable deterioration. Perhaps a condign punishment
for one who in youth was disdainful of the very flaws he would exhibit in
old age. It also serves as a reminder for us deficient mortals about
true love's potency. Though nobody is impervious to time's passage, in
one's estimation, a dearest spouse should remain forever flawless.
THE DAILY ASTRONOMER
Wednesday, April 29, 2020
Remote Planetarium 23: Asteroids!
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Our discussion about asteroids begins with a little number trick called
"Bode's Law," a name it hardly deserves.
It works like this: Write the number 0 followed by 3. Now double the
3 to make 6 then double the 6 to make 12 and then 12 to make 24 all the way
to 384:
*0 3 6 12 24 48 96 192 384*
Next, add 4 to each number
*4 7 10 16 28 52 100 196
388*
Finally, divide each number by 10
*0.4 0.7 1.0 1.6 2.8 5.2 10.0
19.6 38.8*
Does this look familiar? If not (don't worry), most of these values
approximate the average planet-Sun distances expressed in astronomical
units. An* astronomical unit* is equal to Earth's average distance from
the Sun, equal to about 93 million miles. Let's compare these Bode's
laws values with the actual mean planet distances:
- Mercury 0.39 AU BODE: 0.4
- Venus 0.73 AU BODE: 0.7
- Earth 1.00 AU BODE: 1.0
- Mars 1.52 AU BODE: 1.6
- ???? BODE: 2.8
- Jupiter 5.2 AU BODE: 5.2
- Saturn 9.5 AU BODE: 10
- Uranus 19.2 AU BODE: 19.6
- Neptune 30.1 AU BODE: 38.8 (FAIL!)
We can actually ascribe this "law" to two astronomers. Johann Daniel
Titius (1729-1796) and Johann Bode (1747-1826). While Titius formulated
this numeral relation based on earlier work performed by philosopher
Christian Wolff (1679-1754). Johann Bode popularized the law in his 1772
publication *Anleitung zur Kenntniss des gestirnten Himmels* ("Manual for
Knowing the Starry Sky.")
This law was initially regarded quite seriously for the numerical
relationship corresponded closely to the distances of the planets then
known, with the exception of the strange gap at 2.8 AU. In 1772, the
most distant known planet was Saturn. In 1781, William Herschel
discovered the planet we now call Uranus. Soon astronomers measured its
orbit and determined that its average distance of 19.2 AU was very close to
Bode's 19.6, A search was soon conducted by many astronomers to detect
any hidden "planet" around 2.8 astronomical units from the Sun. On Jan 1,
1801 (the very first day of the 19th century), Italian priest and
astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi (1746-1826) discovered Ceres. Its average
distance from the Sun: 2.79 AU.
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*Piazzi discovered Ceres on Jan 1, 1801.*
Astronomers classified Ceres as a planet and Bode's law was established as
one of astronomy's most important mathematical relations. Astronomers
found three other "planets" within that same decade:
- *Pallas* discovered on March 28, 1802 by Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers
- *Juno *discovered on September 1, 1804 by Karl Ludwig Harding
- *Vesta* discovered on March 29, 1807 by Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers
No other body in this region was discovered until 1845, when Karl Ludwig
Hencke (1793-1866) discovered Astrea. Astronomers discovered five more
bodies between Mars and Jupiter during the following four years: Hebe
(1847), Iris (1847), Flora (1847), Metis (1848) and Hygeia (1849). Until
these discoveries astronomers had classified Ceres, Pallas, Juno and Vesta
as planets. The detection of more worlds lead to the re-classification
of these bodies as "asteroids," small bodies in orbit around the Sun.
William Herschel coined this famous term, deriving it from the Greek words
for "star like."
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The four largest asteroids were all discovered in the 19th century.
Astronomers classified the first three (Ceres, Vesta and Pallas) as
planets. By the time Hygeia was discovered, they had all been reclassified
as asteroids.
[Note: The 1846 discovery of Neptune made short work of Bode's law as its
mean distance isn't even close to the value Bodes law predicted. It is
still remembered as a historical curiosity and because it enables us to
remember the average planet distances.]
By 1868, 100 asteroids had been discovered. The number increased to
10,000 in 1989. Today, the known number of asteroids in the region now
defined as the "Main asteroid belt" exceeds one million.
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This main belt occupies the vast region separating the orbits of Mars and
Jupiter, as seen above. Looking at this image would make one assume that
the asteroid density is so high that nothing could safely pass through it.
Think of the Millennium Falcon deftly avoiding the asteroid swarm it
traversed in Star Wars. In fact, one could hardly describe this belt as a
"swarm." The combined mass of all these asteroids is about three percent
that of the moon. The diameter of Ceres, the largest asteroid, is merely
587 miles. Those asteroids are scattered over a region more than eight
hundred million miles in circumference.
Asteroids are not only confined to this belt. As seen above, asteroids can
also be "Trojans," just as those found within Jupiter's orbit. As Jupiter
revolves around the Sun, so do the Trojans. They maintain the same
distance from the planet because both groups librate around Lagrangian
Equilibrium Stability Points, or L points. Each body in orbit around
another will, in theory, have five such points at which the gravitational
forces of the parent and orbiting body balance. The Trojans are
clustered around either the L4 or the L5 points, the most stable of the
five points. Ever since German astronomer Max Wolf discovered the 566
Achilles, the first known Trojan, in 1906, more than 7,000 Trojan
asteroids have
been found. They are divided into Trojans and Greeks, the two antagonists
in the Trojan War. The Greek camp moves ahead of Jupiter and the
Trojan camp trails behind
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Even though fewer than 10,000 Trojan asteroids are now known, more than one
million likely exist between both the L4 and L5 regions. They might
be as numerous as those in the main asteroid belt. Moreover, like the
asteroid belt members, the Trojans are divisible into *"families,*"
asteroids that share a common origin through the fragmentation of a larger
progenitor asteroid. While the Trojan asteroids are more
difficult to study owing to their greater distance and the comparatively
scant information yielded by spectral analysis, a new space mission called
LUCY is due to launch in 2021. This mission will study six Trojan
asteroids and
one main belt asteroid. This mission will allow astronomers to examine
Trojan asteroids for the first time.
Trojans are of mysterious origin. It was once believed that they might
have been Kuiper Belt objects originally. This notion has fallen out of
vogue after observations have shown the Jupiter Trojans exhibit stark color
differences from the Kuiper Belt members. They could have been captured
in the early stages of solar system development, when the planets were
believed to have been closer together before they migrated to their current
stable orbits. While we will continue to largely ignore the Trojan
asteroids in favor of the planets, moons, comets and main belt asteroids,
we will likely hear much more about them later in the decade when the LUCY
probe takes a closer look at a few of them while most assuredly discovering
many more
Astronomers have also discovered Trojan asteroids in the orbits of Venus,
Earth, Mars and Uranus. So far only one Earth Trojan 2010 TK7 has been
found. TK7 was discovered in 2010 at the L4 point which precedes Earth in
its orbit.
*ASTEROID FAMILIES*
Astronomers recognize 20 - 30 prominent asteroid families, with many other
groupings exhibiting behaviors consistent with "family" behavior. A
asteroid family is a group of asteroids that share a common mean distance
and other orbital characteristics. It is believed that asteroids in a
given family were created by the fragmentation of a larger asteroid after
which the family is named.
Prominent asteroid families include:
- *The Hilda family:* contains more than 4,000 members located beyond
the asteroid belt and named for the progenitor asteroid 153 Hilda
- *The Vesta family:* one of the largest families with a member number
exceeding 15,000. One would find the Vesta family in the asteroid belt,
along with its namesake asteroid.
- *The Eos Family:* a large group at the outer asteroid belt region
containing nearly 10,000 members and named for the parent asteroid 221 Eos
*ASTEROID NAMES:*
The number preceding the asteroid name indicates the order of discovery.
For this reason, asteroid Ceres is officially known as 1 Ceres.
Thousands of asteroids have been assigned proper names by the
International Astronomical Union (IAU). Unlike comets, which are named
for their discoverers, asteroids have been named for scientists,
celebrities, and even fictional characters and fictional objects Beautiful
examples:
- 3325 Tardis
- 2309 Mr Spock
- 2001 Einstein
- 171 Ophelia
- 96189 Pygmalion
- 74 Galatea
- 1866 Sisyphus
- 1981 Midas
- 399 Persephone
- 1864 Daedalus
- 1566 Icarus (this one occasionally swoops so close to the Sun its
surface heats to a high temperature)
- 4147 Lennon; 4148 McCartney; 4149 Harrison and 4150 (Guess!)
- 9007 James Bond
We wanted to mention also that the University of Southern Maine's resident
asteroid expert Dr. Julie Ziffer has been similarly honored.
- 7909 Ziffer
Julie Ziffer was part of the research team that discovered water ice on the
asteroid 24 Themis
We'll discuss the all important potentially hazardous asteroids (PHA) on
Monday when we talk about Space Weather.
Tomorrow, a voyage to many of the moons in our solar system.
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