An Astronomical Evening
Jul. 21st, 2003 04:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pameladeanAs most of my readers probably know, Mars will make its closest approach to Earth in most of our lifetimes near the end of August. Eric and I have been reminding one another repeatedly not to forget about it. We've had several good views of it in the wee hours of the morning, together and separately. It's unmistakeable: large, not where a star should be, reddish, indubitably a planet of substance, a bit like Venus with an apoplexy.
Eric and I had a date on Wednesday, July 16th. We got together a bit late, but had some splendid conversation about an essay he was reading about nominalism and perversion; then he settled in to read in earnest and I went back to the book Lydy had lent me, We Keep a Light, an account of a family that bought an island with a lighthouse and kept the light and farmed the island while raising three children and not drowning or going crazy. At some point something made me recall that the Minnesota Weatherguide Calendar had said something about a conjunction of the Moon and Mars sometime in the middle of the month. It would be an occultation further south, but we just missed that. I got up and went into the bathroom, which is, as we determined during the lunar eclipse, good for astronomical observation. I bent and peered at the southeastern sky. Yes indeed. I got into the bathtub and surveyed matters for a moment, and then went and got Eric.
He got out the binoculars and raised the screen out of the way. The cat reprised his eclipse performance by racing around the apartment and then darting around under the bathtub. Eric, as always in such circumstances, delightfully to me, was a font of information about the absolute and relative sizes of the planets involved, the nature of their orbits, the nature of conjunctions and occultations generally. We took turns using the binoculars and sitting in the bathtub with them, keeping a wary eye on the cat lest he decide to launch himself out the window.
The Moon was just past full, just a trifle lopsided, and very bright. Through the binoculars its craters and seas showed crisp and almost three-dimensional. Eric named some of them for me, began searching for a moon map to verify his memory, was briefly disconcerted at not owning a moon map, and finally ran one to earth in the Cambridge star guide. It was for people using telescopes, so he turned it upsidedown for me.
Mars was a remarkable sight. It looked like an alien body, not part of the solar system or sky at all. The moonlight gradually swallowed its redness, but when it emerged triumphantly from its near conjunction, there the color was again. The planets sailed their separate ways, and we went to bed and had another conversation about how we would be doing the same all too soon.
Pamela
Eric and I had a date on Wednesday, July 16th. We got together a bit late, but had some splendid conversation about an essay he was reading about nominalism and perversion; then he settled in to read in earnest and I went back to the book Lydy had lent me, We Keep a Light, an account of a family that bought an island with a lighthouse and kept the light and farmed the island while raising three children and not drowning or going crazy. At some point something made me recall that the Minnesota Weatherguide Calendar had said something about a conjunction of the Moon and Mars sometime in the middle of the month. It would be an occultation further south, but we just missed that. I got up and went into the bathroom, which is, as we determined during the lunar eclipse, good for astronomical observation. I bent and peered at the southeastern sky. Yes indeed. I got into the bathtub and surveyed matters for a moment, and then went and got Eric.
He got out the binoculars and raised the screen out of the way. The cat reprised his eclipse performance by racing around the apartment and then darting around under the bathtub. Eric, as always in such circumstances, delightfully to me, was a font of information about the absolute and relative sizes of the planets involved, the nature of their orbits, the nature of conjunctions and occultations generally. We took turns using the binoculars and sitting in the bathtub with them, keeping a wary eye on the cat lest he decide to launch himself out the window.
The Moon was just past full, just a trifle lopsided, and very bright. Through the binoculars its craters and seas showed crisp and almost three-dimensional. Eric named some of them for me, began searching for a moon map to verify his memory, was briefly disconcerted at not owning a moon map, and finally ran one to earth in the Cambridge star guide. It was for people using telescopes, so he turned it upsidedown for me.
Mars was a remarkable sight. It looked like an alien body, not part of the solar system or sky at all. The moonlight gradually swallowed its redness, but when it emerged triumphantly from its near conjunction, there the color was again. The planets sailed their separate ways, and we went to bed and had another conversation about how we would be doing the same all too soon.
Pamela
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no subject
Date: 2003-07-22 01:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-22 02:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-22 10:12 am (UTC)I am amazed at what astronomical progress was actually made in Britain. I should think every astronomer there would be stark bonkers from frustration.
Pamela