Mysteries So Bright

” I will give you the treasures of darkness
and the hoards in secret places,
that you may know that it is I, the Lord,
the God of Israel, who call you by your name.” (Is. 45:3 ESV)

Monday morning I sketched what I saw of Comet Lulin, supposedly a bright comet visible right now.  But believe me, it is not very bright in the area where I live (near Bowling Green, VA).  (Let’s talk sometime about light pollution and what we could do to slow it down or even reverse it)

This is the 3rd or 4th time I have seen the comet through binoculars and telescopes.  Here is a log of my struggles this morning.

4:01 a.m. – Glanced at clock, moaned and got up anyway … bathroom thermometer says it is 27.5 deg. outside.  Hmm… maybe it will be cloudy… nope crystal clear … oh, well, better get out there.

4:25 – Glad I set up telescope last night, but Saturn is behind the trees, and the comet is supposed to be close to it ,,, so I struggle to move telescope to a better spot … OH WOW! … suddenly I am awake when I see a beautiful bright streak of a meteor whiz by … right by Saturn.  Thank you, Lord, for that encouragement.  And there is Saturn in the telescope view … what a beautiful jewel it is, so bright against the dark background, even with the rings almost invisible … they will be on edge for several more months.

4:55 – Using my red l.e.d. headlamp, and a printed copy of the chart of Lulin’s path, I finally catch the comet in the eyepiece … I’ve got to improve my methods.  At 68 years old, getting down on the ground 4 or 5 times to aim the telescope, having it totter as it almost slips off from my too-small platform … it’s too much for this old guy.  But the weariness fades as the Comet comes in focus, and I am young again.

5:30 –  I wander out onto the street knowing it would be a better viewing spot next time, away from my 60 feet tall pine trees, 28 in number.  Yes, it is, and I can see so much of the sky here … but suddenly I am embarrassed as the paper deliverer drives by … he or she probably wonders why this guy is out along the road, hiding his eyes from the headlights, with a blue ski mask over his head … Maybe some morning I will stop him or her and explain what I am doing … and also tell the neighbor who just drove by.

6:00 – Time to go inside and ruin my night vision by turning on the computer screen and start this article … actually that can wait – but slipping between the sheets, I remember that tomorrow morning Lulin and Saturn will be really close together, an event too exciting to miss.   Surely my wife will want to see that too –  or maybe it will be cloudy.

Some good links for Comet Lulin:

Comet Lulin at Visual Astronomy.

A good chart for the next 2 days.

Sky and Telescope on Comet Lulin with complete charts.

Note: This article written by me is copyrighted 2009 by Caroline Progress, used by permission.

The photograph, courtesy of NASA (Hubble telescope), is a scene I saw last week as I re-visited the constellation Orion.  This is the middle “star” of the sword, which when looked at closely (in my telescope) is a tiny, brilliant jewel made up of 4 stars.  It is labeled as the Trapezium.  And it is surrounded by a ghostly cloud of stellar dust.  It is another breathtaking sight in the heavens.  Here is a sketch of Orion’s belt and sword.

I am currently reading “The Case for a Creator” by Lee Strobel.  I am reminded through that writing that the earth is a very unique place to live.  It is one of the rare places with a life-sustaining atmosphere that is also transparent which allows us to study the wonders beyond our world, as related in this story.

My wife, puzzled by a clue in the crossword, inquired, “3 across – Discovered the structure of the atom – 4 letters starts with B”.  I answered, “Bohr”.

And then not losing an opportunity to spout some knowledge, I asked, “Did you know that Bohr got the idea of how the electrons are trapped in certain strict orbits around the nucleus from sunlight?”

She answered, “No. Tell me more…”  (I  might be exaggerating her enthusiasm).

I went on to explain that sunlight was the main source of discovering that atoms give off certain pure colors when excited by heat or electricity, and this led to the fields of atomic physics and modern chemistry in the early 1900’s.  And the particular combination of gases around each star gives each star a unique “signature” of colors, or as I like to think, a unique song in the symphonic chorus of the heavens declaring the glory of God.

Note: This article copyrighted 2009 by Caroline Progress, used by permission.

(article submitted to the Caroline Progess, used by permission)
Behold the height of the stars, how high they are! (Job 22:12)

The photographs, used by permission of Wikipedia.com,  show the surprising view of Saturn now compared to just a year ago.  The rings become almost invisible  for several weeks.  This phenomena happens every 14 to 15 years when the plane of Saturn’s rings crosses the plane of the earth’s orbit around the sun.  My wife and I last saw this 29 years ago as the story below tells.

My wife writes:

My husband walked up to me and asked, “What happens every twenty-nine years?”  Although he had given the question no introduction,  I promptly answered, “Saturn makes a complete circuit of the sun.”

“It’s amazing that you would remember that,” he replied.

Actually, it’s far from amazing.  There is something about being urged out of  a warm bed at 2 A.M. when it’s 19 degrees outside that leaves an indelible imprint on one’s brain.  We had been married about a week.  From my perspective, things had been going rather smoothly.  We had previously recognized that we had differing tastes in music, but eventually, I reasoned, he will understand that I really do prefer the Beach Boys to Bach.

I knew, of course, that he had taught astronomy and had a small telescope.  What I didn’t realize until that cold January night was the extent of his enthusiasm for the subject.  He woke me with such delight, insisting that I must accompany him to the balcony to view Saturn turned on its side so that the rings were virtually invisible.  I looked at the clock and at his face.  He clearly saw neither hour nor the frigid cold as deterrents.   I went to the balcony and froze for ten minutes before beginning to plead that seeing Saturn once without its rings must be enough and arguing that all these heavenly bodies must also still be there in May and June when there was no danger of frostbite.  Don’t ever use that argument with an astronomer.  It leads to a long, enthusiastic (on his part) discourse about periods of peak visibility.

Ultimately,  reality set in.  He really loved this stuff.  I began to see these middle-of-the-night invitations as normal – and when he taught astronomy at Randolph Macon, I even thought it was normal that we should have placed our sleeping children in sleeping bags in the car to drive to the observatory to view the Grand Conjunction – the one that was supposed to cause California to fall into the sea.  He held each child up to the telescope, and they went to school that day with pictures of the conjunction taken through the telescope.

And through it all we have learned.  He got me a Beach Boys CD, and I have come to treasure his devotion to God’s handiwork in the heavens and even more to treasure the presence of God in our lives.

(This article copyrighted 2009 by Caroline Progress and Lakeway Publishers, Inc., written by myself and used by permission)
“The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.” (Ps 19:1 ESV)

Sketch of Venus and Moon – 29 Jan 2009

We are having another conjunction of Venus and the moon this evening.  They will be very close together somewhere else in the world later tonight – probably in Japan.   I went out to observe the sky – it was breathtaking, the evening western sky.  I never tire of seeing it.

I started a sketch book of what I see, with the first drawing shown.  The left side of the sketch shows Venus and the moon as they appeared to my unaided eye.  On the right side is a sketch of Venus made as I looked through the eyepiece of my 4.5 inch reflector.  You can see that it is less than 1/2 full at its present phase.  It will get “thinner” the next few weeks, but will get brighter as it draws closer to us in its orbit.

Bluebirds the next morning.
At the end of a morning walk with my bride, I strolled to the back yard where the snow had melted in all the sunny areas of the yard.  Here it is, January 30, and already the robins are actively finding food in the grass.  I counted at least a dozen.

And then I noticed a small bird that looked to me like a Junco (snow bird) sitting on the top of the tall swing set pole.  He next flew down to a near-by young tulip tree about 15 feet away and looked at me, turning his body as he did so.  Ah ha!  Look at that flash of blue – it is an Eastern Bluebird!

Not only that, he was gradually joined by 4 other Bluebirds that were females, I believe, since their coloring was more subtle.  And they were hopping around on the bare branches.   One swooped down to the ground when she spotted an early spring bug emerging, I assume.

I started talking with them, asking why they had stayed around this winter.  They cocked theirs heads and replied, I felt certain, that they had grown up in the bluebird box in our yard,  and they just wanted to be near home.

They seemed very friendly and stayed for about five minutes, at least it seemed that long.  Then they said, “See ya later.” and flew off over our rooftop.

I stood there a few more moments reflecting on how wonderful God’s creatures are, and how he created such a wide variety of beautiful animals, of stars, planets, galaxies for our enjoyment and to display His glory in the splendor around us.

Write me at HeWillRejoice@yahoo.com

Boyd