1.

Hindu astrology
Hindu astrology (also known as Indian astrology, more recently Vedic astrology Kannada: ), also Jyotish or Jyotisha, from Sanskrit jyotia, from jytis- "light, heavenly body") is the ancient Indian system of astronomy and astrology. It has three branches:[citation needed]

Astrology

Siddhanta: Indian astronomy. Samhita: Mundane astrology, predicting important events related to countries such as war, earthquakes, political events, financial positions, electional astrology, house and construction related matters (Vstu Shstra), animals, portents, omens, and so on. Hora: Predictive astrology in detail.

The foundation of Hindu astrology is the notion of bandhu of the Vedas, (scriptures), which is the connection between the microcosm and the macrocosm. Practice relies primarily on the sidereal zodiac, which is different from the tropical zodiac used in Western (Hellenistic) astrology in that an ayanamsa adjustment is made for the gradual precession of the vernal equinox. Hindu astrology includes several nuanced sub-systems of interpretation and prediction with elements not found in Hellenistic astrology, such as its system of lunar mansions (nakshatras). Astrology remains an important facet in the lives of many Hindus. In Hindu culture, newborns are traditionally named based on their jyotish charts, and astrological concepts are pervasive in the organization of the calendar and holidays as well as in many areas of life, such as in making decisions made about marriage, opening a new business, and moving into a new home. To some extent, astrology even manages to retain a position among the sciences in modern India.[1] Following a controversial judgement of the Andhra Pradesh High Court in 2001, some Indian universities even offer advanced degrees in astrology.[2]

English name
Hindu astrology had been in use as the English equivalent of Jyotisha since the early 19th century. Vedic astrology is a relatively recent term, entering common usage in the 1980s with self-help publications on Ayurveda or Yoga. The qualifier "Vedic" is however a something of a misnomer,[3][4][5] as there is no mention of Jyotisha in the Vedas, and historical documentation suggests horoscopic astrology in the Indian subcontinent was a Hellenic influence post-dating the Vedic period.[6]

History

Main article: Indian astronomy Further information: Astrology and astronomy and Hindu chronology The term jyotia in the sense of one of the Vedanga, the six auxiliary disciplines of Vedic religion, is used in the Mundaka Upanishad and thus likely dates to Mauryan times. The Vedanga Jyotisha redacted by Lagadha dates to the Mauryan period, with rules for tracking the motions of the sun and the moon. The documented history of Hindu astrology begins with the interaction of Indian and Hellenistic cultures in the Indo-Greek period. The oldest surviving treatises, such as the Yavanajataka or the Brihat-Samhita, date to the early centuries CE. The Yavanajataka ("Sayings of the Greeks") was translated from Greek to Sanskrit by Yavanesvara during the 2nd century CE, under the patronage of the Western Satrap Saka king Rudradaman I, and is considered the first Indian astrological treatise in the Sanskrit language.[7] The first named authors writing treatises on astronomy are from the 5th century CE, the date when the classical period of Indian astronomy can be said to begin. Besides the theories of Aryabhata in the Aryabhatiya and the lost Arya-siddhnta, there is the Pancha-Siddhntika of Varahamihira. The main texts upon which classical Indian astrology is based are early medieval compilations, notably the Bhat Parara Horstra, and Srval by Kalyavarman. The Horashastra is a composite work of 71 chapters, of which the first part (chapters 151) dates to the 7th to early 8th centuries and the second part (chapters 5271) to the later 8th century. The Srval likewise dates to around 800 CE.[8] English translations of these texts were published by N.N. Krishna Rau and V.B. Choudhari in 1963 and 1961, respectively. Historically, the study of astrology in India was an important factor in the development of astronomy in the Early Middle Ages.Ganaka is a caste in Kerala, India famous for doing traditional Hindu or vedic astrology as there traditional career.

Elements
This article relies largely or entirely upon a single source. Please help improve this article by introducing citations to additional sources. Discussion about the problems with the sole source used may be found on the talk page. (October 2009)

Vargas
Main article: Varga (astrology) There are sixteen varga (Sanskrit: varga, 'part, division'), or divisional, charts used in Hindu astrology:[9] Varga Rasi Divisor Chart 1 D-1 Natal chart Purpose

Hora 2 Drekkana 3 Chaturtamsha 4 Trimshamsha 5 Saptamsha 7 Navamsha 9 Dashamsha 10 Dwadashamsha 12 Shodhashamsha 16 Vimshamsha 20 Chaturvimsha 24 Saptavimshamsha 27 Khavedamsha 40 Akshavedamsha 45 Shastiamsha 60

D-2 D-3 D-4 D-5 D-7 D-9 D-10 D-12 D-16 D-20 D-24 D-27 D-40

Overall wealth Siblings Properties Morals, ethics, spiritual values Children Spouse, Etc. Earning Career Parents, Grandparents Vehicles Upasana-s, Sdhana-s Education (higher) Vitality Quality of life (From here on out,the birth time must be absolutely precise or D-45 the divisional chart is incorrect!!) D-60 Used to differentiate between twins, etc., etc.

[edit] Chart styles There are three chart styles used in Jyotia, two of which are depicted below:

North Indian The third style of chart is available here.

South Indian

Grahas the planets

Main article: Navagraha Graha (Devanagari: , Sanskrit: graha, 'seizing, laying hold of, holding'.)[10]

Nine grahas, or navagrahas, are used:[11] Sanskrit Name Surya ( ) Chandra ( ) Mangala ( ) Budha () Brihaspati ( Shukra ( Shani ( ) ) English Name Sun Moon Mars Mercury ) Jupiter Venus Saturn Abbreviation Gender Guna Sy or Su Ch or Mo Ma Bu or Me Gu or Ju Sk or Ve Sa M F M N M F M M M Sattva Sattva Tamas Rajas Sattva Rajas Tamas Tamas Tamas

Rahu ( ) Ketu ( )

North Lunar Node Ra South Lunar Node Ke

Planets in maximum exaltation, mooltrikona (own sign), and debilitation, are:[12] Graha Sun Moon Mars Jupiter Venus Saturn Exaltation 10 Aries 3 Taurus Mooltrikona 4-20 Leo 4-20 Cancer 16-20 Virgo 0-15 Libra Debilitation 10 Libra 3 Scorpio 28 Cancer 15 Pisces 27 Virgo Sign Rulership Leo Cancer Aries, Scorpio Gemini, Virgo Taurus, Libra Capricorn, Aquarius

28 Capricorn 0-12 Aries 5 Cancer 27 Pisces 20 Libra

Mercury 15 Virgo

0-10 Sagittarius 5 Capricorn Sagittarius, Pisces 0-20 Aquarius 20 Aries

Rahu and Ketu are exalted in Taurus/Scorpio and are also exalted in Gemini and Virgo. The natural planetary relationships are:[13] Graha Sun Moon Friends Moon, Mars, Jupiter Sun, Mercury Neutral Mercury Enemies Venus, Saturn

Mars, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn Mercury, Venus, Saturn

Mars Mercury Jupiter Venus Saturn

Sun, Moon, Jupiter Sun, Venus Sun, Moon, Mars Mercury, Saturn Venus, Mercury

Venus,Saturn Mars, Jupiter, Saturn Saturn Mars, Jupiter Jupiter

Mercury Moon Mercury, Venus Sun, Moon Sun, Moon, Mars Sun, Moon, Jupiter

Rahu, Ketu Mercury, Venus, Saturn Mars

Ri the zodiac signs

The sidereal zodiac is an imaginary belt of 360 degrees (like the tropical zodiac), divided into 12 equal parts. Each twelfth part (of 30 degrees) is called a sign or ri (Sanskrit: ri, 'part'). Jyotia and Western zodiacs differ in the method of measurement. While synchronically, the two systems are identical, Jyotia uses primarily the sidereal zodiac (in which stars are considered to be the fixed background against which the motion of the planets is measured), whereas most Western astrology uses the tropical zodiac (the motion of the planets is measured against the position of the Sun on the Spring equinox). This difference becomes noticeable over time. After two millennia, as a result of the precession of the equinoxes, the origin of the ecliptic longitude has shifted by about 22 degrees. As a result the placement of planets in the Jyotia system is consistent with the actual zodiac, while in western astrology the planets fall into the following sign, as compared to their placement in the sidereal zodiac, about two thirds of the time. Number Sanskrit Name 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Western/Greek Name Tattva (Element) Tejas (Fire) Prithivi (Earth) Vayu (Air) Quality Ruling Planet

Mea ( ) "ram" Aries ( "ram") Vabha ( "bull" ) Taurus ( "bull") Gemini ( "twins") Cancer ( "crab") Leo ( "lion") Virgo ( "virgin")

Cara (Movable) Mars Sthira (Fixed) Dvisvabhava (Dual) Venus Mercury

Mithuna ( ) "twins" Karkaa ( "crab" Siha ( "lion" Kany ( "girl" Tul ( ) "balance" ) ) )

Jala (Water) Cara (Movable) Moon Tejas (Fire) Prithivi (Earth) Sthira (Fixed) Dvisvabhava (Dual) Sun Mercury

Libra ( "balance") Vayu (Air)

Cara (Movable) Venus Mars

Vcika ( ) Scorpio (o "scorpion") "scorpion"

Jala (Water) Sthira (Fixed)

9 10 11 12

Dhanus ( ) "bow" Makara ( ) "sea-monster" Kumbha ( "pitcher" )

Sagittarius ( "archer") Capricorn ( "goat-horned") Aquarius ( "water-pourer")

Tejas (Fire) Prithivi (Earth) Vayu (Air) Jala (Water)

Dvisvabhava (Dual)

Jupiter

Cara (Movable) Saturn Sthira (Fixed) Dvisvabhava (Dual) Saturn Jupiter

Mna ( ) "fish" Pisces ( "fish")

The zodiac signs in Hindu astrology correspond to parts of the body:[14] Sign Mea (Aries) Vabha (Taurus) Mithuna (Gemini) Karka (Cancer) Siha (Leo) Kany (Virgo) Tula (Libra) Vcika (Scorpio) Part of Body head mouth arms two sides heart digestive system umbilical area generative organs

Dhanus (Sagittarius) thighs Makara (Capricorn) knees Kumbha (Aquarius) Lower part of legs Mna (Pisces) feet

Bhvas the houses

Main article: Bhva Bhva (Sanskrit: bhva, 'division'.) In Hindu astrology, the natal chart is the bhava chakra (Sanskrit: chakra, 'wheel'.) The bhava chakra is the complete 360 circle of life, divided into houses, and represents our way of enacting the influences in the wheel. Each house has associated karaka (Sanskrit: karaka, 'significator') planets that can alter the interpretation of a particular house.[15] House 1 Name Lagna Sun Karakas Meanings outer personality, physique, health/well-being, hair, appearance

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Dhana Sahaja Sukha Putra Ari Yuvati

Jupiter, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Moon Mars Moon Jupiter Mars, Saturn Venus, Jupiter

wealth, family relationships, eating habits, speech, eyesight, death natural state, innate temperament, courage, valor, virility, younger siblings inner life, emotions, home, property, education, mother creativity, children, spiritual practices, punya acute illness, injury, openly known enemies, litigation, daily work, foreigners, service business and personal relationships, marriage, spouse, war, fighting length of life, physical death, moka, chronic illness, deep and ancient traditions luck, fortune, spirituality, dharma, guru, father

Randhara Saturn Dharma Jupiter, Sun Karma Labha Vyaya

Mercury, Jupiter, Sun, dream fulfillment, knees and spine, current karmas, Saturn career, sky themes (being 12am/mid heavens Jupiter Saturn gains, profits from work, ability to earn money, social contexts and organizations loss, intuition, imprisonment, feet, foreign travel, moksha

Nakshatras
Main article: Nakshatra A nakshatra or lunar mansion is one of the 27 divisions of the sky, identified by the prominent star(s) in them, used in Hindu astrology.[16] Historical (medieval) Hindu astrology had various systems of enumerating either 27 or 28 nakshatras. Today, popular usage[clarification needed] favours a rigid system of 27 nakshatras covering 1320 of the ecliptic each. Each nakshatra is divided into quarters or padas of 320: # 1 Ashvin ( ) ) Name ) Location 0 1320' Aries Ruler Pada 1 Pada 2 Pada 3 Ketu Chu Che Cho Li A O Lu I Va/Ba Le U Vi/Bi Ka Pada 4 La Lo E Vu/Bu Ke

2 Bharan ( ) 3 Krittik ( 4 Rohini ( )

1320' 2640' Aries Venus 2640' Aries 1000' Sun Taurus 1000' 2320' Taurus Moon

5 Mrigashrsha (

2320' Taurus 640' Mars Gemini

Ve/Be Vo/Bo

6 rdr (

) )

7 Punarvasu ( 8 Pushya ( ) 9 shlesh ( 10 Magh ( ) 11 12

640' 2000' Gemini 2000' Gemini 320' Cancer 320' 1620' Cancer 1640' Cancer 000' Leo 000' 1320' Leo

Rahu Jupiter Saturn

Ku Ke Hu

Gha Ng/Na Chha Ko He Du Ha Ho De Hi Da Do Me Tu Pi Tha Ri Ta To Ne Yu Bhi

Mercury Di Ketu

Ma Mi Mu Mo Ta Te Pu Pe Ru To Sha Po Re Tu Ti Pa Na Ra Ro Te Nu Yi

Prva or Prva Phalgun 1320' 2640' Leo Venus ( ) Uttara or Uttara Phalgun 2640' Leo 1000' Sun ( ) Virgo ) 1000' 2320' Moon Virgo 2320' Virgo 640' Mars Libra 640' 2000 Libra Rahu ) 2000' Libra 320' Scorpio 320' 1640' Scorpio 1640' Scorpio 000' Sagittarius 000' 1320' Sagittarius ) 1320' 2640' Sagittarius

13 Hasta (

14 Chitr ( ) 15 Svt ( )

16 Vishkh (

Jupiter Ti

17 Anurdh ( ) 18 Jyeshtha ( ) 19 Mla () 20 Prva Ashdh ( 21 Uttara Ashdh ( ) )

Saturn Na Ni Mercury No Ya Ketu Venus Ye

Yo Bha

Bhu Dha

Dha Bha/Pha Ji

2640' Sagittarius Sun 1000' Capricorn 1000' 2320' Capricorn Moon Mars Rahu Jupiter

Bhe Bho Ja Jo/Khe Gu Si Da

22 Shravana ( 23 24

Ju/Khi Je/Khu Ga Go Se Gi Sa So

Gha/Kho Ge Su Di Da/Tra

Shravishth ( ) or 2320' Capricorn 640' Aquarius Dhanist

Shatabhish ( )or 640' 2000' Aquarius Shatataraka Prva Bhdrapad 2000' Aquarius 25 ( ) 320' Pisces 26 Uttara Bhdrapad

320' 1640' Pisces Saturn Du

Tha Jha

( ) 27 Revat ( ) 1640' 3000' Pisces Mercury De Do Cha Chi

Da-s the planetary periods

Main article: Dasha (astrology) Dasha (Devanagari: , Sanskrit,da, 'planetary period'.) The dasha system shows which planets will be ruling at particular times in Hindu astrology. There are several dasha systems; however, the primary system used by astrologers is the Vimshottari dasha system. The first maha dasha is determined by the position of the natal Moon. Each maha dasha is divided into subperiods called bhuktis. Vimshottari dasha lengths are:[17] Maha Dasha Length Ketu Venus Sun Moon Mars Rahu Jupiter Saturn Mercury Bhuktis

7 Years Ketu, Venus, Sun, Moon, Mars, Rahu, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury 20 Years Venus, Sun, Moon, Mars, Rahu, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury, Ketu 6 Years Sun, Moon, Mars, Rahu, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury, Ketu, Venus 10 Years Moon, Mars, Rahu, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury, Ketu, Venus, Sun 7 Years Mars, Rahu, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury, Ketu, Venus, Sun, Moon 18 Years Rahu, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury, Ketu, Venus, Sun, Moon, Mars 16 Years Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury, Ketu, Venus, Sun, Moon, Mars, Rahu 19 Years Saturn, Mercury, Ketu, Venus, Sun, Moon, Mars, Rahu, Jupiter 17 Years Mercury, Ketu, Venus, Sun, Moon, Mars, Rahu, Jupiter, Saturn

Drishtis the planetary aspects

Drishti (Sanskrit: drishti, 'sight'.) In Hindu astrology, the aspect is to an entire sign, and grahas only cast forward aspects:[18] Graha Houses Sun 7th Moon Venus Mars Jupiter Saturn Rahu 7th 7th 4th, 7th, 8th 5th, 7th, 9th 3rd, 7th, 10th 5th,7th,9th Mercury 7th

Ketu

No aspect

Gocharas the transits

Gochara (Sanskrit: gochara, 'transit'.) In Hindu astrology, a natal chart shows the actual positions of the grahas at the moment of birth. Since that moment, the grahas have continued to move around the zodiac, interacting with the natal chart grahas. This period of interaction is called gochara.[19]

Yogas the planetary combinations

Yoga (Sanskrit: yoga, 'union'.) In Hindu astrology, yogas are planetary combinations placed in specific relationships to each other.[20] Kalasarpa Yoga is a dangerous yoga. If all planets (excepting Uranus, Neptune, Pluto) are 1side of Rahu & Ketu, it becomes Kala-Sarpa Yoga.

Dig bala the directional strength

Dig bala (Sanskrit: dig bala, 'directional strength'.) Graha-s gain strength when they are placed in specific cardinal houses:[21] House 1st 4th 7th 10th Grahas Venus, Moon Saturn Sun, Mars Direction North West South

Jupiter, Mercury East

Horoscopy
Lagna the ascendant
Main article: Lagna Lagna (Sanskrit: lagna, 'ascendant'.) Lagna is the first moment of contact between the soul and its new life on earth in Hindu astrology.[22]

Atmakaraka the soul significator

Main article: Atmakaraka Atmakaraka (Sanskrit: atmakaraka, from atma, 'soul', and karaka, 'significator' .) Atmakaraka is the significator of the soul's desire in Hindu astrology.[23]

Gandanta the karmic knot

Main article: Gandanta Gandanta (Sanskrit: gandanta, from gand, 'knot', and anta, 'end'.) Gandanta is a spiritual or karmic knot in Hindu astrology. Gandanta describes the junction points in the natal chart where the solar and lunar zodiacs meet, and are directly associated with times of soul growth.[24]

Ayanamsa the zodiac conversion

Main article: Ayanamsa Ayanamsa (Sanskrit: ayansa, from ayana, 'movement', and asa, 'component') is the longitudinal difference between the Tropical (Sayana) and Sidereal (Nirayana) zodiacs.[25]

Moudhya the combustion

Moudhya (Sanskrit: moudhya, 'combustion') is a planet that is in conjunction with the Sun. The degrees the planets are considered combust are:[26] Graha Degree Moon Venus Mars Jupiter Saturn 12 9 17 11 15 Mercury 13

Saade saati the critical transit

Saade saati, the transit of Saturn over the natal Moon, is the most important transit in a birth chart and takes approximately 7.5 years to complete. The transit begins when Saturn enters the house before the Moon, and ends when Saturn departs the house after the Moon. The most intense phase is when Saturn is 23 on either side of the Moon. The beginning of the transit will give an indication of the issues to be addressed. Saade saati results in a complete transformation, usually with a change in career or life direction.[27]

2.Natal chart

An astrological chart calculated for January 1, 2000 at 12:01:00 A.M. Eastern Standard Time in New York City, New York, USA (Longitude: 074W00'23" - Latitude: 40N42'51"). In astrology, a natal chart is a stylized map of the universe with the "native" (the individual or subject to be studied) at the center. It is calculated for the exact time and location of the native's birth for the purposes of gaining insight into the native's personality and potential. Commonly used alternative names for the natal chart include birth chart, horoscope, natus, nativity, radix, geniture and genethliac chart, among others. The chart shows the positions of the sun, moon, planets, and potentially other celestial objects, all referred to as the native's "planets," within the frames of references defined by the astrological signs and houses. The accurate birth time (generally agreed upon as the first breath or intake of air)[1] and location are necessary for the calculation of the exact degree of the signs that are rising, setting, culminating up, and culminating down, known respectively the ascendant (or "rising sign"), descendant, medium coeli (or "midheaven"), and imum coeli (or "lower midheaven"). These degrees, also known as the angles, are essential for mapping the positions of the native's twelve houses.

Example

These are the astrological symbols/glyphs as most commonly used in Western Astrology

The symbols used in Western astrology to represent the astrological signs (Zodiac) The picture to the above-right is a modern example of a natal chart as a modern Western astrologer would most likely view it (though there are variants depending on the specific astrological tradition that the astrologer follows and/or their personal preferences). The design, along with the symbols/glyphs used in the chart, can vary widely; some choose to include the Zodiac wheel, while some do not. Also, charts do not have to be roundfollowing the Hellenistic/Roman, medieval and/or Vedic styles, they can be square as well. The astrological aspects (such as conjunctions or oppositions, among others) are delineated in the center of the chart. The twelve signs of the Zodiac are located at the outer portion of the chart wheel; similarly, twelve segments of arc form astrological houses which are said to have significance for different areas of life. There are many different systems for calculating the houses. The sample chart uses a quadrant house system of house division whereby the angles of the chart divide the chart into four quadrants with three houses within each quadrant, and in which the houses usually include portions of more than one astrological sign. Each quadrant has

an angular house, which includes one of the angles of the chart; a succedent house follows this, with a cadent house at the end of the quadrant.

Place and time of birth

Because the Sun, Moon, planets, and primary angles in the sky are constantly in motion relative to the earth, as each second passes the natal chart/astrological chart is changing (albeit slowly) and a new chart is created for every moment at each location. A natal chart is extremely personal and unique, depending on the specific date, exact time, and precise location of the birth. Even the birth charts of a pair of twins are often slightly different due to the fact that one of the twins is usually born a few minutes apart from the other (see also: astro-twin). The time of birth can usually be found on the birth certificate in many countries. In some instances, however, the birth times are rounded off by the nurse or doctor that is present to the nearest half or quarter-hour, thus rendering the time only approximately correct. Because of this fairly common practice, the parents should always remember to note the exact time of the child's first breath and not rely on the time given on the birth certificate in the event that they ever plan on having a precisely accurate natal chart calculated for their child. An accurate time of birth is virtually useless if the exact location of birth is not known. Most charts are geocentric, that is based on the Earth. However, there is no reason in theory why a chart cannot be created for another planet. Some astrologers use Heliocentric - Sun centered charts. These are theoretical constructions and have a different interpretation to geocentric natal charts. Charts based on other planets would need all the points recalculating from that point of view; for example, "Jovocentric" would be a Jupiter centered view.

Erecting the natal chart

Main article: Horoscope Once the astrologer has ascertained the exact time and place of the subject's birth, the local standard time (adjusting for any daylight saving time or war time) is then converted into Greenwich Mean Time or Universal Time at that same instant. The astrologer then has to convert this into the local sidereal time at birth in order to be able to calculate the ascendant and midheaven. The astrologer will next consult a set of tables called an ephemeris, which lists the location of the sun, moon and planets for a particular year, date and sidereal time, with respect to the northern hemisphere vernal equinox or the fixed stars (depending on which astrological system is being used). The astrologer then adds or subtracts the difference between the longitude of Greenwich and the longitude of the place in question to determine the true local mean time (LMT) at the place of birth to show where planets would be visible above the horizon at the precise time and place in question. Planets hidden from view beneath the earth are also shown in the horoscope.

Natal chart for Martin Luther, also appearing in Sibly's Astrology. The horoscope is then divided into 12 sectors around the circle of the ecliptic, starting from the eastern horizon with the ascendant or rising sign. These 12 sectors are called the houses and numerous systems for calculating these divisions exist. Tables of houses have been published since the 19th Century to make this otherwise demanding task easier.

Placements of the planets

Having established the relative positions of the signs in the houses, the astrologer positions the sun, moon, and planets at their rightful celestial longitudes. Some astrologers also take note of minor planetary bodies, fixed stars, asteroids (for example, Chiron) and other mathematically calculated points and angles such as the vertex, equatorial ascendant, etc. Many astrologers also use what are commonly referred to as Arabic parts (or Greek Lots), the most common of which is the Part of Fortune (Pars Fortuna).

Aspects
Main article: Astrological aspects To complete the horoscope the astrologer will consider the aspects or relative angles between pairs of planets. Certain aspects are considered more important than others. Those generally recognized by the astrological community are Conjunction (0), Opposition (180), Square (90), Trine (120), Sextile (60), Semi-Square (45), Sesquisquare (135), and Quincunx (150). Understandably these aspects are more significant when they are exact, but they are considered to function within an orb of influence, the size of which varies according to the importance of each aspect. Thus conjunctions are believed to operate with a larger orb than sextiles. Most modern astrologers use an orb of 8 or less for aspects involving the Sun, Moon, and Jupiter and smaller orbs for the other points. Some astrologers, such as practitioners of Cosmobiology, and Uranian astrology, use minor aspects (15, 22.5, 67.5, 72, 75, 105, 112.5).

Rectification
If the birth time cannot be obtained, or is not precise, some astrologers try to find it by rectification. This is usually done by making a list of important events in the person's life, and calculating what birth time would give the most appropriate progressions and/or transits for these dates. Another method, often combined with the former, is to decide what birth time would give a chart that seems to describe the person most accurately - especially as regards physical appearance. Not all astrologers approve of rectification, however.

Interpretation
Main article: Natal astrology Once the natal chart has been constructed the process of interpretation can begin. This is a branch of astrology known as natal astrology , which involves building a complete picture of the personality of the subject, or native. Interpretation involves two main steps - chart weighting and chart shaping. Chart weighting involves noting the distribution of zodiac signs and houses in the chart, and the significance of this to the overall personality of the native. Signs are assessed by element (Fire, Earth, Air, and Water) and by quality (Cardinal, Fixed and Mutable). Houses are assessed by the significance of Angular, Succedent and Cadent houses. Chart shaping involves assessing the placement of the planets by aspect and position in the chart, and noting any significant patterns which occur between them. This involves noting significant aspect patterns (or groups of aspects), which may appear in the chart and any other patterns , such as Jones patterns.

The Ecliptic: the Sun's Annual Path on the Celestial Sphere

As the Earth orbits around the Sun over the course of the year, we observe the Sun to track out a circle around the celestial sphere. This track of the Sun on the celestial sphere is called the ecliptic. Relative to the "fixed" stars we observe the Sun to move eastwards on the celestial sphere completing one full circuit of 360 over the year (~365.25 days), i.e. an eastward motion of ~1 per day. The zodiac is the set of constellations on the ecliptic, (i.e. those that the Sun travels through in the course of the year). The traditional twelve zodiac constellations are Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricornus, Aquarius and Pisces.

The animation above shows the Sun moving along the ecliptic (green line) over the course of one year. This diagram is in ecliptic coordinates, i.e. relatively to ecliptic (longitude measures the angle around the ecliptic and latitude measures the angle away from the ecliptic). By definition the Sun tracks along the zero ecliptic latitude line. The Earth's spin axis is tilted by 23.5 with respect to the Earth's orbital plane (the ecliptic plane). The direction of Earth's spin axis is fixed in space.

The tilt of the Earth's spin axis with respect to the ecliptic plane results in the Sun tracking out an seemingly sinusoidal path on the celestial sphere when viewed in the projection with the celestial equator horizontal.

The animation above shows the Sun moving along the ecliptic (green line). This diagram is in equatorial coordinates, i.e. Right Ascension and Declination. The (red line) is the celestial equator. In the course of the year, the Sun spends six months above the celestial equator (~21st March to ~20th September) and six months below (~20th September to the ~21st March). It is this 23.5 tilt of the Earth's spin axis with respect to the ecliptic plane which causes the seasons.

Each year we see the Sun cross the celestial equator moving northwards on about 21st March. This is the vernal (March) equinox and at this time the Sun, by definition, is at RA = 0h, Dec = 0.0. At the equinoxes at every location on the Earth the Sun spends 12 hours above the horizon and 12 hours below the horizon. The Sun rises precisely in the East and sets precisely in the West; the Sun is on the celestial equator. This animation shows the track of the Sun across the sky as seen from Durham at the time of the equinox. For northern hemisphere observers the Sun stops moving up the celestial sphere reaching its highest point on about 21st June, i.e. at the summer (June) solstice. The word solstice means "Sun standing still". At this time the Sun is at RA = 6h, Dec = +23.5. At this time northern hemisphere observers receive the maximum amount of sunlight because the Sun is highest in the sky at noon and is above the horizon for the longest period. This animation shows the track of the Sun across the sky as seen from Durham at the time of the summer solstice. On about 20th September, the Sun crosses the celestial equator moving southwards. This is the autumnal (September) equinox. At this time the Sun is at RA = 12h, Dec = 0.0. The Sun reaches its lowest point at the winter (December) solstice on about 21st December. At this time the Sun is at RA = 18h, Dec = 23.5. Northern hemisphere observers receive the minimum amount of sunlight at this time as the Sun is lowest in the sky at noon and is above the horizon for the shortest time. This animation shows the track of the Sun across the sky as seen from Durham at the time of the winter solstice. This animation shows how the position of the midday Sun changes over the year as seen from Durham. A good approximation to the Sun's position is given by RA [deg] = + 2.45 sin 2 sin Dec [deg] = 0.4 sin ( or Dec [deg] = 23.5 sin ) ,

where is the Sun's ecliptic longitude. can be estimated by assuming that the Earth's orbit is circular ( = 0 on 21st March, = 30 on 21st April, = 60 on 21st May, = 90 on 21st June, etc). For example, estimate the Sun's RA and Dec on 21th January? At this date the Sun's = 300 (i.e. about two months before the vernal equinox). Using the above formulae we estimate that on the 21st January the Sun's RA = 299.1 (19h 56.4m) and Dec = 20.3.

3. Ecliptic
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Perspective of Earth and celestial sphere, showing the ecliptic (plane), the celestial equator (overhead the Earth's equator) and the Earth's polar axis (which also points to the celestial poles). The intersection shown between the equator and the ecliptic (the vernal equinox point) is not associated with any particular location on the Earth (despite the diagram), because the Earth rotates daily, while the celestial sphere does not. The ecliptic is the plane of the earth's orbit around the sun. In more accurate terms, it is the intersection of the celestial sphere with the ecliptic plane, which is the geometric plane containing the mean orbit of the Earth around the Sun. (The ecliptic plane should be distinguished from the invariable plane of the solar system, which is perpendicular to the vector sum of the angular momenta of all planetary orbital planes, to which Jupiter is the main contributor. The present ecliptic plane is inclined to the invariable plane by about 1.5.) The name ecliptic arises because eclipses occur when the full or new Moon is very close to this path of the Sun.

Contents
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1 Equator 2 Stars 3 Sun 4 Planets 5 Moon 6 Star coordinates 7 References

8 External links

[edit] Equator
As the rotational axis of the Earth is not perpendicular to its orbital plane, the equatorial plane is not parallel to the ecliptic plane, but makes an angle of about 2326', which is known as the axial tilt (or obliquity of the ecliptic).

The plane of the ecliptic is well seen in this picture from the 1994 lunar prospecting Clementine spacecraft. Clementine's camera reveals (from right to left) the Moon lit by Earthshine, the Sun's glare rising over the Moon's dark limb, and the planets Saturn, Mars and Mercury (the three dots at lower left). The intersections of the equatorial and ecliptic planes with the celestial dome are great circles known as the celestial equator and the ecliptic respectively. The intersection line of the two planes results in two diametrically opposite intersection points, known as the equinoxes. The equinox that the Sun passes from south to north is known as the vernal equinox or first point of Aries. Ecliptic longitude, usually indicated with the letter , is measured from this point on 0 to 360 towards the east. Ecliptic latitude, usually indicated with the letter is measured +90 to the north or -90 to the south. The same intersection point also defines the origin of the equatorial coordinate system, named right ascension measured from 0 to 24 hours also to the east and usually indicated with or R.A., and declination, usually indicated with also measured +90 to the north or -90 to the south. Simple rotation formulas allow a conversion from , to , and back (see: ecliptic coordinate system).

[edit] Stars

The ecliptic serves as the center of a region called the zodiac, which constitutes a band of 9 on either side. Traditionally, this region is divided into 12 signs of 30 longitude each. By tradition, these signs are named after 12 of the 13 constellations straddling the ecliptic. The zodiac signs are very important to many astrologers. Modern astronomers typically use other coordinate systems today. The position of the vernal equinox is not fixed among the stars but due to the lunisolar precession slowly shifting westwards over the ecliptic with a speed of 1 per 72 years. A much smaller north/southwards shift can also be discerned (the planetary precession, along the instantaneous equator, which results in a rotation of the ecliptic plane). Said otherwise, the stars shift eastwards (increase their longitude) measured with respect to the equinoxes in other words, as measured in ecliptic coordinates and (often) also in equatorial coordinates. Using the current official IAU constellation boundaries and taking into account the variable precession speed and the rotation of the ecliptic the equinoxes shift through the constellations in the years (expressed in astronomical year numbering in which the year 0 = 1 BC, -1 = 2 BC, etc.) as follows:[1]

The March equinox passed from Taurus into Aries in year -1865, passed into Pisces in year -67, will pass into Aquarius in year 2597, will pass into Capricornus in year 4312. It passed along (but not into) a 'corner' of Cetus on 010' distance in year 1489. The June solstice passed from Leo into Cancer in year -1458, passed into Gemini in year -10, passed into Taurus in December 1989, will pass into Aries in year 4609. The September equinox passed from Libra into Virgo in year -729, will pass into Leo in year 2439. The December solstice passed from Capricornus into Sagittarius in year -130, will pass into Ophiuchus in year 2269, and will pass into Scorpius in year 3597.

[edit] Sun
UTC date and time of solstices and equinoxes[2] Equinox Mar Solstice June Equinox Sept Solstice Dec

year

day time day time day time day time 2004 20 06:49 21 00:57 22 16:30 21 12:42 2005 20 12:33 21 06:46 22 22:23 21 18:35 2006 20 18:26 21 12:26 23 04:03 22 00:22 2007 21 00:07 21 18:06 23 09:51 22 06:08

2008 20 05:48 20 23:59 22 15:44 21 12:04 2009 20 11:44 21 05:45 22 21:18 21 17:47 2010 20 17:32 21 11:28 23 03:09 21 23:38 2011 20 23:21 21 17:16 23 09:04 22 05:30 2012 20 05:14 20 23:09 22 14:49 21 11:11 2013 20 11:02 21 05:04 22 20:44 21 17:11 2014 20 16:57 21 10:51 23 02:29 21 23:03 2015 20 22:45 21 16:38 23 08:20 22 04:48 2016 20 04:30 20 22:34 22 14:21 21 10:44 2017 20 10:28 21 04:24 22 20:02 21 16:28

Due to the inclination of the Moon's orbit and the resulting movement of Earth around the barycenter, and due as well to the perturbing influences on the Earth's orbit by the other planets, the true Sun is not always exactly on the ecliptic for a hypothetical observer at Earth's center, but may be some arcseconds north or south of it. It is therefore the centre of the mean Sun that outlines its path. As the Earth takes one year to make one complete revolution around the Sun, the apparent position of the Sun also takes the same length of time to make a complete circuit of the whole ecliptic. With slightly more than 365 days in the year, the Sun moves almost 1 eastwards every day (direction of increasing longitude). This annual motion should not be confused with the daily motion of the Sun (and the stars, and indeed the whole celestial sphere for that matter) towards the west along the equator every 24 hours. In fact, where the stars need about 23h 56m for one such rotation to complete the sidereal day, the Sun, which has shifted 1 eastwards during that time needs 4 minutes extra to complete its circle, making the solar day about 24 hours. The distance between Sun and Earth varies slightly during the year, so the speed with which the Sun moves along the ecliptic also varies. For example, within one year, the Sun is north of the equator for about 186.40 days and south of the equator for about 178.24 days. The mean Sun crosses the equator around 20 March at the time of the vernal equinox, when its declination, right ascension, and ecliptic longitude are all zero. (The mean sun's ecliptic latitude is always zero.) The March equinox marks the onset of spring in the northern hemisphere and autumn in the southern. The actual date and time varies from year to year because of the occurrence of leap years. It also shifts slowly over the centuries due to imperfections in the Gregorian calendar.

Ecliptic longitude 90, at right ascension 6 hours and a northern declination equal to the obliquity of the ecliptic (23.44), is reached around 21 June. This is the June solstice - or summer solstice in the northern hemisphere and winter solstice in the southern hemisphere. It is also the first point of Cancer and directly overhead on Earth on the tropic of Cancer so named because the Sun turns around in declination. Ecliptic longitude 180, right ascension 12 hours is reached around 22 September and marks the second equinox or first point of Libra. Due to perturbations to the Earth's orbit, the moment the real Sun passes the equator might be several minutes earlier or later. The southernmost declination of the sun is reached at ecliptic longitude 270, right ascension 18 hours at the first point of the sign of Capricorn around 21 December. These traditional signs (in western tropical astrology) have given their names to the solstices and equinoxes, but in reality (as from the list in the previous chapter) the cardinal points are currently situated in the constellations of Pisces, Taurus, Virgo and Sagittarius respectively, due to the precession of the equinoxes.

[edit] Planets

Orbits of planets of the Solar System, Pluto and Ceres, viewed perpendicular to the ecliptic directly above the Sun. Brighter parts of orbits are nearer to the viewer than the ecliptic and darker parts are farther. Of the eight planets, the orbital plane of Mercury has the greatest difference from Earth's at 7 orbital inclination; other planets' inclinations range up to 3.39. Pluto's, at 17, was previously an exception until it was reclassified a dwarf planet, and other non-planetary bodies in the Solar System have even greater orbital inclinations (e.g. Eris at 44 and Pallas at 34). Interestingly, the Earth has the most inclined orbit of all eight major planets relative to the Sun's equator, with the giant planets close behind.

Inclination
Inclination Inclination Inclination to ecliptic to Sun's equator to invariable plane[3]

Name

Mercury Venus Terrestrials Earth Mars Jupiter Saturn Gas giants Uranus

7.01 3.39

3.38 3.86

6.34 2.19

0 1.85 1.31 2.49 0.77

7.155 5.65 6.09 5.51 6.48

1.57 1.67 0.32 0.93 1.02

Neptune

1.77

6.43

0.72

The intersection line of the ecliptical plane and another planet's orbital plane is called the nodal line of that planet, and the nodal line's intersection points on the celestial sphere are the ascending node (where the planet crosses the ecliptic from south to north) and the diametrically opposite descending node. Only when an inferior planet passes through one of its nodes can a

transit over the Sun take place. Transits, especially for Venus, are quite rare, because the Earth's orbit is more inclined than those of the inner two planets. Inclination and nodal lines, as almost all other orbital elements, change slowly over the centuries due to perturbations from the other planets.

[edit] Moon
The orbit of the Moon is inclined by about 5 to the ecliptic. Its nodal line is not fixed, but regresses (moves towards the west) over a full circle every 18.6 years. This is the cause of nutation and lunar standstill. The moon crosses the ecliptic about twice per month. If this happens during new moon a solar eclipse occurs, during full moon a lunar eclipse. This was the way the ancients could trace the ecliptic along the sky; they marked the places where eclipses could occur.

[edit] Star coordinates

Up to the 17th century in Europe, star maps and positions in star catalogues were always given in ecliptical coordinates, though in China, astronomers employed an equatorial system in their catalogues. It was not until astronomers started to use telescopes and mechanical clocks to measure star positions that equatorial coordinates came into use, which occurred so exclusively that nowadays ecliptical coordinates are no longer used. Nonetheless, this change is not always desirable, as a planetary conjunction would be much more illustratively described by ecliptic coordinates rather than equatorial. Also see zodiacal coordinates.

Stargazers and Sunwatchers

Watchers of the Heavens
Early stargazers--especially the priests of Egypt and Babylon, semi-desert countries where skies are rarely clouded--were fascinated by the star-studded canopy which seemed to arch overhead, and by the daily cycle of the Sun, which seemed supernatural, beyond understanding. The ancient author of Psalm 19 wrote:

The heavens declare the glory of God, And the firmament showeth His handiwork; Day unto day uttereth speech, And night unto night revealeth knowledge; There is no speech, there are no words, Neither is their voice heard.

Their line is gone out through all the earth, And their words to the end of the world. In them He has set a tent for the Sun, Which is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber; And rejoiceth as a strong man to run his course. His going forth is from the end of the heaven, And his circuit unto the ends of it; And there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.

East, West, South and North

Imagine you were one of the early Babylonian skywatchers! You live on a plain, and as far as you can see, the world around you is absolutely flat (only careful observations of the surface of the ocean suggest anything different--see section #8). Your view is limited by the horizon, an imaginary line all around you at a distance of a few miles, or whatever units Babylonians used. Observing day after day, you note that the Sun always rises from roughly the same direction, which you name east. It sets in the opposite direction, and that will be west. In between the Sun rises in a long arc, and is furthest from the horizon halfway between its rising and setting, in a direction you call south. Finally, the direction opposite south will be north. When the Sun is near the horizon, shortly after sunrise or before sunset, a vertical pole or post casts a long shadow. At the highest point in the Sun's motion, when it is in the south, the shadow is at its shortest. The time when this happens is halfway between sunrise and sunset, and we call it noon or maybe "noon by the Sun," because "noon by the clock" may differ. After noon shadows again grow longer, as the Sun descends towards the horizon. Because the shadow always points away from the Sun:
o o o

At sunrise, with the Sun in the east, it points to the west. At noon, with the Sun in the south, it points north At sunset, with the Sun in the west, it points to the east.

That is the principle of the sundial, discussed in section #2a.

Suppose you watch the Sun rise and set day after day. Using as markers features on the horizon--trees, houses, etc.--you soon realize that the points where Sun rises and sets are not always the same, but shift week after week. On the other hand, the direction of south where the Sun is The shortest shadows during the day "highest" above the horizon does not define the north direction change, and neither does that of north, of the shortest shadow of the day. Because those directions are fixed, it is best to choose as the "true" east and west those directions which are perpendicular to north-south. Only twice each year are sunrise and sunset exactly in those directions, but they help measure and understand what happens in the rest of the year.

Seasons of the Year

Even in Babylon the year has seasons--winters are cool, summers dry and very hot. As already noted, twice a year, halfway between summer and winter, the Sun rises exactly in the east (as defined above), and sets exactly in the west (well, nearly exactly, in both cases). We now know that on the days when this happen, day and night are very nearly equal in length, and that time of year is therefore called "equinox." One equinox happens in the fall ("autumnal equinox") and one in the spring ("vernal equinox," "ver" is Latin for spring). As fall advances towards winter, the location of sunrise moves south, as does the location of sunset. The steepness of the curve traced by the Sun does not change, nor does the rate ("speed") with which the Sun appears to move along it, but the length of the curve changes, it becomes shorter. Around December 21 --the "winter solstice" halfway between the equinox dates (typically, September 23 and March 21) sunrise and sunset are as far south as they can go (at any one location). As a result, the Sun has its shortest path for the year, the day is at its shortest and night is at its longest. Other days of that season are short, too, which is one reason for the colder weather in winter.

The apparent path of the Sun across the sky. In summer, the Sun's path is longest, and so are the days. In winter, the Sun's path is shortest, and so are the days. After that the points of sunrise and sunset migrate northward again, and days get longer. This migration continues past equinox (when it is at its fastest), and the Sun crosses the horizon furthest northwards around June 21, the "summer solstice" (celebrated in some cultures as "midsummer day"), longest day of the year with the shortest night. After that days get shorter again as sunset and sunrise migrate south again. The long days of summer, of course, match the warmer summer weather. The reason for this behavior will be described in section #2 and section #3.

Elevation of the Sun

The length of the day is not the only reason summers are hot and winters cold. Another is the elevation of the Sun above the horizon. When the Sun is near the horizon, not only are the shadows which it casts stretched to greater length, so is its illumination. Any beam of sunlight then spreads out along a greater distance on the ground, diluting the heat given to any area. The noontime Sun in winter is low in the sky, and its heating is less pronounced, while the summer Sun can be almost overhead, heating the ground much more effectively. This is further discussed in section #3a Babylonian priests, who tracked these regular changes of sunrise and sunset, soon realized that they provided an accurate way of measuring the passage of the seasons. They counted the days between solstices and equinoxes, and from this the first calendar was born. That was a great help to farmers, telling them when to prepare for sowing, when to expect seasonal rain, and in Egypt, when to expect the annual flood of the river Nile, which replenished the land. As will be described in section #6, other cultures also had their stargazers and developed calendars of their own,

probably in much the same way.

(1a) The Celestial Sphere

The Sun rules by daytime sky, but at night, especially if the Moon does not shine, the show belongs to the stars. Bright and dim, randomly distributed across the sky, with odd formations that catch the eye, their number seems huge. To ancient observers it seemed as if Earth was at the center of a giant star-studded "celestial sphere," which reinforced the belief, held for thousands of years, that we are at the center of the universe.

If you watch stars throughout the night, you will see that most of them also rise to the east of you and set west of you, like the Sun and Moon. Indeed, the entire celestial sphere seems to rotate slowly--one turn in 24 hours--and since half of it is always hidden below the horizon, this rotation constantly brings out new stars on the eastern horizon, while others to disappear beneath the western one. In the drawing to the left, the horizontal "belt" around the globe can be viewed as the horizon, while the sphere itself rotates around its axis. We of course know that it is not the universe that rotates around us from east to west, but our Earth is the one rotating, (from west to east--see note at end). But it is still convenient to talk about "the rotation of the celestial sphere." That could also make the sky rotate the way it is observed to do.

Note: The text above--and sections that follow--gives the period of rotation
of the Earth as 24 hours. That is not exactly true: 24 hours is the mean length of a solar day, the average time that passes from noon to the next noon. Noon is always defined by the position of the Sun--when it passes exactly to the south (to viewers in Europe and the US, at least), and is at its greatest distance from the equator. Using the Sun for reference, however, gives a shifting reference point in the sky. Between one noon and the next, the Sun too moves slightly in the sky, as part of its annual circuit around the celestial sphere, discussed in the next section, on the ecliptic. We could instead use some star as reference point, since stars keep fixed positions on the celestial sphere (see further below): for instance, define as "sidereal day" (sidereal--related to stars) the time between one passage of Sirius (the brightest star) to the south, and the next passage. That would be the true rotation period of the Earth, shorter than 24 hour by nearly 4 minutes--more accurately, 235.9 seconds.

(If you wish to calculate the difference: 24 hours are equal to 86400 seconds, and the average year contains 365.2422 solar days (see section on the calendar, where this point is also discussed). Actually, however, the Earth completes 366.2422 rotations in that time, so the real rotation period is just (365.2422/366.2422) of 86400 seconds. You should be able to figure out the rest.) Most stars keep fixed positions relative to each other, night after night. The eye naturally groups them into patterns or constellations ("stella" is Latin for star), to which each culture has given its own names. The names we use come from the ancient Greeks and the Romans, e.g. Orion the hunter, accompanied by his two faithful dogs nearby. Other names evoke animals, whose Latin names are used-Scorpio the scorpion, Leo the lion, Cygnus the swan, Ursa Major the Big Bear (better known as the "big dipper") and so forth. The Sun slowly moves through this pattern, circling around it once a year, always along the same path among the stars ("the ecliptic"). The ancients distinguished 12 constellations along this path, and since most are named for animals, they are known as the zodiac, the "circle of animals." The Sun spends about one month inside each "sign of the zodiac." The Moon moves close to the Sun's path, but only takes about a month, and a few conspicuous stars also move near it, the planets. We will come back later to all these: all other celestial objects are firmly placed and do not move, forming the "firmament." Like the globe in the drawing, the sphere of the sky has two points around which it turns, points that mark its axis --the celestial poles. Stars near those poles march in daily circles around them, and the closer they are, the smaller the circles (they do not rise and set). At any time, only half the sphere is visible: it is as if the flat ground on which we stand sliced the celestial sphere in half--the upper half is seen, the lower half is not. Because of that, only one pole is seen at any time, and for most of us, living north of the equator, that is the north pole. (If you mount a camera on a dark night in a way that the pole is in the middle of its field of view, open the shutter and take a time exposure, the image of each star will be smeared into part of a circle, and all the circles will be centered on the pole. Click here to see such a picture.) Just as the globe of the Earth has an equator around its middle, halfway between the poles, so the sphere of the sky is circled by the celestial equator, halfway between the celestial poles. As the sky rotates, stars on the equator trace a longer circle than any others. Of course, we know well (as the priests in Babylon didn't) that the stars are not attached inside a huge hollow sphere. Rather, it is the Earth which rotates around its axis, while the stars are so distant that they seem to stand still. The final effect, however, is the same in both cases. Therefore, whenever that is convenient, we can

still use the celestial sphere to mark the positions of stars in the sky.

Polaris, the Pole Star

By pure chance, a moderately bright star is seen near the northern celestial pole-Polaris, the pole star (or north star). Polaris is not exactly at the pole, but its daily circle is very small and for many purposes one can assume it is at the pole, a pivot around which the entire sky rotates.

All this looks much clearer if one remembers that it is the Earth that rotates, not the sky. The axis around which the Earth spins points in a certain direction in the sky, and that is also the direction of the pole star (or more accurately, the northern celestial pole). As the Earth turns, even though the observer moves with it (for instance, from point B in the drawing to point A), that direction always makes the same angle with the horizon and is always to the north. Hence the pole star is always in the same spot--north of the observer, and the same height above the horizon. If on a clear night you find yourself lost in the wilderness or at sea, the pole star can tell you where north is, and from that you easily deduce east, west and south. Any other star is unreliable for determining direction--it will move across the sky, and may even set--but not this one. For instructions on finding the pole star at night, click here. The closer you are to the equator, the closer is the pole star to the horizon, and at the equator (point C) it is on the horizon, and probably not easy to see. Further south, at points such as D, it is no longer visible, but now you can see the southern pole of the sky. Unfortunately, no bright star comparable to Polaris marks that position. The existence of a bright star near the north celestial pole is just a lucky accident, and as will be seen, it wasn't always so, and will not be a few thousand years from now.

The Mounting of a Telescope

As the drawing above makes clear, during the night we view the pole star from different positions (such as A and B). This however makes no noticeable difference in its place in the sky, because it is so distant from us. If the Earth rotated not around its axis but along a parallel line through A or B, the sky would not appear any different.

The equtorial mounting of a telescope. To track a star it is only necessary to rotate !the telescope around its polar axis. To the eye the rotation of the sky is very, very slow (it is most noticeable when the Sun or Moon are rising or setting). A telescope however greatly magnifies the rotation rate, and any star observed with it quickly drifts to the edge of the field of view and then disappear, unless the direction of the telescope is constantly adjusted. That is usually done automatically, by turning the telescope around an axis parallel to the Earth's rotation, for as explained above, a parallel shift does not change the apparent rotation of the stars. To make such an adjustment easy, an astronomical telescope (pictured above) is mounted very differently from a surveyor's telescope (a "theodolite," pictured below). A theodolite usually has two axes--one allows it to scan all horizontal directions over 360 degrees, while the other adjusts its elevation and allows it to set its sights on reference marks higher than the viewer, such as mountaintops. On the other hand, a telescope for viewing stars (above) also has two perpendicular axes, but the main one (the "equatorial axis") is slanted to point at the pole star and is therefore parallel to the Earth's axis. As the celestial sphere rotates, a clockwork (or in cheap telescopes, the hand of the observer on a suitable knob) turns the telescope

at a matching rate, keeping the same stars in the field of view.

Planets and the Zodiac

Not all stars keep fixed positions on the sphere of the heavens. Even early sky-watchers noted that a few moved about: the ancient Greeks called them "planets", wanderers. The names we use today came from the Romans, who named them after their chief gods--Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. <p ="">Mercury and Venus are always close to the Sun and can only be seen shortly after sunset or before sunrise: Mercury is so close that most of the year it cannot be seen at all, because the bright sky drowns out its light. Venus is brighter than any other star (with appropriate conditions and looking An old surveyor's teleright at it, you can see it even in the daytime) and scope (theodolite). Jupiter takes second place.

Note
You can demonstrate that the rotation is west to east by using an apple or some other fruit to represent the Earth. Hold it with the stem vertical--that would be the axis of the Earth, north pole on top--and mark two points in the northern half--New York and slightly clockwise from it, (= westward) San Francisco. You can use a lamp as your "Sun," or imagine having a lamp somewhere nearby. When it is noon in New York, the Sun is almost overhead above "New York," but it is still only 9 in the morning in "San Francisco." Three hours later, the Earth has rotated and now it is noon at "San Francisco," with the Sun close to overhead. To get to this position, San Francisco must rotate to the position New York was in--from west to east. </p >

(1b) Finding the Pole Star

Two bright constellations occupy opposite sides of the pole star--the Big Dipper and Cassiopeia. As the celestial sphere rotates (or appears to rotate), these constellations also march in circles around the pole . Depending on the hour of the night and the day of the year, one or the other may be low near the horizon where it is barely seen, or even hidden

below the horizon. But when that happens the other constellation is sure to be high in the sky, where (weather permitting) it is easily seen.

The Big Dipper

The Big Dipper consists of 7 bright stars, forming a dipper, a small pot with a long handle. In England it is often called "the plough" (spelled "plow" in the US), and fugitive slaves before the Civil War knew it as "the drinking gourd", a signpost in the sky pointing the way north to safety, to Canada where slavery was outlawed. Astronomers name it "Ursa Major," Latin for "the big she-bear," and some other languages also refer to it as the Big Bear. In Greek, bear is "Arktos", and hence the far-north region where this constellation is usually overhead became known as "the Arctic." When the territory of Alaska in 1926 decided to create a flag of its own, it asked citizens to submit proposed designs for the new flag. The winning design was that of Benny Benson, age 13, and is reproduced on the right (more about him--see below). It shows the 7 stars of the Big Dipper and Polaris, the north star. When Alaska became a state, this became the state flag, and Alaska's Flag, a song about it by Marie Drake, was chosen as the state song. For more details, click here.

The flag also shows how the north star can be found. Imagine a line connecting the two stars at the front of the "dipper", continue it on the side where the dipper is "open" to a distance 5 times that between the two stars (the flag shortens this a bit!), and you will arrive at (or very close to) the pole star. Because of their role in locating Polaris, these two stars are often called "the guides." And by the way--the last-but-one star in the handle of the "dipper", named Mizar by Arab astronomers, is a double star, whose components are readily separated by binoculars--or, some say, by very sharp eyes during good viewing conditions.

Cassiopeia
Cassiopeia was a queen in Greek mythology, and the constellation named for her is shaped like the letter W. Polaris is above the first "V" of this letter. If you draw a line dividing the angle of that "V" in half and continue along it, you will reach the vicinity of Polaris. The name of Cassiopeia's husband, King Cepheus, goes with a nearby constellation, above the other "V" (the brighter one), but Cepheus is nowhere as striking as Cassiopeia. Her daughter Andromeda has another constellation, framed by a big undistinguished rectangle of four stars. An unremarkable constellation to the eye-but it contains a large galaxy, our nearest neighbor in space (not counting two dwarf

galaxies in the southern sky), one which seems to resemble ours in size and shape. Ursa Minor, the "Small Bear" or "Little Dipper" is a constellation somewhat resembling the Big Dipper, and Polaris is the last star in its tail. The "dipper" itself faces the tail of the Big Dipper, so that the two "tails" (or "handles") point in opposite directions. The two front stars of the "little dipper" (quite smaller and more square than the big one) are fairly bright, but other stars are rather dim and require good eyes and a dark sky.

Further Exploration
Benny Benson was of mixed Swedish-Alutiiq parentage and grew up in the Aleut islands. He was placed in the Jesse-Lee Memorial Home for Orphans in Unalaska, Aleut islands, and later moved to Seward, Alaska, where he was attending the 7th grade when he proposed his flag design. He is honored with a monument at the end of 3rd Ave. in Seward. Later Benny became an airplane mechanic and lived on Kodiak. Throughout his life he made miniature Alaska flags and some are displayed in various public places

2) The Path of the Sun, the Ecliptic

The apparent path of the Sun across the sky. In summer, the Sun's path is longest, and so are the days. In winter, the Sun's path is shortest, and so are the days.

Signs of the Zodiac

Even though the planets move on the celestial sphere, they do not wander all over it but are confined to a narrow strip, dividing it in half. Stars along that strip are traditionally divided into the 12 constellations of the zodiac. The name, related to "zoo," comes because most of these constellations are named for animals--Leo the lion, Aries the ram, Scorpio the scorpion, Cancer the crab, Pisces the fish, Capricorn the goat and Taurus the bull. At any time, the Sun is also somewhere on the celestial sphere, and as the Earth turns, it rises and sets the same way as stars do. Like the planets, the Sun, too, moves around the zodiac, making one complete circuit each year. Every month it covers a different constellation of the zodiac, which is the real reason why those constellations are 12 in number. Of course, during that month, this particular constellation is not seen, because the sky near the Sun is too bright for its stars to be seen (except, very briefly, during a total eclipse of the Sun). One can however figure out where the sun is on the zodiac (as ancient astronomers have done) by noting which is the last constellation of the zodiac to rise ahead of the Sun, or the first to set after it. Obviously, the Sun is somewhere in between. In this manner each month-long period of the year was given its "sign of the zodiac." Astrologers, who believe that stars mysteriously direct our lives, claim it makes a great difference "under what sign" a person was born. Be aware, however, that the "sign" assigned to each month in horoscopes is not the constellation where the Sun is in that month, but where it would have been in ancient times. The difference is discussed in the section on the precession of the equinoxes

The Ecliptic
The path of the Sun across the celestial sphere is very close to that of the planets and the moon. After clocks became available, it was a relatively straightforward job for astronomers to relate the path of the Sun in the daytime to the one of stars at night, and to draw it on their star charts. Because of its relation to eclipses, that path is known as the ecliptic.

The orbit of the Earth around the Sun. This is a perspective view, the shape of the actual orbit is very close to a circle. The significance of the ecliptic is evident if we examine the Earth's orbit around the Sun. That orbit lies in a plane, flat like a tabletop, called the plane of the ecliptic (or sometimes just "the ecliptic"). In one year, as the Earth completes a full circuit around the Sun (drawing above), the Earth-Sun line and its continuation past Earth sweep the entire plane. The far end of that line then traces the ecliptic on the celestial sphere; if you have a star chart handy (it is often included in an atlas), you will find the ecliptic traced there, too.

The Planets and the Moon

Planets seen in the sky are always near the ecliptic, which means that their orbits are never too far from the plane of the ecliptic. In other words, the solar system is rather flat, with all its major parts moving in nearly the same plane. What about the connection between "ecliptic" and eclipses? The moon's orbit cuts the ecliptic at a shallow angle, around 5 degrees, which means that on the celestial sphere the Moon, too, follows a path through the zodiac. Half the time the Moon is north of the ecliptic, half the time south of it. If the shadow of the moon hits the Earth, the Sun is eclipsed in the shadow area; if on the other hand the shadow of the Earth covers the moon, the moon goes dark and we have an eclipse of the moon. Either of these can only happen when the Sun, Earth and Moon are on the same straight line. Since the Sun and Earth are in the plane of the ecliptic, the line is automatically in that plane too; if the moon is also on the same line, it must be in the plane of the ecliptic as well. It takes close to a month for the Moon to go around the Earth ("month" comes from "Moon") and during that time its orbit crosses the ecliptic twice, as it goes from one side to the other. At the time of crossing, the Sun may be anywhere along the ecliptic; usually it is not on the Earth-Moon line, and therefore an eclipse usually does not take place. Occasionally, however, it is on that line or close to it. If it then happens to occupy exactly the same spot on the celestial sphere, we get an eclipse of the Sun, because the moon is then between us and the Sun. On the other hand, if it

occupies the spot exactly opposite from that of the Moon, the Earth's shadow falls on the Moon and we have an eclipse of the Moon. (Added August 2005)

A new distant planet far from the Ecliptic

Most planets have orbital planes inclined by only a few degrees from the ecliptic, but far from the Sun larger differences may exist. Pluto, long believed to be the outermost planet (average distance 39.5 times that of Earth--or "39.5 AU," i.e. 39.5 "astronomical units"), moves in an orbital plane inclined by 17. Smaller "Kuiper objects" are found at somewhat greater distances, but a new planet announced in 2005 at a distance of 97 AU seems bright enough to suggest it is appreciably larger than Pluto. It was discovered by Mike Brown, Chad Trujillo and David Rabinowitz, using a 48-inch telescope on Mt. Palomar, California. They first photographed it in October 2003, but only discovered its motion by comparing that picture with one from January 2005. One reason no one had discovered it until now seems to be that previous searches examined the vicinity of the ecliptic, whereas the new planet (nameless, so far) was about 44 away from the ecliptic. For more, see here and here. As reported in the "New Scientist" (6 August 2005, p. 10) the planet's orbit is also rather eccentric, approaching the Sun within 36 AU--though its orbital period of 560 years means this would not happen very soon. Like Pluto, it seems to be an extreme member of the Kuiper Belt, a population of small planets outside the orbit of Neptune. Most such objects are the size of large asteroids, but according to the same article, two recent additions (one of them announced just a day before the new planet) are about 0.7 time sthe size of Pluto and have inclination of 28. For anything else you may want to know about the new planet and its moon (it seems to have one) and those two runners-up, look here, on a web page by Mike Brown, one of the discoverers. (Concerning Sedna, another newly discovered planet, see here and here.)

(2a) The Sundial

"Some people can tell what time it is by looking at the sun. But I have never been able to make out the numbers." (Attributed to an essay by a student in elementary school.) The simplest sundial is a vertical stick rising from a flat horizontal surface.

As the Sun rises, passes the highest point in its path (at noon and to the south, in the northern hemisphere) and sets, the shadow rotates around the stick in a clockwise direction, and its position can be used to mark time. Indeed, it has been claimed that the "clockwise" direction in which the hands on a clock rotate was chosen for this reason. A sundial with a vertical pointer ("gnomon") will indicate noon correctly when its shadow points north or south. [North in northern middle latitudes, south in southern ones, while near the equator it can be either way, depending on season.] However, the direction of the shadow at some other time of the day may depend on the season--its value in summer, when the Sun's path is high, may differ from what it is in winter, with Sun low above the horizon.

Such a sundial will however work equally well at all times if the pointer is slanted, to point towards the pole of the celestial sphere (click here for an explanation--but be warned, it is a bit complicated!). The angle between it and the base then equals the geographic latitude of the user.

A Paper Sundial
Ornamental sundials are often found in parks and gardens, with the pointer widened into a triangular fin, which must point northwards. A sundial of this type can be constructed from folded cardboard or stiff paper: click here to see the basic design used around latitude 38 North of the equator, here for a corresponding one in the southern hemisphere. Either can be printed and then photo-copied onto suitable sheets of stiff paper or cardboard [You may want to use the "option" menu to reduce size to 90% before printing--but make sure to return the setting to 100% afterwards!]. It is meant to be used at a latitude of 38 degrees and should work adequately in most of the continental US.

Instructions:
1. Cut the paper along the marked line: one half will serve as base, the other will be used to construct the gnomon. 2. In the gnomon part, cut away the two marked corners. 3. Fold the sheet in its middle, in a way that the two secondary printed lines (leading to the cut-off corners) remain visible. The line of the fold is the gnomon. Note: In stiff paper, straight folds are helped by first scoring the paper, by drawing a line along them with a black ballpoint, guided by

a ruler and pressed down hard. 4. With the page folded in its middle, cut out along the curved line, cutting a double thickness of paper in one cut. The cut begins near the top of the gnomon-fold and ends on the secondary line. Do not cut along the secondary line. No pieces come off. 5. Score the other two secondary lines, then fold the gnomon sheet along them. The fold is opposite to that of the fold in the middle. These two folds should form 90-degree angles, so that the two pieces with the corners not cut in step 2 can be placed flat on the table, and the triangular gnomon rises above them. 6. In cut (4), the fin of the gnomon was separated from two pieces with curved outlines. Fold those pieces so that they, too, are flat with the table. One goes above the other, and the slots they form near the secondary lines create a place for the fin to fit into. 7. You are almost done. Take the base sheet, and note the apex where the hourlines all meet (that is where the bottom corner of the fin will go). Carefully cut the sheet from this point along its middle line, up to the small cross-line marked on it. Do not cut any further! 8. Slide the fin into the cut you made, so that all horizontal parts of the first sheet are below the base sheet; only the fin sticks out. Its bottom corner should be at the apex. The sundial is now ready, but you might use tape on the bottom of the base-sheet to hold the two pieces together firmly. For further stability, and to prevent the sundial from being blown away, you may attach its base with thumbtacks to a section of a wooden board or a piece of plywood. 9. Finally, orient the fin to point north. You may use a magnetic compass; before pocket watches were available, folding pocket sundials were used in Europe, with small magnetic compasses embedded in their bases. If clear sunlight is available, the shadow of the tip of the fin now tells the time. If you want to make a sundial of more durable materials, draw the pre-noon hour lines at the angles to the fin (given in degrees) given below. These lines are meant for a latitude of 38 degrees; if your latitude is markedly different, see note at the end. 6 -- 90 9 -- 31.6 7 -- 66.5 10 -- 19.6 8 -- 46.8 11 -- 9.4

Accuracy
The sundial will obviously be one hour off during daylight saving time in the summer, when clocks are reset.

In addition, "clock time" (or "standard time") will differ from sundial time, because it is usually kept uniform across "time zones"; each time zone differs from its neighbors by one full hour (more in China and Alaska). In each such zone, sundial time matches clock time at only one geographical longitude: elsewhere a correction must be added, proportional to the difference in longitude from the locations where sundial time is exact. (Up to the second half of the 19th century, local time and sundial time were generally the same, and each city kept its own local time, as is still the case in Saudi Arabia. In the US standard time was introduced by the railroads, to help set up uniform timetables across the nation.) Finally, a small periodic variation exists ("equation of time") amounting at most to about 15 minutes and contributed by two factors. First, the Earth's motion around the sun is an ellipse, not a circle, with slightly variable speed in accordance with Kepler's 2nd law (see here as well as the section preceding that page). Secondly, the ecliptic is inclined by 23.5 degrees to the equator, which means the projection of the Sun's apparent motion on it (which determines solar time) is slowed down near the crossing points of the two.

Note on Latitude
The angles listed above are intended for a latitude of 38 degrees. If your latitude is L, denotes "square root of" and K (=cotg2L) is K = cos2L/ sin2L then the angle between the fin and the line corresponding to the hour N+6 (N going from 0 to 6) satisfies sin A = cos(15N) / (1 + Ksin215N) Here 15N (=15 times N) is an angle in degrees, ranging from 0 to 90, and of course, the afternoon angles are mirror reflections of the morning ones. If your calculator has a button (sin-1), if you enter (sin A) and press it, you will get the angle A. For an explanation of sines and cosines, look up the math refresher. And don't forget to adjust the angle of your fin to L, too!

And by the way...

The sundial described here, with a gnomon pointing to the celestial pole, is a relatively recent invention, probably of the last 1000 years. Yet sundials were used long before, often with unequal hours at different times of the day. The bible--2nd book of Kings, chapter 20, verses 9-11 (also Isaiah, ch. 38, v. 8) tells of an "accidental" sundial, in which the number of steps covered by the Sun's shadow on a staircase was used to measure the passage of time. In that story, the shadow miraculously retreated ten steps on the staircase built by King Ahaz.

Exploring Further
The "Sundial Bridge," with a unique design which may well make it the largest sundial anywhere, opened July 4, 2004 in Turtle Bay Park in Redding, California, at the foot of Mt. Shasta. Designed by the innovative Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, it resembles his stunning 1992 bridge erected in Seville, Spain. It is a pedestrian bridge, connecting two parts of Turtle Bay Park, and it also operates as a sundial, using plaques set in a semicircular upper plaza.

For a more detailed article about this bridge, see Sundial Bridge at Turtle Bay

Before the days of affordable wristwatches, people often carried a folding sundial in their pocket ("poke" below), with a small magnetic compass embedded, to show the north direction. In "As You Like It" by William Shakespeare (act 2, scene 7) one of the characters tells of meeting in the forest a fool (= witty court entertainer) carrying such a "dial": "Good morrow, fool," quoth I. "No, sir," quoth he, "Call me not fool till heaven sent me fortune:" And then he drew a dial from his poke, And, loking on it with lack-lustre eye Says very wisely, "It is ten o'clock: Thus we may see how the world wags: 'T is but an hour ago since it was nine; And after one hour more 't will be eleven; (and continues)

You may also be interested to know that a North American Sundial Society (NASS) exists, with its home page at http://sundials.org. From the main page, the visitor can click on "About NASS", and/or access the many other features the site offers. And in case you wonder about the creatures drawn at the bottom of the "About NASS" page, they are toves, the whimsical invention of Lewis Caroll in his poem Jabberwocky. Concerning what toves are, see Humpty Dumpty's explanation, also reachable by clicking the winking sun icon on the top of the NASS home page. The reference is from the 6th chapter of Lewis Carrol's Through the Looking Glass.

The British Sundial Society also has its sundial page.

(3) Seasons of the Year

Section #1 Stargazers and Skywatchers described the observed motion of the Sun across the sky, in different seasons of the year. This section tries to explain what is seen. If the Earth's axis were perpendicular to the ecliptic, as in the drawings here, the Sun's position in the sky would be halfway between the celestial poles, and its daily path, seen from any point on Earth, would stay exactly the same, day after day. Each point on Earth would be carried around the axis AB once a day. On the equator (point C) the sun would always rise until it was overhead, then again descend to the horizon. At the poles (A and B) it would always graze the horizon and never get away from it. Except at the pole, every point would be in the shadow half the time, when on the right of the line AB, and would experience night; the other half it would be in the sunlight, experiencing day. Because the motion is symmetric with respect to the line AB, day and night anywhere on Earth are always equal. Actually, the axis of rotation makes an angle of about 23. 5 degrees with the direction perpendicular to the ecliptic. That makes life a lot more interesting.

Equinox and Solstice

In particular (drawing above), the angle between the Earth's axis and the Earth-Sun line changes throughout the year. Twice a year, at the spring and fall equinox (around March 21 and September 22--the exact date may vary a bit) the two directions are perpendicular. Twice a year, the angle is as big as it can get, at the summer and winter solstices, when it reaches 23.5 degrees. In the summer solstice (around June 21) the north pole is inclined towards the Sun, in the winter solstice (around December 21) it faces away from it. Let us look at the summer solstice first, with the Sun on the left.

Summer and Winter

The boundary AB between sunlight and shadow--between day and night--is always perpendicular to the Earth-Sun line, as it was in the example shown at the beginning. But because of the tilted axis, as each point on Earth is carried on its daily trip around the rotating Earth, the part of the trip spent in daylight (unshaded part of the drawing) and in the shadow (shaded) are usually not equal. North of the equator, day is longer than night, and when we get close enough to the north pole, there is no night at all. The Sun is then always above the horizon and it just makes a 360-degree circuit around it. That part of Earth enjoys summer. A mirror-image situation exists south of the equator. Nights are longer than days, and the further one gets from the equator, the larger is the imbalance--until one gets so close to the pole that the sun never rises. That is the famous polar night, with 24 hours of darkness each day. In that half of the Earth, it is winter time. Half a year later, the Earth is on the other side of the Sun, that is, the Sun's position in the above drawing should be on the right, and the shaded part of the Earth should now be on the left (light and dark portions in the drawing switch places). The Earth's axis however has not moved, it is still pointed to the same patch of sky, near the star Polaris. Now the south pole is bathed in constant sunshine and the north one is dark. Summer and winter have switched hemispheres. A big difference between summer and winter is thus the length of the days: note that on the equator that length does not change, and hence Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter do not exist there (depending on weather patterns, however, there may exist a "wet season" and a "dry season"). In addition (as the drawing makes clear), the Sun's rays hit the summer hemisphere more vertically than the winter one. That, too, helps heat the ground, as explained further in section #4, "The Angle of the Sun's Rays." At equinox, the situation is as in the first drawing, and night and day are equal (that is where the word "equinox" comes from)

Some interesting facts

If June 21 is the day when we receive the most sunshine, why is it regarded as the beginning of summer and not its peak? And similarly, why is December 21, the day of least sunshine, the beginning of winter and not mid-winter day? Blame the oceans, which heat up and cool down only slowly. By June 21 they are still cool from the winter time, and that delays the peak heat by about a month and a half. Similarly, in December the water still holds warmth from the summer, and the coldest days are still (on the average--not always! ) a month and a half ahead. And what about our distance from the Sun? It, too, varies, because the Earth's orbit around the Sun isn't an exact circle. We are closest to the Sun--would you believe it? -in the cold wintertime, around January 3-5. This may have an interesting implication for the origin of ice ages, as will be explained later. It also ties to an interesting story of the unusually bright Moon of December 22, 1999.

(3a) The Angle of the Sun's Rays

The apparent path of the Sun across the sky. Note how much higher the Sun is in the sky in mid-summer!

In the US and in other mid-latitude countries north of the equator (e.g those of Europe), the sun's daily trip (as it appears to us) is an arc across the southern sky. (Of course, it's really the Earth that does the moving.) The sun's greatest height above the horizon occurs at noon, and how high the sun then gets depends on the

season of the year--it is highest in mid-summer, lowest in mid-winter. Boy scouts used to be taught (perhaps still are) that someone lost in the woods can often tell the north direction by checking on which side of tree-trunks lichens grew best. Lichens avoid direct sunlight, and with the sun's path curving across the southern sky, the north side of a tree-trunk is the one most shaded.

For a similar reason--but to collect sunlight rather than avoid it--solar collectors for heating water or generating electricity always face south. In addition, they are invariably tilted at an angle around 45, to make sure that the arrival of the sun's rays is as close to perpendicular as possible. The collector is then exposed to the highest concentration of sunlight: as the drawing shows, if the sun is 45 degrees above the horizon, a collector 0.7 meters wide perpendicular to its rays intercepts as much sunlight as a 1-meter collector flat on the ground. It therefore heats its water faster and reaches a higher temperature. French wine producers, too, have for centuries preferred southward-facing hillsides, on which ripening grapes get the most sunlight. The same also holds for the Earth. The rays of the summer sun, high in the sky, arrive at a steep angle and heat the land much more than those of the winter sun, which hit at a shallow angle. Although the length of the day is an important factor in explaining why summers are hot and winter cold, the angle of sunlight is probably more important. In the arctic summer, even though the sun shines 24 hours a day, it produces only moderate warmth, because it skims around the horizon and its light arrives at a low angle. The apparent motion of the sun can be important in designing a building, in particular in the placing of windows, which trap the sun's heat. In a hot sunny climate such as that of Texas or Arizona, it is best to have the largest windows face north, avoiding the sun. The south-facing walls, on the other hand, should be well insulated and their windows should be small, allowing cross-ventilation when needed but not admitting much sunlight (wooden shutters on the outside of the windows also help). In Canada the opposite directions might be chosen, to trap as much heat as possible from the winter sun. Overhangs above south-facing windows also help. In summer, with the noontime Sun high in the sky, such an overhang casts a shadow on the window and keeps the house cool. In the winter, however, when the Sun stays close to the horizon, the overhang allows it to shine through the window and warm the rooms inside.

(4) The Moon: the Distant View

The Month
The monthly cycle of the moon (we won't capitalize the word here) must have mystified early humans--"waxing" from thin crescent ("new moon") to half-moon, then to a "gibbous" moon and a full one, and afterwards "waning" to a crescent again. That cycle, lasting about 29.5 days, gave us the word "month"--related to "moon," as is "Monday." The civil year, January to December, no longer ties its months to the moon, but some traditions still do and their terms for "month" reflect the connection--in Arabic, "shahr", in biblical Hebrew "yerach" and also "chodesh" from "new," since it was reckoned from one new moon to the next. Jericho (pronounced Yericho), one of the oldest cities on Earth, took its name from "yerach," and of course, legends tell of many moon-gods and goddesses, e.g. Artemis and Diana. Early astronomers understood the different shapes of the moon, noting that each was linked to a certain relative position between moon and Sun: for instance, full moon always occurred when moon and Sun were at opposite ends of the sky. All this suggested that the moon was a sphere, illuminated by the Sun.

The moon's path across the sky was found to be close to the ecliptic, inclined to it by about 5 degrees. Eclipses of the Sun always occurred when moon and Sun were due to occupy the same spot in the sky, suggesting that the moon was nearer to us and obscured the Sun. Eclipses of the moon, similarly, always occurred at full moon, with the two on opposite sides of the Earth, and could be explained by the shadow of the Earth falling on the moon. Lunar eclipses allowed the Greek astronomer Aristarchus, around 220 BC, to estimate the distance to the moon (see section #8c). If the moon and the Sun followed exactly the same path across the sky, eclipses of both kinds would happen each month. Actually they are relatively rare, because the 5-degree angle between the paths only allows eclipses when Sun and moon are near one of the points where the paths intersect. . The cycle from each new moon to next one takes 29.5 days, but the actual orbital period of the moon is only 27.3217 days. That is the time it takes the moon to return to (approximately) the same position among the stars.

Why the difference? Suppose we start counting from the moment when the moon in its motion across the sky is just overtaking the Sun; we will call this the "new moon," even though the thin crescent of the moon will only be visible some time later, and only shortly after sunset. Wait 27.3217 days: the moon has returned to approximately the same place in the sky, but the Sun has meanwhile moved away, on its annual journey around the heavens. It takes the moon about 2 more days to catch up with the Sun, to the position of the next "new moon," which is why times of the new moon are separated by 29.5 days.

The Face of the Moon

The visible face of the moon has light and dark patches, which people interpreted in different ways, depending on their culture. Europeans see a face and talk of "the man in the moon" while children in China and Thailand recognize "the rabbit in the moon." All agree, however, that the moon does not change, that it always presents the same face to Earth. Does that mean the moon doesn't rotate? No, it does rotate--one rotation for each revolution around Earth! The drawings on the left, covering half an orbit, should make this clear. In them we look at the moon's orbit from high above the north pole, and imagine a clock dial around the moon, and a feature on it, marked by an arrow, which initially (bottom position in each drawing) points at 12 oclock. In the top drawing the marked feature continues to point at Earth, and as the moon goes around the Earth, it points to the hours 10, 8 and 6 on the clock dial. As the moon goes through half a revolution, it also undergoes half a rotation If the moon did not rotate, the situation would be as in the bottom drawing. The arrow would continue to point in the 12-oclock direction, and after half an orbit, people on Earth would be able to see the other side of the moon. This does not happen.

We need to go aboard a spaceship and fly halfway around the Moon before we get a view of its other side--as did the Apollo astronauts who took the picture below.

The Gravity Gradient

This strange rotation of the moon is maintained because the moon is slightly elongated along the axis which points towards earth. To understand the effect we look at the motion of a body with a much more pronounced elongation--an artificial satellite with the shape of a symmetric dumbbell (drawing). It can be shown that if the forces on the dumbbell (or indeed on a satellite of any shape) are unbalanced, it rotates around its center of gravity. That point will be defined later, but in a symmetric dumbbell with two equal masses marked A and B, the center of gravity is right in the middle between them. Both masses A and B are attracted to the Earth, and if the attracting forces were equal, their tendencies to rotate the satellite ("rotation moments" or "torques") are equal and cancel each other, so that no rotation occurs. If however A starts closer to the center of Earth, the force on it is just a little stronger. Therefore the satellite will rotate until A is as close to Earth as it can be, which is a possible position of equilibrium. Of course, it may then overshoot its equilibrium position, and end up swinging back-and-forth like a pendulum, only slowly (like a pendulum) losing energy and settling down. The elongated moon acts like a dumbbell too. The rotating force which lines up the moon or an orbiting dumbbell is the difference between the pull on A and on B. It depends not on how strongly gravity pulls these masses, but on how rapidly the pull of gravity changes with distance--on the "gravity gradient." Near Earth that is a gentle force, though still strong enough to line up elongated satellites. Among those was Triad, deliberately shaped like a long dumbbell with an additional payload in the middle, the first satellite to map the electrical currents associated with the polar aurora. Near a black hole or pulsar, though, the gravity-gradient force can be fierce enough to rip a spacecraft apart.

Actually, the long axis of the Moon does not always point exactly to the center of the Earth, but swings back and forth around that direction, a motion known as libration. Most of this is caused because the Moon rotates around its axis with a fixed period, while its motion around its orbit slows down far from Earth and speeds up close to it. This speeding up and slowing down is the result of Kepler's 2nd law, discussed in section 12, and is a rather small effect, since the moon's orbit is very close to circular. Because of libration, even though at any time only half the Moon is visible, over time 59% can be seen, since it lets astronomers look at the Moon from slightly different viewing directions. Librations are a rather specialized subject--but if you want to know more about it, click here.

Earthshine
At times when only a narrow crescent of the Moon is seen (e.g. a "new moon"), one can also see the rest of the Moon faintly outlined. The Sun now shines on almost all of the side of the moon turned away from Earth (those calling that "the dark side of the moon" are quite wrong!) and therefore it also illuminates most of the side of the Earth facing the moon. If you were standing on the moon at that time, a "full Earth" would shine brightly in your sky, and the faint "earthshine" of the darker part of the moon is just the reflection of some of that bright earthlight. Earthshine is of interest to scientists, because its brightness is contributed by all the factors which turn back sunlight before it manages to heat the Earth--light reflected from the ground and from clouds, and light scattered back by dust and small particles ("aerosols") in the atmosphere. In a time when atmospheric scientists are trying to assess heating of the Earth by the greenhouse effect, earthshine measures a process which works in the opposite direction, reducing the heat our planet receives. The fraction of light reflected is hard to estimate theoretically, but earthshine allows it to be measured. According to recent reports ("The Darkening Earth", Scientific American August 2004, p. 16), this fraction has been growing, reducing the amount of sunlight received by Earth and canceling about 1/3 of the greenhouse heating.

(4a) The Moon: A Closer Look

The View Through the Telescope

When Galileo became the first human to view the Moon through a telescope, our understanding of the Moon changed forever. No longer a mysterious object in the sky, but a sisterworld full of ring-shaped mountains and other formations! Giovanni Riccioli in 1651 named the more prominent features after famous astronomers, while the large dark and smooth areas he called "seas" or "maria" (singular "mare," mah-reh). Some of the names he used for the Moon's crater are of persons discussed in "Stargazers"--Tycho (distinguished by bright streaks that radiate from it), Ptolemy ("Ptolemaeus"), Copernicus, Kepler, Aristarchus, Hipparchus, Erathosthenes; Meton and Pythagoras are on the edge, near the northern pole. Late-comers who lived after the 17th century had to make do with left-overs: the craters Newton and Cavendish are at the southern edge of the visible disk, Goddard and Lagrange too are near the edge. Also, "Galilaei" is a small undistinguished crater (because of Galileo's banishment?). However, since the Russians were the first to observe the rear side of the Moon, a prominent crater there bears the name of Tsiolkovsky, who at the end of the 19th century promoted the idea of spaceflight.

Note: Strictly for moon junkies--all you ever wanted to know, perhaps even more. From Cambridge University Press (1999), Mapping and naming the moon: A history of lunar cartography and nomenclature by Ewen A. Whitaker, xix+242 pp., $59.95.

The Craters
What had created those strange round "craters"? ("Krater" is Greek for a bowl or widemouthed goblet.) They reminded some observers of volcanic craters on Earth, or better, of the large "calderas" (cauldrons) formed by the internal collapse of volcanos, e.g. Crater Lake in Oregon. Others suggested that they were formed by the impact of large meteorites, but this was countered by the argument that most meteorites probably arrived at a slanting angle, and were expected to leave not a round ring but an elongated gouge.

We now know that the impact explanation was right. The craters are round because at the enormous velocities with which meteorites arrive, the impact resembles a local explosion, and the signature of the impact is determined by the energy released rather than by the momentum transmitted. Part of the evidence has come from the nicely rounded impact remnants found on Earth, e.g. Meteor Crater (Canyon Diablo) in Arizona and Manicougan lake in Canada, in northern Quebec (picture on right), which is about 100 km (60 miles) wide and 214 million years old. Note that rather than having a pit in its center, the Manicougan lake has a round island. After the impact, the land rose again to the level of its surroundings, pushed by fluid pressure of the material below it, which acts like a viscous fluid and tries to establish equilibrium between the different loads which it supports. (For another picture of Lake Manicougan, and more about it, click here.) Other solid bodies of the solar system also diplay round craters. On the large ice-covered moons of Jupiter, the return to equilibrium is much more pronounced, because ice sags and flows much more readily than rock. Those moons display "palimpsest" craters which are merely surface markings, because as time passed, the walls which originally existed sagged back onto the flat surface.

The Airless Moon

In the centuries after Galileo's discoveries, the Moon was extensively studied by astronomers using telescopes. One thing soon became clear: it had no atmosphere. When a star was eclipsed by the Moon, it vanished suddenly and its light showed no refraction or absorption by an atmosphere. Why? By the laws of motion, the Moon orbits not the center of the Earth, but the center of gravity of the Earth and Moon (this will be discussed in section #11a, and the center of gravity is defined in section #25). The location of that point allows astronomers to deduce the mass of the Moon, and from that, the pull of the Moon's gravity. At the surface of the Moon, it turned out, gravity is only 1/6 as strong as at the surface of the Earth. Gravity is important for the retention of an atmosphere. It holds an atmosphere down, while heat is what can make it escape. Heat is atomic or molecular motion. In a hot solid or liquid, it can be viewed as a shaking motion of atoms or molecules around their average position, like the

rustling of leaves in a wind. The higher the temperature, the more vigorous the motion, until the material boils or evaporates, at which point its particles shake loose altogether. In a gas atoms and molecules fly around randomly, colliding constantly (if the gas is as dense as it is in the atmosphere), and their collisions lead to a very good explanation ("the kinetic theory of gases") of the observed properties of a gas. The average velocity of a gas molecule depends on the temperature of the gas, and at room temperature it is comparable to that of the speeding bullet, quite below the "escape velocity" needed for escaping Earth's gravity. However, that is just an average: actual velocities are expected to be distributed around that average, following the "Maxwellian distribution" first derived by James Clerk Maxwell, whom we meet again in the discovery of the three color theory of light (section #S4) and the prediction of electromagnetic waves (section #S-5). According to that distribution, a few molecules always move fast enough to escape, and if they happen to be near the top of the atmosphere, moving upwards and and avoiding any further collisions, such molecules would be lost. For Earth, their number is too small to matter, but with the Moon, having only 1/6 of the surface gravity, it can be shown that any atmosphere would be lost within geological time. The planet Mercury, only slightly larger, also lacks any atmosphere, while Mars, with 1/3 the Earth's surface gravity, only retains a very thin atmosphere. Water evaporates easily and once in gas form, is quickly lost by the same process. That suggested the "maria" could not possibly be oceans, though their name remained. They actually turned out to be basaltic flows, hardened lava which long ago flowed out of fissures on the Moon; no present-day volcanism on the Moon has been reliably identified. The vast majority of craters probably date back to the early days of the solar system, because the lava of the maria has very few craters on it, suggesting it flooded and obliterated older ones. The picture of a dry Moon was reinforced by Moon rocks brought back by US astronauts. Earth rocks may contain water bound chemically ("water of hydration"), but not these. Water, of course, would be essential to any human outpost on the Moon. Yet small amounts of water may still exist, brought by comets which occasionally hit the Moon. All this water is sure to evaporate in the heat of the collision, but some of it may re-condense in deep craters near the Moon's pole, which are permanently in the shade and therefore extremely cold. Observations by the "Clementine" spacecraft suggest that one such crater may indeed contain a layer of ice.

In the Space Age

From the beginning of spaceflight, the Moon was a prime target, but this chapter in space exploration is too long to be covered here in any detail. The first spacecraft to reach the Moon were Luna 1, 2 and 3 of the Soviet Union, in 1959. Of these, Luna 3 rounded the Moon, took photographs of the far side which is not seen from Earth, and later scanned and transmitted those images (on the right); unfortunately, their quality was poor. In the decade that followed, 19 other Soviet missions were aimed at the Moon. In 1970 a Soviet spacecraft landed and returned a rock sample, and later that year a remotely controlled "Lunokhod" vehicle was landed, exploring its surroundings for nearly a year. Other sample returns and Lunokhods followed, the series ending in 1976. However, failures marked tests of a large rocket developed for human Moon flights, ending any plans of manned lunar exploration by the Soviet Union. Early attempts by the US to send unmanned spacecraft to the Moon (1958-64) either failed or returned scanty data. In July 1964, however, Ranger 7 returned clear TV pictures of its impact on the Moon, as did Rangers 8 and 9. Of the 7 "soft landers" in the "Surveyor" series (1966-8), 5 performed well and sent back data and pictures. In November 1969, after Apollo 12 landed 500 feet (160 meters) from the "Surveyor 3" lander, astronauts retrieved its camera and brought if back to Earth. In addition to the Surveyor project, 5 lunar orbiters photographed the Moon and helped produce accurate maps of its surface.

On May 25, 1961, about one month after Russia's Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit the globe, US president John F. Kennedy proposed to the US Congress "that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth. " The Apollo missions followed, with Apollo 8 rounding the Moon in 1968 and Apollo 11 finally landing there, on July 20, 1969. Five other lunar landings followed, the last of them in December 1972. Only Apollo 13 failed to land, its crew members narrowly escaping with their lives after an explosion aboard their craft on the way to the Moon.

Achievements of "Project Apollo."

Among the activities of Apollo astronauts on the Moon were:

Bringing back to Earth extensive samples of lunar rock and soil. The rocks turned out to be ancient, suggesting no significant change since the surface of the Moon formed, about 4.5 billion years ago. The "soil" (regolith) had probably been pulverized by impacts, but as the "Surveyor" missions showed, it was firm enough to provide support. Crews of Apollo 15, 16 and 17 explored the Moon aboard an electrically driven "moon buggy. " (picture on the right). Extensive video pictures from the Moon were beamed to Earth--even one (by a remotely controlled camera) of the take-off from the Moon by the Apollo 17 crew. Also, the Earth and its "geocorona" of glowing hydrogen were photographed by a special camera using ultraviolet light. A seismometer was placed on the Moon, showing that the Moon was seismically much quieter than Earth. Metal foils were hung out (like a flag) to receive the solar wind. They were then returned to Earth where the composition of the ions caught in them was analyzed. Corner reflectors were placed on the Moon, so that laser beams reflected from them could accurately measure the distance. No humans have visited the Moon from 1972 until now, but some orbital missions have studied the Moon's magnetic field as well as X-ray and gamma-ray emissions, from which some variations of the surface composition could be inferred. The Moon was found to have no global magnetic field like the Earth, but its surface was weakly magnetized in some patches. Molten rock can become permanently magnetized if it solidifies in the presence of an external magnetic field, suggesting that in some ancient era the Moon, like Earth now, had a molten metallic core in which electric currents generated a magnetic field. Somewhat similar observations were made near Mars in 1998-2000. Some excitement was caused by indications from the Lunar Prospector spacecraft, which suggested that ice may exist on the moon, inside a deep crater near the Moon's south pole. A possible explanation was that some time in the past (perhaps long ago) a comet had crashed into the Moon, and comets contain considerable amounts of water ice. The energy of the impact, turned into heat, would of course evaporate the ice. However, some of the water vapor would form a temporary atmosphere around the Moon, and might condense again to ice in very cold locations, like craters near the pole, which are permanently shaded from sunlight. At the end of its mission, on July 31, 1999, Lunar Prospector was therefore steered to deliberately crash inside the crater. It was hoped the impact might create (briefly) a cloud of water vapor, which could be

observed from Earth, but none was detected. There is little doubt that the future will see further lunar exploration, though a "lunar base" is probably far off. Astronomical and other observations can readily be made from Earth orbit, and providing life support on the Moon is not easy. Such a base will probably become attractive only after ways are developed for utilizing local lunar materials for construction and for fuel.

4b. Libration of the Moon

Observers on Earth can see a little more than half the surface of the Moon, thanks to processes known as "librations." The term comes from "libra," Latin for scales. This too is the name of a constellation in the zodiac, supposedly resembling scales, and what we call "pound" also used to be called "libra," and hence the abbreviation "lb". Two-pan weighing scales can oscillate like a pendulum, back and forth across their equilibrium position, and supposedly the libration of the Moon resembles such motion. In the equilibrium position, the long axis of the Moon points towards Earth, and libration temporarily shifts the earthpointing tip of that axis to the north, south, east or west. Because the entire Moon follows that motion, librations reveal a little more of its surface. At any time, only half of the Moon's surface is visible from Earth, but librations allow us to "peek around the edges." Over time, up to 59% can be observed, although near the edge, where the line of view is very slanted, not much detail can be made out. Nowadays artificial lunar satellites have mapped the Moon in great detail, so such extra coverage is no big deal. But before the space age, when astronomers were denied any view of the back of the Moon, any trick for increasing their coverage was appreciated. The British amateur astronomer Patrick Moore actually investigated the edge regions where libration provided extra coverage. He concluded that he could see there the edge of a large circular feature, whose main part was on the hidden side of the Moon. He named it Mare Orientale of "The Eastern Sea"--"seas" of the Moon being of course dark plains, probably flooded by lava early in the history of the Moon. (On p.99 in "Seeing in the Dark," author Timothy Ferris cites Moore as this having occurred in the 1930s; another source gives the date as 1946.) When the far side of the Moon was mapped from space, it turned out that Mare Orientale was actually an impact crater, the largest one on the Moon, looking like a "bull's eye" shooting target, with concentric circular ridges.

"Libration" is used for any of several effects which allow us to "peek around the edge." Most of them, it turns out, are not associated with any pendulum-like motion of the axis, but rather represent a shift in viewing direction. Three such

"geometrical librations" exist:

Geometrical Librations
1. Just as the rotation axis of the Earth is inclined by (9023.5) to the EarthSun direction (drawing above, from section #3 "Seasons of the year"), so the rotation axis of the Moon is inclined by about (906.5) to the mean Moon-Earth line. As noted, that line is also the direction of the Moon's elongation, on the average always pointed towards Earth. In the discussion of the seasons of the year, it was shown how the 23.5 tilt of the Earth axis lets the Sun shine onto the polar caps, onto circular areas around the poles, giving them 24-hour sunlight. The drawing demonstrates how in June the Sun illuminates the northern polar cap and in December (when shade and light are interchanged) the southern one. Similarly, each lunar orbit, the tilt of the Moon's rotation axis allows observers on Earth to peek into the polar regions of the Moon--at some time into the northern one, half a month later into the southern one. Because the tilt is much smaller (only 6.5), the area thus revealed is much smaller, but still, this increases coverage. 2. Suppose the moon moved with steady speed in a perfectly circular orbit around Earth, and also rotated at a steady rate around its axis. That ideal situation is shown below in a drawing, taken from section #4 ("The Moon--a distant view"). This is the view from north, so the Moon's orbital motion starts from the bottom and advances counter-clockwise, and the Moon itself also rotates counter-clockwise.

Then--neglecting the 6.5 tilt discussed in item #1 above--the axis of the Moon could always point straight at the Earth, always exposing the same range of longitudes on the Moon's surface. As the figure shows, during the time the Moon covers 60 in its orbit, its body has also rotated by 60. In the time it covers 120, it has also rotated by 120, and so forth. The same axis of the Moon always points at Earth, and by the time the Moon-Earth line has rotated a full 360 in the plane of the drawing (the orbital plane of the Moon), the Moon itself has also rotated a full 360. Now imagine that the Moon orbited at a steady speed, but the rotation of the Moon around its axis varied--sometimes it speeded up, sometimes it slowed down, though on the average it still matched the orbital period. Then when the rotation was a bit ahead of the Moon,Earth line, observers would see a little extra of the receding edge of the Moon. And when the rotation lagged a bit behind, astronomers could see a bit more of the advancing edge. No, this does not happen. The rotation rate of the Moon is pretty steady. However, the orbiting motion of the Moon is not steady--at some times it advances faster than average, some times it is slower. The result is pretty similar to the above example of uneven rotation, and that is a second kind of libration. The first one lets astronomers peek over the poles, while this one adds to the longitudes visible to Earth-based telescopes. Below are the details, which you can skip if this is heavy going for you. The actual orbit of the Moon around Earth is not a circle but an ellipse, an oval shape (in this case, one not greatly different from a circle), in agreement with Kepler's first law of planetary motion (section #10),). Its distance from Earth, therefore, goes up and down slightly. And by Kepler's 2nd law (section #12), the Moon speeds up when closer to Earth, and slows down when further away. When it speeds up, the rotation of the Moon-Earth line around the Earth (measured in degrees per hour) is faster. The rotation of the Moon around its axis, as noted, stays steady, and therefore lags behind that rotation. In the drawing below, the elliptical shape of the Moon is very much exaggerated, to make clear the argument below.

If (as in the preceding drawing) the Moon orbited the Earth at the same rate as its body rotated around its axis, the Earth-Moon line and the long axis of the Moon would match, as in position "A" in the diagram. Actually, if this is the part of the orbit closest to Earth, with the moon advancing fastest, it would already have raced ahead to position "B"--although its rotation at the same time would still be the one appropriate to "A." If that happened, the long axis of the Moon would make a small angle with the Earth-Moon line (as drawn), allowing astronomers to peek past the western edge of the visible Moon ("east" and "west" are defined with respect to Earth, so the western edge is the one closer to the western horizon of the observer.) Similarly, when the motion of the Moon is extra-slow, by the time the rotation of the Moon brings it to the orientation in position "A", the orbital motion has only managed to reach position "C." Now an extra little sliver near the eastern edge becomes visible. While the first type of libration adds to our coverage near the poles of the Moon, this type increases coverage at the east and west edges, by about 7.7 degrees (out of 360). 3. A third "libration" arises because the size of the Earth is not negligible. During the 12 hours or so when the Moon is visible on any day, the rotation of the Earth can displace an observer by up to one diameter of the Earth (for observers on the equator), shifting the line of view and slightly increasing the observable area. Similarly, observers in the northern and the southern hemisphere get slightly different views. Since this effect again allows astronomers to "peek past the edge," it too is counted as a sort of libration. At a lunar distance of 60 RE (Earth radii), a displacement of 1 RE shifts the viewing angle by about 1.

Physical Librations
In addition to the preceding modes, there also exist "physical" librations, actual pendulum-like nodding and wobbling of the Moon around its equilibrium position, like the spring-attached head of one of those "bobblehead dolls" popular as souvenirs. The main mode is pole-to-pole nodding and amounts to about a degree and a half. The longitudinal side-to-side oscillation, on the other hand, has an amplitude of only a quarter of a minute of arc, much too small to be measured by ordinary telescopebased methods. It can however be quite easily checked by laser signals bounced back from the sets of reflecting prisms left by Apollo 11, 14 and 15 astronauts on the Moon, part of the ALSEP or "Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Package," or by the set placed there by the Soviet Luna 21 robot lander. The results are in agreement with the theory of such motions, which was extended to cover motions previously neglected as unobservable.

Other cases of locked-in rotation

Moons whose rotation is "locked in" or "synchronous"--always presenting the same face to the parent body--are surprisingly common in the solar system, especially inner moons, close to the planet. All four "Galilean satellites" of Jupiter are synchronous: volcanic Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, all discovered by Galileo. The 5 inner moons of Saturn are similarly synchronous, as is Iapetus, more distant, the mysterious half-dark-half-light moon which in Arthur Clarke's book "2001, Space Odyssey" was the gateway to another world. The rotation of the planet Mercury is locked onto the Sun in a strange way--three rotations every two orbits. And the strange rotation of Venus, from east to west, unlike Earth--seems to be locked on Earth. The lock seems imperfect and may be accidental, but the fact is that every time Venus is closest to Earth, it presents us with almost exactly the same face. Venus is covered by dense clouds, and the radarcarrying Magellan mission has mapped almost all of its surface in great detail. Before that, though, the main tool for studying the surface were radio telescopes, doubling as radar dishes for bouncing signals off the planet. Only imperfect images could be obtained, but astronomers were frustrated to find that on every closest approach, the same face presented itself.

(5) Latitude and Longitude

Any location on Earth is described by two numbers--its latitude and its longitude. If a pilot or a ship's captain wants to specify position on a map, these are the "coordinates" they would use. Actually, these are two angles, measured in degrees, "minutes of arc" and "seconds of arc." These are denoted by the symbols ( , ', " ) e.g. 35 43' 9" means an angle of 35 degrees, 43 minutes and 9 seconds (do not confuse this with the notation (', ") for feet and inches!). A degree contains 60 minutes of arc and a minute contains 60 seconds of arc--and you may omit the words "of arc" where the context makes it absolutely clear that these are not units of time. Calculations often represent angles by small letters of the Greek alphabet, and that way latitude will be represented by (lambda, Greek L), and longitude by (phi, Greek F). Here is how they are defined. PLEASE NOTE: Charts used in ocean navigation often use the OPPOSITE notation-- for LONGITUDE and for LATITUDE. The convention followed here resembles the one used by mathematicians in 3 dimensions for spherical polar coordinates. Imagine the Earth was a transparent sphere (actually the shape is slightly oval; because of the Earth's rotation, its equator bulges out a little). Through the transparent Earth (drawing) we can see

its equatorial plane, and its middle the point is O, the center of the Earth. To specify the latitude of some point P on the surface, draw the radius OP to that point. Then the elevation angle of that point above the equator is its latitude --northern latitude if north of the equator, southern (or negative) latitude if south of it.

Latitude
Imagine the Earth was a transparent sphere (actually the shape is slightly oval; because of the Earth's rotation, its equator bulges out a little). Through the transparent Earth (drawing) we can see its equatorial plane, and its middle the point is O, the center of the Earth. To specify the latitude of some point P on the surface, draw the radius OP to that point. Then the elevation angle of that point above the equator is its latitude --northern latitude if north of the equator, southern (or negative) latitude if south of it. [How can one define the angle between a line and a plane, you may well ask? After all, angles are usually measured between two lines! Good question. We must use the angle which completes it to 90 degrees, the one between the given line and one perpendicular to the plane. Here that would be the angle (90-) between OP and the Earth's axis, known as the co-latitude of P.]

The latitude angle lambda

On a globe of the Earth, lines of latitude are circles of different size. The longest is the equator, whose latitude is zero, while at the poles--at latitudes 90 north and 90 south (or -90) the circles shrink to a point.

Longitude
Lines of latitude On the globe, lines of constant longitude ("meridians") extend from pole to pole, like the segment boundaries on a peeled orange.

Every meridian must cross the equator. Since the equator is a circle, we can divide it--like any circle--into 360 degrees, and the longitude of a point is then the marked value of that division where its meridian meets the equator. Longitude lines or

"meridians" What that value is depends of course on where we begin to count--on where zero longitude is. For historical reasons, the meridian passing the old Royal Astronomical Observatory in Greenwich, England, is the one chosen as zero longitude. Located at the eastern edge of London, the British capital, the observatory is now a public museum and a brass band stretching across its yard marks the "prime meridian." Tourists often get photographed as they straddle it--one foot in the eastern hemisphere of the Earth, the other in the western hemisphere. A lines of longitude is also called a meridian, derived from the Latin, from meri, a variation of "medius" which denotes "middle", and diem, meaning "day." The word once meant "noon", and times of the day before noon were known as "ante meridian", while times after it were "post meridian." Today's abbreviations a.m. and p.m. come from these terms, and the Sun at noon was said to be "passing meridian". All points on the same line of longitude experienced noon (and any other hour) at the same time and were therefore said to be on the same "meridian line", which became "meridian" for short.

About time--Local and Universal

Two important concepts, related to latitude and (especially) longitude are Local time (LT) and Universal time (UT) Local time is actually a measure of the position of the Sun relative to a locality. At 12 noon local time the Sun passes to the south and is furthest from the horizon (northern hemisphere). Somewhere around 6 am it rises, and around 6 pm it sets. Local time is what you and I use to regulate our lives locally, our work times, meals and sleep-times. But suppose we wanted to time an astronomical event--e.g. the time when the 1987 supernova was first detected. For that we need a single agreed-on clock, marking time world-wide, not tied to our locality. That is universal time (UT), which can be defined (with some slight imprecision, no concern here) as the local time in Greenwich, England, at the zero meridian.

Local Time (LT) and Time Zones

Longitudes are measured from zero to 180 east and 180 west (or -180), and both 180-degree longitudes share the same line, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. As the Earth rotates around its axis, at any moment one line of longitude--"the noon meridian"--faces the Sun, and at that moment, it will be noon everywhere on it. After 24 hours the Earth has undergone a full rotation with respect to the Sun, and the same meridian again faces noon. Thus each hour the Earth rotates by 360/24 =

15 degrees. When at your location the time is 12 noon, 15 to the east the time is 1 p.m., for that is the meridian which faced the Sun an hour ago. On the other hand, 15 to the west the time is 11 a.m., for in an hour's time, that meridian will face the Sun and experience noon. In the middle of the 19th century, each community across the US defined in this manner its own local time, by which the Sun, on the average, reached the farthest point from the horizon (for that day) at 12 oclock. However, travelers crossing the US by train had to re-adjust their watches at every city, and long distance telegraph operators had to coordinate their times. This confusion led railroad companies to adopt time zones, broad strips (about 15 wide) which observed the same local time, differing by 1 hour from neighboring zones, and the system was adopted by the nation as a whole. The continental US has 4 main time zones--eastern, central, mountain and western, plus several more for Alaska, the Aleut islands and Hawaii. Canadian provinces east of Maine observe Atlantic time; you may find those zones outlined in your telephone book, on the map giving area codes. Other countries of the world have their own time zones; only Saudi Arabia uses local times, because of religious considerations. In addition, the clock is generally shifted one hour forward between April and October. This "daylight saving time" allows people to take advantage of earlier sunrises, without shifting their working hours. By rising earlier and retiring sooner, you make better use of the sunlight of the early morning, and you can enjoy sunlight one hour longer in late afternoon.

The Date Line and Universal Time (UT)

Suppose it is noon where you are and you proceed west--and suppose you could travel instantly to wherever you wanted. Fifteen degrees to the west the time is 11 a.m., 30 degrees to the west, 10 a.m., 45 degrees--9 a.m. and so on. Keeping this up, 180 degrees away one should reach midnight, and still further west, it is the previous day. This way, by the time we have covered 360 degrees and have come back to where we are, the time should be noon again--yesterday noon. Hey--wait a minute! You cannot travel from today to the same time yesterday! We got into trouble because longitude determines only the hour of the day--not the date, which is determined separately. To avoid the sort of problem encountered above, the international date line has been established--most of it following the

180th meridian--where by common agreement, whenever we cross it the date advances one day (going west) or goes back one day (going east). That line passes the Bering Strait between Alaska and Siberia, which thus have different dates, but for most of its course it runs in mid-ocean and does not inconvenience any local time keeping. Astronomers, astronauts and people dealing with satellite data may need a time schedule which is the same everywhere, not tied to a locality or time zone. The Greenwich mean time, the astronomical time at Greenwich (averaged over the year) is generally used here. It is sometimes called Universal Time (UT).

Right Ascension and Declination

The globe of the heavens resembles the globe of the Earth, and positions on it are marked in a similar way, by a network of meridians stretching from pole to pole and of lines of latitude perpendicular to them, circling the sky. To study some particular galaxy, an astronomer directs the telescope to its coordinates. On Earth, the equator is divided into 360 degrees, with the zero meridian passing Greenwich and with the longitude angle measured east or west of Greenwich, depending on where the corresponding meridian meets the equator. In the sky, the equator is also divided into 360 degrees, but the count begins at one of the two points where the equator cuts the ecliptic--the one which the Sun reaches around March 21. It is called the vernal equinox ("vernal" means related to spring) or sometimes the first point in Aries, because in ancient times, when first observed by the Greeks, it was in the zodiac constellation of Aries, the ram. It has since then moved, as is discussed in the later section on precession. The celestial globe, however, uses terms and notations which differ somewhat from those of the globe of the Earth. Meridians are marked by the angle (alpha, Greek A), called right ascension, not longitude. It is measured from the vernal equinox, but only eastward, and instead of going from 0 to 360 degrees, it is specified in hours and other divisions of time, each hour equal to 15 degrees. Similarly, where on Earth latitude goes from 90 north to 90 south (or -90), astronomers prefer the co-latitude, the angle from the polar axis,equal to 0 at the north pole, 90 on the equator, and 180 at the south pole. It is called declination and is denoted by the letter (delta, Greek small D). The two angles (, ), used in specifying (for instance) the position of a star are jointly called its celestial coordinates. The next section tells how the stars, the Sun and accurate clocks allowed sailors

to find their latitude and longitude.

(5a) Navigation
How does a captain determine a ship's position in mid-ocean? In our space age, this is easily done, by using the GPS system of satellites--the Global Positioning System. That network of 24 satellites constantly broadcasts its positions, and small hand-held receivers exist which convert those signals into positions accurate within at least 15 meters or about 50 feet. Before the space age, however, it was not as easy. One had to use the Sun and the stars.

Finding latitude with the Pole Star

Imagine yourself standing at night at point P on Earth and observing the pole star (or better, the position of the north celestial pole, near that star), at an elevation angle h above the horizon. The angle between the direction of the pole and the zenith is then (90h) degrees. If you continue the line from zenith downwards (see drawing) it reaches the center of the Earth, and the angle beween it and the Earth's axis is also (90h). Therefore (as the drawing shows) h is also your latitude.

Finding latitude with the Pole Star

Imagine yourself standing at night at point P on Earth and observing the pole star (or better, the position of the north celestial pole, near that star), at an elevation angle h above the horizon. The angle between the direction of the pole and the zenith is then (90h) degrees. If you continue the line from zenith downwards (see drawing) it reaches the center of the Earth, and The angle of the pole star the angle beween it and the Earth's axis is also (90h). above the horizon equals the Therefore (as the drawing shows) h is also your latitude. local latitude

Finding latitude with the noontime Sun

If you are sailing a ship in mid-ocean, you can get the same information from the noontime Sun--probably more accurately, since at night you might not see the horizon very well.

Noon is when the Sun reaches the highest point in its journey across the sky. It then crosses the north-south direction--in the northern hemisphere, usually south of the observer. Because the axis of the Earth is inclined by an angle e = 23.5 to a line perpendicular to the ecliptic, the height of that point above the horizon depends on the season. Suppose you are at point P. We examine 3 possibilities: (1) Suppose the date is the winter solstice, around December 21, when the north pole is inclined away from the Sun. To find your latitude (Note: Navigators on the ocean may use a different notation!) you measure the angle a between the direction of the noontime Sun and the zenith. Look at the drawing and imagine you could rotate the equator and the north pole N until they reached the ecliptic and the pole of the ecliptic N'. Then all three angles marked e fold up together, showing that they are equal. You get Position of the noon Sun at the winter solstice a=+e and your latitude is = a e = a 23.5

(2) Half a year later, at the summer solstice (June 21), the north pole is inclined towards the Sun, not away from it, and now (if is larger than e) a=e and your latitude is = a + e = a + 23.5 Position of the noon Sun at the summer solstice (3) Finally, suppose you are at equinox, around March 21 or September 21. The inclination of the Earth's axis is now out of the plane of the drawing-away from the paper, if this were a picture in a book. The direction to the Sun is in the plane of the equator, and we get =a

Position of the noon Sun at equinox Thus at least at those dates, seafarers could tell what their latitude was by measuring the position of the noontime Sun. For any other date, navigation tables exist that give the proper angle (smaller than 23.5 degrees) which must be added or subtracted. They also provide formulas for deriving the height of the noontime Sun from observations made at other times. As with the pole star, rather than measuring the angle a from the zenith--which is not marked in the sky!--it is simpler to measure the angle (90a) from the horizon, which at sea is usually sharply defined. Such observations, known as "shooting the Sun," are done with an instrument known as the sextant. It has a sliding scale covering 1/6 of a circle (hence the name) and an attached pivoted mirror, providing a split view: by moving the scale, the sea-officer brings Sun and horizon simultaneously into view and then reads off the angle between them.

Longitude
In the age of the great navigators--of Columbus, Magellan, Drake, Frobisher, Bering and others--finding your latitude was the easy part. Captains knew how to use the noontime Sun, and before the sextant was invented, a less precise instrument known as the cross-staff was widely used. Longitude was a much harder nut to crack. In principle, all one needs is an accurate clock, set to Greenwich time. When the Sun "passes the meridian" at noon, we only need to check the clock: if Greenwich time is 3 p.m., we know that 3 hours ago it was noon at Greenwich and we are therefore at longitude 15 x 3 = 45 degrees west. However, accurate clocks require a fairly sophisticated technology. Pendulum clocks can keep time quite accurately on firm land, but the pitching and rolling of a ship makes them quite unsuitable for sea duty. Non-pendulum clocks--e.g. wristwatches, before they became electronic--use a

balance wheel, a small flywheel rotating back and forth through a small angle. A flat spiral spring is wrapped around its axis and it always brings the wheel back to its original position. The period of each back-and-forth oscillation is then only determined by the strength of the spring and the mass of the wheel, and it can replace the swing of the pendulum in controlling the motion of the clock's hands. Gravity plays no role here, and motions of the ship also have very little effect; as discussed in a later section, a vaguely similar method was used in 1973 for "weighing" astronauts in the weightless environment of a space station. For navigation, however, such a clock must be very accurate, which is not easy to achieve: friction must be minimal, and so must changes in the dimensions of the balance wheel and properties of the spring due to changing temperature and other factors. In the 17th and 18th century, when the navies of Britain, Spain, France and Holland all tried to dominate the seas, the "problem of longitude" assumed great strategic importance and occupied some of the best scientific minds. In 1714 Britain announced a prize of 20,000 pounds--a huge sum in those days--for a reliable solution, and John Harrison, a British clockmaker, spent decades trying to achieve it. His first two "chronometers," of 1735 and 1739, though accurate, were bulky and delicate pieces of machinery; they have been restored and are ticking away on public display, at the Royal Astronomical Observatory in Greenwich. Only his 4th instrument, tested in 1761, proved satisfactory, and it took some additional years before he received his prize. An extensive and delightful web site on the story of the "longitude problem," by Jonathan Medwin, can be reached here. Another recommended source is the book Longitude by Dava Sobel.

Tales of Navigation #1 :

Robert Wood

Robert Wood was a professor at Johns Hopkins University during the first half of the 20th century, distinguished for his work on physical optics and also for his sense of humor and his love of mischievous tricks. In September 1917, Wood and some colleagues embarked for Europe aboard the steamship Adriatic, to help US allies use science in fighting World War I. To hinder German submarines from intercepting the ship, it location was kept secret from everybody, including its passengers. What follows are Wood's own notes, reproduced in "Doctor Wood" by William Seabrook (1940). The book is out of print, but remains worth reading (if you can find it) for its great store of stories, of which this one is a fair sample. "We sailed on night after night, the weather growing colder and colder, and the North Star climbing towards the zenith. One afternoon it occured to Colpitts [one of the traveling scientists] that it was the night of the autumnal equinox, on

which both longitude and latitude can be calculated from the elevation of the North Star and the time of sunset [6 hours after noon]. I made a quadrant out of two sticks of wood and a protractor. By sighting one stick on the horizon and the other on the star, I determined its elevation, given which Colpitts, who had timed the sunset, worked out our position in a few minutes. This news spread rapidly, throwing the ship's officers into a frenzy, as all information regarding the course we were sailing was a dead secret. Next morning we discovered the ships' officers had set all of the clocks available to passengers three-quarters of an hour ahead, to confuse and baffle the scientists aboard." The calculation which enabled Wood and Colpitts to determine the ship's position is described in the lesson plan provided for teachers and accompanying the present web page.

Tales of Navigation #2 :

Nansen

Once radio arrived on the scene, early in the 20th century, the accuracy of chronometers became less critical, because broadcast time signals allowed shipboard timepieces to be reset periodically. But until then chronometers were essential to accurate navigation, as the following story illustrates. In 1893 the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen set out towards the north pole (located in the ice-covered Arctic Ocean) in a specially strengthened ship, the "Fram." Having studied the currents of the Arctic Ocean, Nansen allowed "Fram" to be frozen into the polar ice, with which it slowly drifted across the water. Nearly two years, later, realizing that the course of "Fram" fell short of the pole, Nansen (who had prepared for this possibility) left the ship with his colleague Johansen and attempted to reach the pole by sleds over the ice. About 400 miles short of the pole they had to turn back: they wintered on a desolate island, in a hut they built of stones and walrus hides, and the following spring they headed for the islands of Svalbard (Spitzbergen). They had been in the icy wilderness for more than a year, completely out of touch, but they always knew exactly where they were, because each man carried a springpowered chronometer. Then disaster struck--in a moment of distraction, both forgot to rewind their chronometers and allowed them to run down. Suddenly, they were lost! Based on their last recorded positions, they made a guess and reset their timepieces, but the rest of their journey was clouded by uncertainty. Luckily, they did not have much further to go, and as chance had it, they encountered a British Arctic expedition which took them home. "Fram" broke free from the edge of the ice at about the same time; it is now on public display in Oslo.

(5b) The Cross Staff

(Note: this section requires familiarity with the tangent function. See "The Tangent" in

the math refresher section.) The picture on the left is meant to represent the astronomer Claudius Ptolemy, who lived around 150 AD. It is an old picture, though not old enough for the artist to have actually known what Ptolemy looked like. But what is that gentleman holding? No, it isn't a religious symbol--the proportions are not right, and the marks on the stick do not seem appropriate. It is actually a cross staff (or "Jacob's staff"), a tool widely used by astronomers and navigators before the invention of the telescope, and for a while afterwards. It consists of a main staff with a perpendicular crosspiece, attached at its middle to the staff and able to slide up and down along it.

The device was apparently invented by Rabbi Levi ben Gershon (1288-1344), a Jewish scholar who lived in Provence, in southern France, also referred to as "Gersonides." It is described in his Hebrew "Book of the Wars of the LORD," also translated to Latin; the name is borrowed from an ancient book whose only surviving trace is a casual reference in the bible, Book of Numbers, ch. 21, v. 14. Claudius Ptolemy lived more than 1000 years earlier, so the drawing on top indeed takes considerable artistic license. Astronomers used the cross-staff for measuring the angle between the directions of two stars. Other, older instruments for this purpose existed, used by scholars such as Hipparchos and Ptolemy, but none was as portable, which made the cross-staff eminently suitable for navigation at sea. Ships' officers used it to measure the elevation angle of the noontime Sun above the horizon, which allowed them to estimate their latitude (see section on navigation). The problem of getting dazzled by the Sun later led to the invention of the backstaff (pictured below on the left) where the sunlight fell onto a target, not into the eye. Columbus may well have used one. This was greatly improved around 1594 by Captain John Davis, so perhaps the "Mayflower" used the upgraded design. To measure the angle between two stars, an astronomer would place the staff just below one eye (drawing) and slide the cross-piece up and down. The cross-piece would have a pair of open sights sticking out perpendicular to the drawing at symmetric locations such as B and B' (often several pairs of sights, some spaced further apart than others). The astronomer would slide the cross-piece up and down, until sight B covered one of the stars and sight B' the other. For use at night, slits make convenient sights (see below).

After that was achieved, the instrument would be lowered and the distance AC would be measured. Then if A was the angle between the staff and the direction of one star, from the definition of the tangent

tanA = BC/AC
The distance BC between the sight and the stick was already known to the astronomer--so, using a table of tangents, the angle denoted by A could be calculated. Since the instrument was symmetric, the angle between the directions of the stars was 2A.

Building your own Cross-Staff

You can build the simple cross-staff shown on the right, using no more than a yardstick, an office ruler and simple materials found in the home. All measurements here are in inches, but if your system is metric, you may use a meter-stick and a 30cm ruler, and estimate equivalents of other dimensions. In either case, feel free to improvise, modify the design and perhaps improve it. The materials:

A wooden yardstick A wooden 1-foot ruler A piece of wood to serve as cross-piece, about the size of the ruler (a 2nd ruler is OK too). A thick paper (manila) folder, which will be cut up. (Optional) An empty cardboard box from cereal, frozen food, etc., with a glossy side. If not available, cardboard from the manila folder may be used. 4-6 rubber bands A stapler Two paper clips, and some paper.

(1) Using the cardboard and the rubber band, make a "slider" on the yardstick, as follows. With a side of a cereal box, cut a strip 2" wide and 5" long, and wrap it around the yardstick, with the glossy side next to the wood; the cross-section should look approximately like Figure (1a). If you are using manila-folder material, make the strip about 1" longer and fold the end a few times as in Figure (1b), to make it press harder against the wood. Move the slider near the end of the yardstick and slip over it 3 turns of the rubber band--more turns for a longer band. None of the rubber should touch the wood, otherwise the slider won't move easily. The bands should fit fairly tightly, so that the slider is easily moved, but does not shift once placed in any position. Finally spread two turns of the rubber band to form an "X", as shown in Figure (2). (2) Carefully lifting the rubber loops, push the cross-piece through the "X", as shown in Figure (3). The crossing of the X should be at about the center of the crosspiece, which should be perpendicular to the yardstick. (However, no great accuracy is needed in meeting these conditions.) (3) Make two more sliders and place them on the cross-piece--one to the left of the yardstick, one to its right. These sliders should be narrower, o n l y a b o u t

1.25" wide, and their rubber bands should also form an "X" shape. (4) From the cereal-box material, cut two strips 5/8" wide and 4" long (you may later shorten them). If you are using the manila folder material, make each strip 1 1/4" wide and then fold it to get double thickness. Slip each strip through the "X" in a direction perpendicular to the cross-piece, so that its middle is under the "X", then crease and bend them as in Figure (4), to support one of the cards you will make in the next step. (5) From the manila folder cut two cards, 5" wide and 2.5" high. In each card cut two slots about 1.25" from the edges, each about 1/8" w i d e ( 1 / 4 " wide for rough measurements) and 1.75" long, as drawn in Figure 5. Insert each card between a pair of supports, as shown, making sure the slits are perpendicular to the cross-piece, as drawn. When everything is lined up, use the stapler to tie the card to its supports (the diagonal line in Fig. 5 is the staple). If the supports are too long, you may first cut off their ends--but their length does not affect performance. Your cross-staff now should resemble the figure given at the beginning. (6) Always use either the inner pair or the outer pair of slits. Ignore the slits you do not use.

To use the cross-staff, start by sliding the cross-piece to about the middle of the yardstick. Sight the yardstick along the line halfway between the stars whose separation you

want to measure, then place the two sliders on the cross-piece so that the slits are approximately where the stars are located. Finally, adjust the yardstick slider until you see both stars flash simultaneously in both slits. If that is too hard, try working with wider slits, such as 1/4" wide. Like all astronomy measurements, these too are best performed under a dark sky, with your eye used to the darkness. With a sky lit up by city lights or moonlight, you might find that you can only conduct measurements on bright stars. When you are satisfied that you have got both stars simultaneously in the slits, take down the cross staff and measure the distance B'B using your ruler. In the drawing at the start of this web page, the stick is exactly in the middle (CB = CB'), but do not worry if the distances do not turn out equal. Just measure the distance BB' and assume the stick is right in the middle. If the stars are very close, use the inner pair of slits and/or move the cross-piece further away on the stick. If they are widely apart, use the outer pair and perhaps go closer to the eye. Of course, use just one eye and close the other.

(5c) Coordinates
Coordinates are sets of numbers that describe position-- position along a line, on a surface or in space. Latitude and longitude, or declination and right ascension, each is a system of coordinates on the surface of a sphere--on the globe of the Earth or the globe of the heavens.

Coordinates on a Flat Plane

A more widely used system are cartesian coordinates, based on a set of axes perpendicular to each other. They are named for Rene Descartes ("Day-cart"), a French scientist and philosopher who back in the 1600s devised a systematic way of labeling each point on a flat plane by a pair of numbers. You may well be already familiar with it. The system is based on two straight lines ("axes"), perpendicular to each other, each of them marked with the distances from the point where they meet ("origin")--distances to the right of the origin and above it, the origin being taken as positive and on the other sides as negative (see drawing below). Ren Descartes

The distance on one axis is named "x" and on the other axis "y". Given then a point P, one draws from it lines parallel to the axes, and the values of x and y at their intersections completely define the point. In honor of Descartes, this way of labeling points is known as a cartesian system and the two numbers (x,y) that define the position of any point are its cartesian coordinates. Graphs use this system, as do some maps. This works well on a flat sheet of paper, but the real world is 3-dimensional and sometimes it is necessary to label points in 3-dimensional space. The cartesian (x,y) labeling can be extended to 3 dimensions by adding a third coordinate z. If (x,y) is a point on the sheet, then the point (x,y,z) in space is reached by moving to (x,y) and then rising a distance z above the paper (points below it have negative z). Very simple and clear, once a decision is made on which side of the sheet z is positive. By common agreement the positive branches of the (x,y, z) axes, in that order, follow the thumb and the first two fingers of the right hand when extended in a way that they make the largest angles with each other. What follows uses the trigonometric functions sine and cosine; if these are not familiar to you, either skip the rest of the section, or go learn about them.

Polar Coordinates
Cartesian c oordinates (x,y) are not the only way of labeling a point P on a flat plane by a pair of numbers. Other ways exist, and they can be more useful in special situations. One system ("polar coordinates") uses the length r of the line OP from the origin to P (i. e. the distance of P distance to the origin) and the angle that line makes with the x-axis. Angles are often denoted by Greek letters, and here we follow conventions by marking it with (Greek f). Note that while in the cartesian system x and y play very similar roles, here roles are divided: r gives distance and direction. The two representations are closely related. From the definitions of the sine and cosine x = r cos y = r sin

That allows (x,y) to be derived from polar coordinates. To go in the opposite direction and derive (r,) from (x,y), note that from the above equations (or from the theorem of Pythagoras) one can derive r: r2 = x2 + y2 Once r is known, the rest is easy cos = x/r sin = y/r These relations fail only at the origin, where x = y = r = 0. At that point, is undefined and one can choose for it whatever one pleases. In three dimensional space, the cartesian labeling (x,y,z) is nicely symmetric, but sometimes it is convenient to follow the style of polar coordinates and label distance and and direction separately. Distance is easy: you take the line OP from the origin to the point and measure its length r. You can even show from the theorem of Pythagoras that in this case r2 = x2 + y2 + z2 All the points with the same value of r form a sphere of radius r around the origin O. On a sphere we can label each point by latitude (lambda, small Greek L) and longitude (phi, small Greek F), so that the position of any point in space is defined by the 3 numbers (r, , ).

Azimuth and Elevation

The surveyor's telescope is designed to measure two An old surveyor's telesuch angles. The angle is measured scope (theodolite). counterclockwise in a horizontal plane, but surveyors (and soldiers) work with azimuth, a similar angle measured clockwise from north. Thus the directions (north, east, south, west) have azimuth (0, 90, 180, 270). A rotating table allows the telescope to be pointed in any azimuth. The angle is called elevation and is the angle by which the telescope is lifted above the horizontal (if it looks down, is negative). The two angles together can in principle specify any direction: ranges from 0 to 360, and from 90 (straight down or "nadir") to +90 (straight up or "zenith"). Again, one needs to decide from what direction is the azimuth measured--that is, where is azimuth zero? The rotation of the heavens (and the fact most humanity lives north of the equator) suggests (for surveyor-type measurements) the northward direction, and this is indeed the usual zero point. The azimuth angle (viewed from the north) is measured counterclockwise. Mathematicians however prefer their own notation and replace "latitude" (or elevation) with co-latitude = 90 deg., the angle not to the horizon but to the vertical. The angle (theta, one of two t-s in Greek) goes from 0 to 180, not from 90 to + 90. This actually may make more sense, because it is easier to measure an angle between two lines (OP and the vertical) rather than between a line and a flat plane (OP and the horizontal).] [And in case you have to know: In referring (r, , ) to cartesian (x,y,z) with the same origin, is measured from the z-axis and is measured in the (x,y) plane, counterclockwise from the x-axis. ]

(6) The Calendar

So familiar has the calendar become that people tend to forget that it, too, had to be invented. Early farmers needed to know when to plow and sow ahead of rainy seasons, and to time other seasonal activities. Early priests in Babylonia, Egypt, China and other countries, even among the Maya in America, examined therefore the motions of the Sun, Moons and planets across the sky, and came up with a variety of calendars, some still in use.

The Day
The basic unit is obviously the day: 24 hours, 1440 minutes, 86400 seconds, each second slightly longer than the average heartbeat. The day is defined by the motion of the Sun across the sky, and a convenient benchmark is noon, the time when the Sun is at its highest (i. e. most distant from the horizon) and is also exactly south or north of the observer.

"One day" can therefore be conveniently defined as the time from one noon to the next. A sundial can track the Sun's motion across the sky by the shadow of a rod or fin ("gnomon") pointing to the celestial pole (click here for construction of a folded-paper sundial), allowing the day to be divided into hours and smaller units. Noon is the time when the shadow points exactly south (or north) and is at its shortest. What then is the period of the Earth's rotation around its axis? A day, you say? Not quite.

Suppose we observe the position of a star in the sky--for instance Sirius, the brightest of the lot. One full rotation of the Earth is the time it takes for the star to return to its original position (of course, we are the ones that move, not the star). That is almost how the day is defined, but with one big difference: for the day, the point of reference is not a star fixed in the firmament, but the Sun, whose position in the sky slowly changes. During the year the Sun traces a full circle around the sky, so that if we keep a separate count of "Sirius days" and "Sun days", at the end of the year the numbers will differ by 1. We will get 366. 2422 "star days" but only 365. 2422 Sun days. It is the "star day" (sidereal day) which gives the rotation period of the Earth, and it is about 4 minutes shy of 24 hours. A clockwork designed to make a telescope follow the stars makes one full rotation per sidereal day. The clocks we know and use, though, are based on the solar day--more precisely, on the average solar day, because the time from noon to noon can vary as the Earth moves in its orbit around the Sun. By Kepler's laws (discussed in a later section) that orbit is slightly elliptical. The distance from the Sun therefore varies slightly, and by Kepler's second law, the motion speeds up when nearer to the Sun and slows down when further away. Such variations can make "sun-dial time" fast or slow, by up to about 15 minutes. Very precise atomic clocks nowadays tell us that the day is gradually getting longer. The culprits are the tides, twin waves raised in the Earth's ocean by (mainly) the Moon's gravitational pull. As the waves travel around the Earth, they break against shorelines and shallow seas, and thus give up their energy: theory suggests that this energy comes out of the (kinetic) energy of the Earth's rotational motion.

The Year
The year is the time needed by the Earth for one full orbit around the Sun. At the end of that time, the Earth is back to the same point in its orbit, and the Sun is therefore back to the same apparent position in the sky. It takes the Earth 365. 2422 days to complete its circuit (average solar days), and any calendar whose year differs from this number will gradually wander through the seasons. The ancient Roman calendar had 355 days but added a month every 2 or 4 years: it wasn't good enough, and by the time Julius Caesar became ruler of Rome, it had slipped by three

months. In 46 BC Caesar introduced a new calendar, named after him the Julian calendar. It is similar to the one used today: the same 12 months, and an added day at the end of February every 4th year ("leap year"), on years whose number is divisible by 4. Two years afterwards the 5th month of the Roman year was renamed July, in honor of Julius. The name of his successor, Augustus Caesar, was later attached to the month following July. The Julian calendar thus assumes a year of 365. 25 days, leaving unaccounted a difference of 0. 0078 days or about 1/128 of a day. Thus the calendar still slips, but at a very slow rate, about one day in 128 years. By 1582 that slippage was approaching two weeks and Pope Gregory the 13th therefore decreed a modified calendar, named after him the Gregorian calendar. Henceforth years ending in two zeros, such as 1700, 1800, 1900-would not be leap years, except when the number of centuries was divisible by 4, such as 2000. This took away 3 "leap days" every 400 years, i. e. one day per 133 1/3 years--close enough to the required correction of one day per 128 years. But it was not enough to modify the calendar: a one-time jump of dates was also needed, to get rid of the accumulated difference. In Italy this was done soon after the pope's edict, and "Tibaldo and the Hole in the Calendar" by Abner Shimony spins the story of a boy whose birthday was on a day skipped by that jump. Another birthday affected was that of George Washington, born 11 February 1732: when the British empire in September 1952 implemented the Gregorian calendar, the 11th of February "old style" became the 22nd of February "new style," and nowadays that is when Washington's birthday is usually celebrated. In Russia the change came only after the revolution, which is why the Soviet government used to celebrate the anniversary of the "October Revolution" on November 7th. The Russian orthodox church continues to use the Julian calendar and celebrates Christmas and Easter about 2 weeks later than most of the Christian world.

The Moon
The Moon's orbital period, measured by the stars ("sidereal period") is 27. 321662 days. However, the monthly cycle of the Moon--thin crescent to half-moon, to full and back to crescent--takes 29. 530589 days, because it depends on the position of the Sun in the sky, and that position changes appreciably in the course of each orbit. The different shapes of the Moon represent different angles of illumination, and the appearance of the Moon in the night sky gives a fair idea of where the Sun would be (e. g. the Moon observed in the east before sunrise appears illuminated from below). The duration of the Moon's cycle ("synodic period") gave rise to the division of time known as month. Many ancient calendars were based on the month. The most successful of these is the "Metonic" calendar, named after the Greek Meton, who noted that adding 7 months in the course of 19 years kept the calendar almost exactly in step with the seasons. That would make the length of the average year (12 + 7/19) months, and with a calculator you can easily

find its value as (12 + 7/19) x 29.530589 = 365.2467 days pretty close to the full value 365. 2422. The Metonic calendar is thus more accurate than the Julian one, though less so than the Gregorian. It is still used by Jews, on whose calendar each month begins at or near the new moon, when the Moon's position in the sky is nearest to the Sun's. The traditional Chinese calendar also uses of a formula like Meton's, which was probably invented by the ancient Babylonians. For more about the ancient Babylonian calendar see here.

The Moslem Calendar

Moslems use an uncorrected lunar calendar, and as a result their holidays slip through the seasons at a rate of about 11 days per year. The reason is not ignorance of astronomy but a deliberate effort to follow a different schedule from that of any other faith. This creates a problem with the month of Ramadan, during which faithful Moslems are expected not to eat or drink from sunrise to sunset. When Ramadan falls in mid-winter, this imposes no great hardship, since days are short and cool. Fifteen years later, however, Ramadan falls in mid-summer, when days are long and the heat makes people quite thirsty. That is when Arab cities wait impatiently for the boom of the cannon which traditionally announces every evening the end of the fast.

The Persian Calendar

Ah, but my Computations, People say Reduced the Year to better reckoning Nay, 'Twas only striking from the Calendar Unborn To-morrow and dead Yesterday Rubaiyat, verse #57, by Omar Khayyam (English by Edward Fitzgerald) A calendar which tracks the solar year even better than the Gregorian one is the Persian (Iranian) calendar, the first version of which was devised by Omar Khayyam (1044-1123), author of the famous "Rubaiyat" poems, masterfully translated in 1839 into English by Edward Fitzgerald. It is also called the Jalali calendar, after the king Malik Shah Jalaludin who in 1074 assigned Omar and 7 other scholars to devise a new calendar. Though the count of Persian years starts, like the Moslem one, from the flight of Mohammed to Medina in 622, establishing there the first strong base of Islam, the new year starts at the spring equinox, March 21, with the holiday of Nowruz.

How Nowruz is celebrated: In Iran, the biggest holiday is Nowruz, New Year's Day.... It always begins on the first day of spring at the exact moment of the equinox. This means that every year Nowruz begins at a different time. One year it might be March 21 at 5:32 A.M., while the next year it might occur on March 20 at 11:54 P.M. Every Iranian knows the exact moment the jubilation begins. The festivities are preceded by weeks of preparation. Everyone thoroughly cleans his house, buys or makes new clothes, and bakes traditional pastries. A ceremonial setting called a haftseen, which consists of seven symbols beginning with the sound "s," is displayed with other meaningful objects like mirror, colored eggs, and goldfish in a bowl. The objects represent health, renewal, prosperity, fertility and the usual universal hopes shared by people at any New Year's celebration.... For Nowruz, most businesses close and the streets are deserted. For twelve days after equinox, people visit relatives and friends, always starting with the eldest. Once all the elders have been visited, they in turn visit the younger members of the family. At every house, a tray of homemade sweets is offered along with wishes for the new year. Children receive money, always in the form of brand-new bills. I assume that since the wave of immigration after 1980 [the revolution in Iran] banks in America have noticed a sudden increase in demand for crisp bills in the month of March. [from "Funny in Farsi -- A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America" by Firoozeh Dumas, 187 pp., $21.95, Villard Books 2003. A charming, sunny book about growing up in two cultures.]

Some people claim that the Jewish custom of the Passover plate is related to the Persian haftseen. That is a ceremonial plate with seven (or six) symbolic objects, the centerpiece of the table at the Passover dinner, perhaps the most important celebration of the Jewish year, commemorating an ancient event coinciding with the spring equinox. The Persian year itself has 12 months--the first 6 have 31 days, the next 5 have 30 days, and the last has 28 or 29, depending on whether the year is or isn't a leap year. Each month corresponds to a sign of the zodiac. The number of days in each month (if not the order of months) is therefore the same as in the Western civil calendar. The difference is in the rule for determining leap year, which is more complex. Even the original Jalali calendar was more accurate than the Gregorian one; the current version assigns 683 leap years in a cycle of 2820 years and would take two million years before it shows a one-day inaccuracy!

An interesting calendar is used by the Coptic Christian church in Ethiopia, with 12 months of 30 days each, plus a 13th short month of 5 days. A tourist brochure once lured visitors with a promise "Come to Ethiopia and enjoy 13 months of sunshine a year."

The Maya Calendar

The Maya Indians in Central America, living on the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico, Belize and Guatemala (where Maya languages are still spoken), created an extensive civilization which peaked around the years 1200-1450. They developed an early system of symbolic writing ("glyphs") and simple mathematics, using a system like ours (including the zero!) based not on the number 10 but on 20. They did not, however, use fractions. Their astronomy was well developed, and they noted the "zenial days" when the Sun was directly overhead ("at zenith") and a vertical stick cast no shadow. Their year had 365 days, but in the absence of leap years it slowly shifted with respect to the solstices. That year was divided into 18 named "months" of 20 days each (numbered from 0 to 19), plus the "short month" of Wayeb, whose days were considered unlucky. Yucatan does not experience summer and winter the way middle latitudes do (e.g. Europe or most of the US), and therefore the Maya calendar was not strongly tied to the seasons the way ours is. The planet Venus received major attention, and its cycles were accurately measured by Maya astronomers. In addition the Maya also observed a "ritual year" of 260 days, consisting of 20 named "long weeks" of 13 numbered days each. For more--much more!--see here, here and also here,, the last being one of a series of web pages devoted to different calendars. About the Maya and Venus, see the chapter "Bringing Culture to the Physicists", p. 313 in "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" by Richard Feynman See also http://alignment2012.com/historychannel.html

The Jewish Calendar

Mosaic pavement of a 6th century synagogue at Beit Alpha, Israel. Signs of the zodiac surround the central chariot of the Sun (a Greek motif), while the corners depict the 4 "turning points" ("tekufot") of the year, solstices and equinoxes, each named for the month in which it occurs--tekufah of Tishrey, (tekufah of Tevet), tekufah of Ni(san), tekufah of Tamuz Larger version (172 Kb) here.

The Months
In the Jewish calendar, today is the 6th day of the month of Adar--and in this year, that is the "first Adar" or "Adar Aleph", because this is a leap year. The month is followed by "Adar Beth" or "Ve-Adar" ("and-Adar"), the second Adar, an extra month added now and then. This happens to be year number 5760, and in a while you will also know how one tells by that number if it is a leap year or not. Of course, you realize that the Jewish calendar follows the Moon: "Rosh Chodesh," the beginning of the month, is always supposed to fall on the new Moon--the time when the Moon's position in the sky passes that of the Sun. Soon after that we may see a thin crescent, right after sunset. It takes the Moon a little over 27 days to go around us, but meanwhile the Sun also

shifts its position in the sky--each year, it circles the entire sky. So the Moon needs about 2 extra days to catch up with the Sun, and it takes 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes and a fraction, to go from one new moon to the next. Thus most Jewish months alternate between 29 and 30 days--1st Adar, 30 days, second Adar, 29, Nissan, 30, Iyar 29, Sivan 30 and so on, except that Cheshvan and Kislev, in the fall, are adjustable--to take care of those 44 odd minutes, and for other adjustments. One important adjustment of this type applies to the new year's day known as Rosh Hashanah ('head of the year')--it may never fall on Sunday, Wednesday or Friday. This is done to prevent the fast of Yom Kippur ("day of atonement"), 10 days later, to be next to a sabbath, because two consecutive days of rest would hinder proper observance of either; and also, to avoid having sabbath hit another holiday later that month. So, strange as it may seem, because of such adjustments, Rosh Hashanah often does NOT fall on the new moon. That is the price one pays for holidays! There is a strange music in the names of Jewish months--Adar, Nissan, Iyar, Sivan, Tamuz, Av, Elul, Tishrey, Cheshvan, Kislev, Tevet, Shvat, the words have an ancient sound, distinctly non-Hebrew. And in fact, they are not Hebrew but Babylonian, from the homeland of Abraham. Likewise, what we call "Hebrew letters" are Babylonian, too, picked up in the Babylonian exile; Jews in the days of the first Temple used a completely different alphabet. (Note: The information on the Babylonian calendar, given below, relied on the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," 1967 edition). If you take into account that the Babylonians had a special liking for the sound "U", you find that the Babylonian names are very similar: Nisanu Ayaru Simanu Du'uzu Abu Ululu Tashritu Arach-Samna Kislimu Shabatu Tebetu Adaru

You will also note some differences: "Shabatu" comes before "Tebetu", whereas in today's Jewish calendar, Tevet comes first, Shvat later. In the three names containing the letter "m" it was replaced in the Jewish calendar by "v" (or "w"), "Du'uzu" is now Tamuz, the name of the god of spring (later known as Adonis), and "Arach-samna" has become "Marcheshvan" or "Cheshvan" for short.

The Start of the Year

When does the Jewish year begin? Tradition has been somewhat ambiguous here. Rosh Hashanah, the official Jewish New Year's Day, is celebrated on the 1st day of Tishrey--but the Bible never calls it "Rosh Hashanah," it is always "Yom Hazikaron," the day of remembrance. And in the biblical chronology, this is not (as you might think) the first day of the first month--no, it is the first day of the seventh month, counting Nissan as the first. In fact, none of these ancient names is in the Bible--all of them were handed down strictly by oral tradition. The Bible does mention though that the exodus from Egypt was in "the month of Aviv," and while in modern Hebrew that would mean "the month of spring," many believe that "Aviv" was the ancient name of that month. According to the scriptures, this was to be the first month of the year, in memory of the exodus from Egypt; in all other dates, months are only referred to by their number. At the beginning of chapter 12 in the book of Exodus you will find: "This month shall be unto you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year to you." Still, it is interesting that the Babylonian calendar had the same ambiguity. There too, two months served as pivots--Nissan and Tishrey. Maybe one was the start of the religious year, one of the tax year--since in Nissan the harvest just starts and in Tishrey the crops are all in--maybe they date to different periods or localities, maybe the year was divided into two 6-month sections. One can only speculate.

Keeping up with both Sun and Moon

If the Jewish calendar only followed the Moon, it would get quickly out of step with the seasons, which follow the cycle of the Sun--the holidays would migrate and you might get Passover in the fall, Rosh Hashanah in the spring, Chanukkah in mid-summer. That is what happens in the Moslem calendar, which only follows the moon. Consider the month of Ramadan, when observant Moslems fast from sunrise to sundown. Ramadan this year was in early winter--the best time, because days are short, nights are long, your fasts are short too and you do not get too thirsty from heat. But wait 15 years! Then Ramadan will have migrated to mid-summer, when days are at their longest, the heat makes you quite thirsty (especially in countries like Arabia and Egypt), and fasting all day long is a much greater ordeal. But the ancient Babylonians found a way to keep up with both the moon and the sun. Their priests were excellent astronomers--helped, no doubt, by the clear skies in a country perched at the edge of the desert. (By the way, the Jewish Talmudic sage Mar Shmuel, who lived in Babylonia in the 3rd century, was also experienced in astronomy. He used to say "I am familiar with the pathways of the heavens as I am familiar with the pathways of [my home town] Nehard'a--except for the comet-star, I don't know what it is.")

By the 9th century BCE, after centuries of observations, Babylonian astronomers concluded that in a cycle of 19 years of 12 lunar months each, if you added 7 more months, you returned almost exactly to the same season. Today this system is known as the Metonic cycle, because the Greek astronomer Meton introduced it in Athens in the year 432 BCE. However, the Babylonians already knew this at least 400 years earlier. The Chinese also have used this system--and the Jewish calendar does the same. So how do you know which year has a seond month of Adar? Simple: in every 19-year cycle, years 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17 and 19 are leap years. This 19-year sequence is known as the "machzor," meaning "cycle" in Hebrew. In the general calendar, we now have Y2K, a special "millenium" year--but I still remember in 1940 or 1941, when I was 9 years old, the teacher told us that the current year 5700 was special, because it marked exactly 300 cycles since the creation of the world, according to the Jewish calendar. So--3 times 19 is 57, 300 times 19 is 5700, and the year 5757 would complete 303 cycles. We are now in the year 5760, 3 years into cycle number 304, so by the rule assigning extra months to years 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17 and 19, it is a leap year. And the additional month is Adar, because it is the 12th and last month. The ancient Babylonians also added a 2nd Adaru--though sometimes they would add instead a second "Ululu" just before the day which became Rosh Hashanah. One could go on and on. The Babylonians did not have a sabbath--but they preferred not to work on the 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th day of the month, because they thought those were unlucky days. Is there a connection? Who knows!

Accuracy
I have not yet touched at all our civil calendar, by which this February of the year 2000 is a very special leap month, instituted to fine-tune the calendar. Or that yesterday's date, February 11, was the day George Washington was born--in 1732, on February 11, old style. Then in 1751 the calendar was advanced 11 days, to make up for 17 centuries when this fine-tuning was not yet known, so now America celebrates Washington's birthday on February 22nd. The Jewish calendar is much more accurate than the old-style calendar used when Washington was born. Still, in the 3500 years or so since the exodus from Egypt, it has slipped by about two weeks. According to the Bible, the exodus took place at the spring equinox, around March 21, and now Passover is about 2 weeks later. However, as long as one uses a calendar that tries to keep up with both the Sun and the Moon, there is nothing one can do about it--except maybe, wait a few thousand years more and then omit an entire leap month.

(7) Precession
The priests of ancient Babylonia and Egypt were also pioneer astronomers. They studied the heavens, mapped their constellations, identified the path of the Sun and estimated the periods of the Moon and Sun as they moved across the sky. But it was a Greek astronomer, Hipparchus of Nicea, who made the first major new discovery in astronomy. Comparing observations more than a century apart, Hipparchus proposed that the axis around which the heavens seemed to rotate shifted gradually, though very slowly. Viewed from Earth, the Sun moves around the ecliptic, one full circuit each year. Twice a year, at equinox, day and night are equal and the Sun rises exactly in the east and sets exactly in the west. Ancient astronomers had no good clocks and could not tell when the day and night had the same length, but they could identify the equinox by the Sun rising exactly in the east and setting exactly in the west. At those times the Sun's position is at one of the intersections between the ecliptic and the celestial equator. Around the year 130 BC, Hipparchus compared ancient observations to his own and concluded that in the preceding 169 years those intersections had moved by 2 degrees. How could Hipparchus know the position of the Sun among the stars so exactly, when stars are not visible in the daytime? By using not the Sun but the shadow cast by the Earth on the moon, during an eclipse of the Moon! During an eclipse, Sun, Earth and Moon form a straight line, and therefore the center of the Earth's shadow is at the point on the celestial sphere which is exactly opposite that of the Sun.

"The Dawning of the Age of Aquarius"

Hipparchus concluded that the intersection marking the equinox slowly crept forward along the ecliptic, and called that motion "the precession of the equinoxes. " The rate is about one full circle in 26 000 years. In ancient times the intersection marking the spring equinox was in the constellation of Aries, the ram, and for that reason the intersection (wherever it might be) is still sometimes called "the first point in Aries." Around the year 1 it moved into the constellation of Pisces (pronounced "pie-sees" in the US) and currently it is again in transition, to the constellation of Aquarius, the water carrier. If you ever heard the song "The dawning of the age of Aquarius" from the musical "Hair," that is what it is all about. To astronomers precession is mainly another factor to be taken into account when aiming a telescope or drawing a star chart; but to believers in astrology, the "dawning of the age of Aquarius" is a great portent and may mark the beginning of a completely new and different era.

The Precession of the Earth's Axis

What does this motion tell us about the Earth's motion in space? If you ever had a spinning top, you know that its axis tends to stay lined up in the same direction-usually, vertically, though in space any direction qualifies. Give it a nudge, however, and the axis will start to gyrate wildly around the vertical, its motion tracing a cone (drawing). The spinning Earth moves like that, too, though the time scale is much slower-each spin lasts a day, and each gyration around the cone takes 26 000 years. The axis of the cone is perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic. The cause of the precession is the equatorial bulge of the Earth, caused by the centrifugal force of the Earth's rotation (the centrifugal force is discussed in a later section). That rotation changes the Earth from a perfect sphere to a slightly flattened one, Precession of a spinning thicker across the equator. The attraction of the top: the spin axis traces Moon and Sun on the bulge is then the "nudge" the surface of a cone. which makes the Earth precess. Through each 26 000-year cycle, the direction in the sky to which the axis points goes around a big circle, the radius of which covers an angle of about 23.50. The pole star to which the axis points now (within about one degree) used to be distant from the pole, and will be so again in a few thousand years (for your information, the closest approach is in 2017). Indeed, the "pole star" used by ancient Greek sailors was a different one, not nearly as close to the pole. Because of the discovery mady by Hipparchus, the word "precession" itself no longer means "shift forward" but is now applied to any motion of a spin axis around a cone--for instance, the precession of a gyroscope in an airplane's instrument, or the precession of a spinning satellite in space. Precession of a spinning scientific payload (also known as its "coning"--from "cone"--or its "nutation") is an unwelcome feature, because it complicates the tracking of its instruments. To eliminate it, such satellites use "nutation dampers," small tubes partially filled with mercury. If the satellite spins as it was designed to do, the mercury merely flows to the part of the tube most distant from the spin axis, and stays there. However, if the axis of rotation precesses, the mercury sloshes back and forth in the tube. Its friction then consumes energy, and since the source of the sloshing is the precession of the spin axis, that precession (very gradually) loses energy and dies down. [In the section on the calendar, we saw that the Earth's rotation is slowed down very gradually by the tides, raised by the gravity of the Moon. That process is a bit similar to the action of nutation dampers: the energy of the

tides is "lost"--that is, converted to heat--when the waves caused by tides break up on the seashore, and that loss is ultimately taken away from the rotational motion (not the precession) of the Earth]

Ice Ages
Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice Robert Frost Some 2000 years after Hipparchus, in the year 1840. Louis Agassiz, a Swiss scientist, published a book on glaciers, a familiar A glacier in Norway. feature of his homeland--huge rivers of ice created by accumulated snowfall, filling valleys and slowly creeping downwards to their end points, lakes of meltwater (or, in some other countries, the sea). Glaciers leave an imprint on the landscape: they scratch and grind down rocks, and carry loads of gravel, at times even big boulders, from the mountains to the plains, leaving them far from their origins, wherever the ice finally melts. Agassiz, who later became a distinguished professor at Harvard, noted that such imprints existed all over northern Europe, and suggested that the lands now inhabited by Germans, Poles, Russians and others used to be covered by enormous glaciers. America, too, had its glaciers; Cape Cod, for instance, is a left-over pile of glacial gravel. Later geological studies found evidence that such glaciers advanced and retreated several times in the last million years. The last retreat, a rather abrupt one, occured about 12,000 years ago.

The Milankovich Theory

The big questions are, of course, what caused those glaciers to spread, and will it happen again? Actually, no one is yet completely sure. But an intriguing idea, due to work in the 1930s by the Serbian astronomer Milutin Milankovich, may link them to the precession which Hipparchus discovered. As already noted, the Earth's orbit is not perfectly round, but is slightly elongated. The

Earth therefore comes closest to the Sun in the first week of January (the exact day varies a little). It means that just when the northern hemisphere experiences winter and receives the least amount of sunlight, the Earth as a whole receives the most (the swing is about 3%, peak to peak). This makes northern winters milder, and northern summers are milder too, since they occur when the Earth is most distant from the Sun. The opposite is true south of the equator: the beginning of January occurs there in summer, and therefore one expects southern summers to be hotter, and southern winters colder, than those north of the equator. This effect is however greatly weakened, because by far most of the the southern hemisphere is covered by ocean, and the water tempers and moderates the climate. Right now, northern winter occurs in the part of the Earth's orbit where the north end of the axis points away from the Sun. However, since the axis moves around a cone, 13,000 years from now, in this part of the orbit, it will point towards the Sun, putting it in mid-summer just when the Earth is closest to the Sun. At that time one expects northern climate to be more extreme, and the oceans then have a much smaller effect, since the proportion of land in the northern hemisphere is much larger. Milankovich argued that because winters were colder, more snow fell, feeding the giant glaciers. Furthermore, he said, since snow was white, it reflected sunlight, and with more severe winters, the snow-covered land warmed up less effectively once winter had ended. Climate is maintained by a delicate balance between opposing factors, and Milankovich argued that this effect alone was enough to upset that balance and cause ice ages. Milankovich was aware that this was just one of several factors, since it turns out that ice ages do not recur every 26,000 year, nor do they seem common in other geological epochs. The eccentricity of the Earth's orbit, which determines the closest approach to the Sun, also changes periodically, as does the inclination of the Earth's axis to the ecliptic. But overall the notion that ice ages may be linked to the motion of the Earth through space may be currently our best guess concerning the causes of ice ages. Postscript, 28 July 1999. The magnitude of the "Milankovich effect" depends on the difference between largest and smallest distances from the Sun. That, in its turn, depends on the eccentricity of the Earth's orbit, which varies with a 100,000-year cycle, on which a 413,000-year cycle is superposed. J. Rial (Univ. of North Carolina) found signatures of those cycles in the oxygen isotope content of deep-sea sediments, in full agreement with the Milankovich theory. His work is in "Science," vol. 285, p. 564, 23 July 1999; a nontechnical explanation "Why the Ice Ages Don't Keep Time " is on pages 503-504 of the same issue.

Further note: The sea-bottom results have now been compared to hydrogen isotope ratios in deep boreholes in the ice sheets of Antarctica, which took nearly a million years to accumulate (Science, 11 June 2004, p. 1609). Deep-sea sediments show that in the last million years, but not before, the variation is dominated by a periodicity around 100,000 years. Its origin, the article states, "is one of the unanswered, yet fundamental questions." Ice cores could help explain it.

Exploring Further:
Because of the precession of the equinoxes, the position among the stars of the celestial pole--the pivot around which the celestial sphere seems to rotate--traces a circle every 26,000 years of so. The celestial pole is now quite close to the pole star Polaris, but it will not be so in the future, and wasn't in the past. The ancient Egyptians regarded as pole star the star Thuban or "Alpha Draconis," the brightest star (=alpha) in the constellation Draco, the serpent. For more information about the motion of the pole, see here and here. A review article, primarily for scientists: Trends, Rhythms and Aberrations in Global Climate 65 Ma to the Present (Ma is million years), by James Zachos, Mark Pagani, Lisa Sloan, Ellen Thomas and Katharina Billups, "Science" vol 292, p. 686, 27 April 2001. Goes beyond variations due to the precession of the equinoxes and also includes variations of orbit eccentricity, inclination between spin axis and the ecliptic and in the precession cycle itself. The full scoop on the Milankovich theory (including other periodicities). A biography of Milutin Milankovich. For serious scientific pursuits: A recent article in "Nature" applies the theory of Milankovich to Mars and concludes that its effects there were probably much more severe, in part because the presence of our Moon regulates the tilt angle of the Earth's rotation axis. See Recent ice ages on Mars by James W. Head et al., Nature, vol 426, p, 797-802, 18/25 December 2003.

(8) The Round Earth and Christopher Columbus

Replica of the flagship of Columbus, sailing past the shuttle launch pad on Cape Canaveral. Today it is well known that the Earth is a sphere, or very close to one (its equator bulges out a bit because of the Earth's rotation). When Christopher Columbus proposed to reach India by sailing west from Spain, he too knew that the Earth was round. India was the source of precious spices and other rare goods, but reaching it by sailing east was difficult, because Africa blocked the way. On a round globe, however, it should also be possible to reach India by sailing west, and this Columbus proposed to do (he wasn't the first one to suggest this--see below). Sometimes the claim is made that those who opposed Columbus thought the Earth was flat, but that wasn't the case at all. Even in ancient times sailors knew that the Earth was round and scientists not only suspected it was a sphere, but even estimated its size.

If you stand on the seashore and watch a ship sailing away, it will gradually disappear from view. But the reason cannot be the distance: if a hill or tower are nearby, and you climb to the top after the ship has completely disappeared, it becomes visible again. Furthermore, if on the shore you watch carefully the way the ship disappears from view, you will notice that the hull vanishes first, while the masts and sails (or the bridge and smokestack) disappear last. It is as if the ship was dropping behind a hill, which in a way is exactly the case, the "hill" being the curve of the Earth's surface. To find out how the distance to the horizon is calculated, click here

Eratosthenes, Posidonius and El Mamun

The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC) argued in his writings that the Earth was spherical, because of the circular shadow it cast on the Moon, during a lunar eclipse. Another reason was that some stars visible from Egypt are not seen

further north The full quotation can be found here. The Alexandria philosopher Eratosthenes went one step further and actually estimated how large the Earth was. He was told that on midsummer day (June 21) in the town of Syene in southern Egypt (today Aswan, near a huge dam on the river Nile) the noontime Sun was reflected in a deep well, meaning that it was right overhead, at zenith. Eratosthenes himself lived in Alexandria, near the river's mouth, north of Syene, about 5000 stadia north of Syene (the stadium, the size of a sports arena, was a unit of distance used by the Greeks). In Alexandria the Sun on the corresponding date did not quite reach zenith, and vertical objects still threw a short shadow. Eratosthenes established that the direction of the noon Sun differed from the zenith by an angle that was 1/50 of the circle, that is, 7. 2 degrees, and from that he estimated the circumference of the Earth to be 250,000 stadia. Tidbit: Eratosthenes also headed the royal library in Alexandria, the greatest and most famous library in classical antiquity. Officially it was called "temple of the muses" or "museion," from which our modern "museum" is derived. Other estimates of the size of the Earth followed. Some writers reported that the Greek Posidonius used the greatest height of the bright star Canopus above the horizon, as seen from Egypt and from the island of Rhodes further north (near the southwestern tip of Turkey). He obtained a similar value, a bit smaller. The Arab Khalif El Ma'mun, who ruled in Baghdad from 813 to 833, sent out two teams of surveyors to measure a north-south baseline and from it also obtained the radius of the Earth. Compared to the value known today, those estimates were pretty close to the mark. The idea of sailing westward to India dates back to the early Romans. According to Dr. Irene Fischer, who studied this subject, the Roman writer Strabo, not long after Erathosthenes and Posidonius, reported their results and noted: "if of the more recent measurements of the Earth, the one which makes the Earth smallest in circumference be introduced--I mean that of Posidonius who estimates its circumference at about 180,000 stadia, then. . . " and he continues: "Posidonius suspects that the length of the inhabited world, about 70,000 stadia, is half the entire circle on which it had been taken, so that if you sail from the west in a straight course, you will reach India within 70,000 stadia. " Notice that Strabo--for unclear reasons--reduced the 250,000 Stadia of Eratosthenes to 180,000, and then stated that half of that distance came to just 70,000 stadia. Handling his numbers in that loose fashion, he could argue that India

was not far to the west.

Columbus Again
All these results were known to the panel of experts which King Ferdinand appointed to examine the proposal made by Columbus. They turned Columbus down, because using the original value by Eratosthenes, they calculated how far India was to the west of Spain, and concluded that the distance was far too great. Columbus had an estimate of his own. Some historians have proposed that he used an argument like Strabo's, but Dr. Fischer found his claim to be based on incorrect units of distance. Columbus used an erroneous estimate by Ptolemy (whom we meet again), who based it on a later definition of the stadium, and in estimating the size of the settled world he confused the Arab mile, used by El Ma'mun, with the Roman mile on which our own mile is based. All the same, his final estimate of the distance to India was close to Strabo's. Christopher Columbus In the end Queen Isabella overruled the experts, and the rest is history. We may never know whether Columbus knowingly fudged his values to justify an expedition to explore the unknown, or actually believed India was not too far to the west of Spain. He certainly did call the inhabitants of the lands he discovered "Indians," a mislabeling which still persists. But we do know that if the American continent had not existed, the experts would have been vindicated: Coumbus with his tiny ships could never have crossed an ocean as wide as the Atlantic and Pacific combined. In hindsight the exploration of the unknown may be justification enough! As for the size of the Earth, it was accurately measured many times since (see item "geodesy" in an encyclopaedia), one notable effort being that of the French Academy of Sciences in the late 1700s. Their aim was to devise a new unit of distance, equal to one part in 10,000,000 of the distance from the pole to the equator (as Eratosthenes showed, it is enough to measure part of that distance). Nowadays that distance is known even more accurately, but the unit introduced by the French academy is still used as the standard of all distance measurements. It is called the meter.

(8a) Distance to the Horizon

Imagine you were standing at an elevation of h meters above the ocean and looking out across the water. What is the distance D to the horizon? It can be calculated, if you know the radius R of the Earth. Your line of sight to the horizon is a tangent to the Earth--a line which touches the sphere of the Earth at just one point, marked B in the drawing here. If O is the center of the sphere of the Earth, by a well-known theorem of geometry such a tangent is perpendicular to the radius OB, that is, it makes a 90o angle with it. It follows that the triangle OAB obeys the theorem of Pythagoras, which here can be written (OA)2 = (AB)2 + (OB)2 or if the length of each line is spelled out (R + h)2 = D2 + R2 By an algebraic identity (derived in the "mathematical refresher"), the left-hand side equals R2 + 2Rh + h2, giving R2 + 2Rh + h2 = D2 + R2

(8b) Parallax
"Pre-Trigonometry"
Section M-7 describes the basic problem of trigonometry (drawing on the left): finding the distance to some far-away point C, given the directions at which C appears from the two ends of a measured baseline AB. This problem becomes somewhat simpler if: 1. The baseline is perpendicular to the line from its middle to the object, so that the triangle ABC is symmetric. We will denote its side by r: AC = BC = r 2. The length c of the baseline AB is much less than r. That means that the angle between AC and BC is small; that angle is known as the parallax of C, as viewed from AB. 3. We do not ask for great accuracy, but are satisfied with an approximate value of the distance--say, within 1%. The method presented here was already used by the ancient Greeks more than 2000 years ago. They knew that the length of a circle of radius r was 2r, where (a modern notation, not one of the Greeks, even though is part of their alphabet) stands for a number a little larger than 3,

approximately = 3.14159... (The Greek mathematician Archimedes derived to about 4-figure accuracy, though he expressed it differently, since decimal fractions appeared in Europe only some 1000 years later.)

Draw a circle around the point C, with radius r, passing through A and B (drawing above). Since the angle is so small, the length of the straightline "baseline" b (drawing on the right; distance AB renamed) is not much different from the arc of the circle passing A and B. Let us assume the two are the same (that is the approximation made here). The length of a circular arc is proportional to the angle it covers, and since b covers an angle 2 r covers an angle 360 we get 2 r = (360/ b) and dividing by 2 r = (360/2 ) b Therefore, if we know b, we can deduce r. For instance, if we know that = 5.73, 2 = 36 and we get r = 10 b

Estimating distance outdoors

Here is a method useful to hikers and scouts. Suppose you want to estimate the distance to some distant landmark--e.g. a building, tree or water tower. The drawing shows a schematic view of the situation from above (not to scale). To estimate the distance to the landmark A, you do the following:

1.

Stretch your arm forward and extend your thumb, so that your thumbnail faces your eyes. Close one eye (A') and move your thumb so that, looking with your open eye (B'), you see your thumbnail covering the landmark A. 2. Then open the eye you had closed (A') and close the one (B') with which you looked before, without moving your thumb. It will now appear that your thumbnail has moved: it is no longer in front of landmark A, but in front of some other point at the same distance, marked as B in the drawing. 3. Estimate the true distance AB, by comparing it to the estimated heights of trees, widths of buildings, distances between power-line poles, lengths of cars etc. The distance to the landmark is 10 times the distance AB. Why does this work? Because even though people vary in size, the proportions of the average human body are fairly constant, and for most people, the angle between the lines from the eyes (A',B') to the outstretched thumb is about 6, close enough to the value 5.73 for which the ratio 1:10 was found in an earlier part of this section. That angle is the parallax of your thumb, viewed from your eyes. The triangle A'B'C has the same proportions as the much larger triangle ABC, and therefore, if the distance B'C to the thumb is 10 times the distance A'B' between the eyes, the distance AC to the far landmark is also 10 times the distance AB.

How far to a Star?

When estimating the distance to a very distant object, our "baseline" between the two points of observation better be large, too. The most distant objects our eyes can see are the stars, and they are very far indeed: light which moves at 300,000 kilometers (186,000 miles) per second, would take years, often many years, to reach them. The Sun's light needs 500 seconds to reach Earth, a bit over 8 minutes, and about 5.5 hours to reach the average distance of Pluto, the most distant planet. A "light year" is about 1600 times further, an enormous distance. The biggest baseline available for measuring such distances is the diameter of the Earth's orbit, 300,000,000 kilometers. The Earth's motion around the Sun makes it move back and forth in space, so that on dates separated by half a year, its positions are 300,000,000 kilometers apart. In addition, the entire solar system also moves through space, but that motion is not periodic and therefore its effects can be separated. And how much do the stars shift when viewed from two points 300,000,000 km apart? Actually, very, very little. For many years astronomers struggled in vain to observe the difference. Only in 1838 were definite parallaxes measured for some of the nearest stars--for Alpha Centauri by Henderson from South Africa, for Vega by Friedrich von Struve and for 61 Cygni by Friedrich Bessel.

Such observations demand enormous precision. Where a circle is divided into 360 degrees (360), each degree is divided into 60 minutes (60')--also called "minutes of arc" to distinguish them from minutes of time--and each minute contains 60 seconds of arc (60"). All observed parallaxes are less than 1", at the limit of the resolving power of even large ground-based telescopes. In measuring star distances, astronomers frequently use the parsec, the distance to a star whose yearly parallax is 1"--one second of arc. One parsec equals 3.26 light years, but as already noted, no star is that close to us. Alpha Centauri, the sun-like star nearest to our solar system, has a distance of 4.3 years and a parallax of 0.75". Alpha Centauri is not a name, but a designation. Astronomers designate stars in each constellation by letters of the Greek alphabet--alpha, beta, gamma, delta and so forth, and "Alpha Centauri" means the brightest star in the constellation of Centaurus, located high in the southern skies. You need to be south of the equator to see it well.

(8c) The Moon's Distance--1

Aristarchus around 270 BC derived the Moon's distance from the duration of a lunar eclipse (Hipparchus later found an independent method). It was commonly accepted in those days that the Earth was a sphere (although its size was only calculated a few years later, by Eratosthenes ). Astronomers also believed that the Earth was the center of the universe, and that Sun, Moon, planets and stars all orbited around it. It was only natural, then, that Aristarchus assumed that the Moon moved in a large circle around Earth. Let R be the radius of that circle and T the time it takes the Moon to go around once, about one month. In that time the Moon covers a distance of 2 R, where ~ 3.1415926... (pronounced "pi") is a mathematical constant, the ratio (circumference/diameter) in a circle. An eclipse of the Moon occurs when the Moon passes through the shadow of the Earth, on the opposite side from the Sun (therefore, it must be a full Moon). If r is the radius of the Earth, the shadow's width is close to 2r. Let t be the time it takes the mid-point of the Moon to cross the center of the shadow, about 3 hours (in eclipses of the longest duration, when the Moon crosses the center of the shadow). If the Moon moves around Earth at a constant speed--and it takes time T to cover 2 R ~ 6.28R, and time t to cover 2r--then

6.28 R / 2 r
From this Aristarchus obtained

T/t

R/r

60

which fits the average distance of the Moon accepted today, 60 Earth radii.

A Few Extra Details

The word "about" was used here more than once. For instance, the orbital period of the Moon was stated to be "about" one month. In fact, the length of the "lunar month" from one new Moon to the next (or from one full Moon to the next) is 29.53 days, but the Moon's orbital period is actually 2.21 days shorter (this is discussed in the section on the calendar). Viewed from Earth, a "new Moon" (occurring between the time a thin crescent is last seen before sunrise and the time one is seen shortly after sunset) happens when the Moon in its apparent motion around the sky overtakes the Sun. However, by the time of the next new Moon, the Sun's position in the sky has already shifted. If the Sun takes 12 months to go around the sky (or around the ecliptic, or around the zodiac), then in one month it completes 1/12 of its circuit. The Moon must therefore complete [1+(1/12)] circuits to catch up with the Sun again, and the lunar month ("synodic period") is about 1/12 of a month longer than the actual period of 27.32 days. Also, the Earth's shadow has only approximately the width of 2r. It would have very nearly a width of 2r if the Sun were a point-like light source (exactly that width if it were infinitely far away). Actually, however, the Sun is large enough to appear as a disk which covers about half a degree of the sky. As a result, the Earth's shadow is not a cylinder but a gradually narrowing cone, and at the Moon's distance it is already about 25% narrower than 2r. Here is another way of looking at the same process. Suppose we observe the eclipse from the Moon. Seen from there, the Earth moves from east to west--from A to B in the drawing, assuming the eclipse is of greatest length (i.e. the middle of the Earth passes in front of the Sun). The eclipse begins when the last bit of the western edge of the Sun passes point A (bottom of the drawing shown) and ends when the first bit of the eastern edge of the Sun pokes out at point B. That takes less time than it takes for the center of the Sun to pass from A to B (top drawing) which would be the duration of the eclipse if the Sun were a tiny point source, located at its middle.

(8d) How distant is the Moon?--2

Hipparchus, who used an eclipse of the Moon to deduce the precession of the equinoxes (here), used a total eclipse of the Sun--probably in 129 BC--to estimate how far the Moon was. That distance had also been derived from a lunar eclipse by Aristachus--see here. That eclipse was total at the Hellespont--the Dardanelles, part of the narrow strait that separates the European and Asian parts of Turkey--but only 4/5 of the Sun were covered in Alexandria of Egypt, further to the south. Hipparchus knew that when the Sun was eclipsed, it and the Moon occupied the same spot on the sphere of the heavens. The reason, he assumed, was that the Moon passed between us and the Sun. He believed that the Sun was much more distant than the Moon, as Aristarchus of Samos had concluded, about a century earlier, from observing the time when the Moon was exactly half full (see sections #8c and #9a).. He also assumed that the peak of the eclipse occurred at the same time at both locations (not assured, but luckily not too far off), and he then carried out the following calculation.

The Eclipse

In a total eclipse of the Sun, the Moon just barely covers the Sun. The Sun itself is so distant that when viewed from anywhere on Earth, it covers practically the same patch of the sky, with a width of about 0.5. Hipparchus concentrated on point E at the edge of the Moon (drawing), which during totality, when viewed from the Hellespont (point B) just overlapped point D on the edge of the Sun. Viewed from Alexandria (point A), at that same moment, the point E only overlapped point C on the Sun, about 1/5 solar diameter short of the edge--which was why the eclipse there was not total. One-fifth of the Sun's diameter covers about 0.1 in the sky, so the small angle (alpha, Greek A) between the two directions measured about 0.1 degrees. That angle is the parallax of the edge of the Moon, viewed from the above two locations. It is unlikely that Hipparchus knew the distance AB, but he probably knew the latitudes of the Hellespont and Alexandria. The local latitude can be shown to be

equal to the elevation of the celestial pole above the horizon and today can be readily deduced by observing the height of Polaris, the pole star above the horizon. In the time of Hipparchus the pole of the heavens wasn't near Polaris (because of the precession of the equinoxes), but Hipparchus, who had mapped the positions of about 850 stars, must have known its position quite well. The latitude of the Hellespont (from a modern atlas) is about 40 20' (40 degrees and 20 minutes, 60 minutes per degree), while that of Alexandria is about 31 20', a difference of 9. We will also assume Alexandria is exactly due south. If furthermore r is the radius of the Earth, then the circumference of the Earth 2R, where = 3.1415926... ("pi", Greek lower-case P) is the ratio between the circumference and diameter of any circle. Since the circumference also equals 360, we get AB = (2r/360) 9 where the dot marks multiplication (algebra's equivalent to the x symbol).

The distance R to the Moon

The points AB are also located on another circle, centered on the Moon. The radius in that case is the distance R to the Moon, and because the arc AB covers 0.1, we get AB = (2 R/360)0.1 Strictly speaking, each of the two arcs AB expressed in the above equations is measured along a different circle, with a different radius (and the two circles curve in opposite ways). However, in both cases AB covers only a small part of the circle, so that as an approximation we may regard each of the arcs as equal to the straight-line distance AB. That assumption allows us to regard the two expressions as equal and to write (2R/360)0.1 = (2r/360)9 Multiplying both sides by 360 and dividing by 2 give 0.1 R = 9 r Dividing by (0.1 r) R/r = 90 suggesting the Moon's distance is 90 Earth radii, an overestimate of about 50%.

A more accurate calculation

One reason an excessive value was obtained is that the Moon was assumed to be overhead at A or B. Actually, it is likely to be at some significant angle to the overhead direction, the "zenith" (see drawing). Then the section cut by the angle from the circle of radius

R around E is not AB but AF (second drawing), which is smaller. Taking this into account reduces the distance. We don't know where the Sun was during the 129 BC eclipse, but it must have been on the ecliptic (the words are obviously related!), which places it within 23.5 of the celestial equator, on either side. Assuming it was on the equator (that is, it passed overhead on the Earth's equator) and south of the reported observations (i.e. the eclipse occurred near noon) one can make a crude estimate of the correction, using simple trigonometry (see section M-8). The Hellespont is around latitude of 40 degrees, and as the drawing shows, that is also the angle between the Moon's direction and the zenith. From the drawing (x marks multiplication) AF = AB cos 40 = 0.766 AB Repeating the preceding calculation for AF AF = (2R/ 360)0.1 AF = 0.766 AB = 0.766(2r/ 360)9 and in the end R/r = 900.766 = 69

Note
Some astronomers have questioned whether Hipparchus used the eclipse of 128 BC-which occurred during his lifetime--or instead used records of an earlier one in 190 BC, which also passed not far from the Hellespont, along a very similar track. The paths of those eclipses and many others can be found in Fred Espenak's atlas of eclipses, accessible from the NASA eclipse page which he maintains, at http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/eclipse.html Eclipse paths are at http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/SEatlas/SEatlas.html

Final comments
According to "A History of Astronomy" by A. Pannekoek, the result obtained by Hipparchus was between 62 and 73 Earth radii. Today we know the average distance is about 60 radii, varying by a few Earth radii either way because of the ellipticity of the Moon's orbit. In the absence of accurate timing, the method is almost guaranteed to produce an

overestimate. The Earth rotates beneath the shadow spot cast by the Moon, which makes that spot sweep over a long strip, hitting many different locations at different times. The Hellespont was just one of many places where the eclipse was total. Similarly, Alexandria was just one of many locations where 4/5 of the Sun was covered. Randomly selecting point B from the first group and point A from the second may give a much longer baseline AB and a much larger (and incorrect) distance of the Moon. The fact Alexandria is almost exactly south of the Hellespont does not guarantee their peak eclipse times are the same, just that they are not too different.

Does history repeat itself?

The total eclipse of the Sun on August 11, 1999 passed just a few hundred kilometers north of the one which Hipparchus used. Its path of totality extended from the ocean off New England, through England and central Europe, all the way across India. An eclipse map of the relevant area is shown on the right--the double line outlines the region of totality, and the lines parallel to it give locations where 90%, 80% etc of the Sun were covered. As can be seen, the totality path crossed the Black Sea around 11:15 am Universal Time (1:15 pm local time) about 300 km. northeast of the Hellespont, and in Alexandria 71% of the Sun's diameter were covered (rather than 80% as in the Hipparchus eclipse) around 11:35 a.m. It will take a bit of work (a quicker way is sketched out at the bottom) but you can, if you wish, duplicate the calculation by Hipparchus for that eclipse (use a calculator, if possible) . 1. First, print out this page with its map. If the quality of the print is poor, use a ruler to draw horizontal lines of latitude 30 (through Cairo, Egypt), and 40 (through Ankara, Turkey). Actually, those lines slant and curve a little, but in this crude calculation, the slant can be ignored. 2. With a ruler measure the distance between the two lines. That distance equals 10 degrees of latitude. 3. Mark on your map a point on the southern shore of the Black Sea where the line of totality passed. In the lifetime of Hipparchus the city of Heraclea stood there, and Hipparchus might have used it instead of the Hellespont, had his eclipse been like that of 1999. 4. Measure with the ruler the distance from Alexandria to the point you have

marked on the line of totality. Use the scale you calculated to derive the corresponding distance measured in degrees of latitude. 5. The eclipse occurred on 11 August, about halfway between midsummer and the fall equinox. At noon on midsummer day, June 21, the Sun is 23.5 north of the equator; on the autumn equinox, September 21, it is right on the celestial equator. On August 11 it might be about halfway between those extremes, some 12 north of the equator. The chosen totality site is around latitude 42, so the angle there at noon, between zenith and the direction to the Sun, is around (42-12) = 30. For the cosine of that angle, see here. 6. Given that 71% of the Sun was covered in Alexandria, and assuming that the edge of the Moon then reached 0.71 of the way across the Sun (strictly speaking, not the same), you can now carry out the calculation of Hipparchus for the 1999 eclipse There also exists a quicker way. Note from the map that at the Hellespont 90% of the Sun was covered on 11 August 1999, which means that in one's field of view there, the front of the Moon's edge was 10% of the Sun's diameter from the edge of the Sun. In Alexandria the same argument shows the edge of the Moon 29% of the diameter from the edge. The lines of view from the two sites to the edge of the occulting Moon, at the height of the eclipse, therefore made an angle equal to 19% of the visual diameter of the Sun--close enough to the 20% which Hipparchus obtained!

As the figure above shows, the path of totality on 11 August 1999 passed over Bucharest, the capital city of Romania. The Romanian government commemorated the event by drawing a map of the strip of totality over Romania (continuing the one drawn above) on its 2000-Lei currency note. Click here to see a copy of that note (takes 132K of memory).

9a) May Earth be Revolving around the Sun?

Aristarchus of Samos, an early Greek astronomer (about 310 to 230 BC), was the first to suggest that the Earth revolved around the Sun, rather than the other way around. He gave the first estimate of the distance of the Moon (section (8c)), and it was his careful observation of a lunar eclipse--pin-pointing the Sun's position on the opposite side of the sky--that enabled Hipparchus, 169 years later, to deduce the precession of the equinoxes). Except for one calculation--an estimate of the distance and size of the Sun--no work of Aristarchus has survived. However, one could guess why he believed that the Sun, not the Earth, was the central body around which the other one revolved. His calculation suggested that the Sun was much bigger than the Earth--a watermelon, compared to a peach--and it seemed unlikely that the larger body would orbit one so much smaller. Here we will develop a line of reasoning somewhat like the one Aristarchus used (for his actual calculation, see reference at the end). Aristarchus started from an observation of a lunar eclipse (section (8c)). At such a time the Moon moves through the Earth's shadow, and what Aristarchus saw convinced him that the shadow was about twice as wide as the Moon. Suppose the width of the shadow was also the width of the Earth (actually it is less--see below, also here). Then the diameter of the Moon would be half the Earth's.

Aristarchus next tried to observe exactly when half the moon was sunlit. For this to happen, the angle Earth-Moon-Sun (angle EMS in the drawing here) must be exactly 90 degrees. Knowing the Sun's motion across the sky, Aristarchus could also locate the point P in the sky, on the Moon's orbit (near the ecliptic), which was exactly 90 degrees from the direction of the Sun as seen from Earth. If the Sun were very, very far away, the half-moon would also be on this line, at a position like M' (drawn with a different distance scale, for clarity). Aristarchus estimated, however, that the direction to the half-Moon made a small angle with the direction to P, about 1/30 of a right angle or 3 degrees. As the drawing shows, the angle ESM (Earth-Sun-Moon) then also equals 3 degrees. If Rs is the Sun's distance and Rm the Moon's, a full 360 circle around the

Sun at the Earth's distance has length of 2Rs ( = 3.14159...). The distance Rm = EM is then about as long as an arc of that circle, covering only 3 or 1/120 of the full circle. It follows that Rm = 2Rs/120 ~ Rs/19 Therefore Rs/Rm ~ 19 making the Sun (according to Aristarchus) 19 times more distant than the Moon. Since the two have very nearly the same size in the sky, even though one of them is 19 times more distant, the Sun must also be 19 times larger in diameter than the Moon. If now the Moon's diameter is half the size of the Earth's, the Sun must be 19/2 or nearly 10 times wider than the Earth. The effect described in the figures of section (8c) modifies this argument somewhat (details here), making the Earth 3 times wider than the Moon, not twice. If Aristarchus had observed correctly, that would make the Sun's diameter 19/3 times--a bit more than 6 times--that the Earth. Actually, he had not! His method does not really work, because in actuality the position of the half-Moonis very close to the line OP. The angle , far from being 3 degrees, is actually so small that Aristarchus could never have measured it, especially without a telescope. The actual distance to the Sun is about 400 times that of the Moon, not 19 times, and the Sun's diameter is similarly about 400 times the Moon's and more than 100 times the Earth's But it makes no difference. The main conclusion, that the Sun is vastly bigger than Earth, still holds. Aristarchus could just as well have said that the angle was at most 3 degrees, in which case the Sun was at least 19 times more distant than the Moon, and its size at least 19/3 times that of Earth. In fact he did say so--but he also claimed it was less than 43/6 times larger than the Earth (Greeks used simple fractions--they knew nothing about decimals), which was widely off the mark. But it makes no difference: as long as the Sun is much bigger than the Earth, it makes more sense that it, rather than the Earth, is at the center. Good logic, but few accepted it, not even Hipparchus and Ptolemy. In fact, the opposite argument was made: if the Earth orbited the Sun, it would be on opposite sides of the Sun every 6 months. If that distance was as big as Aristarchus claimed it to be, would not the positions of the stars differ when viewed from two spots so far apart? We now know the answer: the stars are so far from us, that even with the two points 20 times further apart than Aristarchus had claimed, the best telescopes can barely observe the shift of the stars. It took nearly 18 centuries before the ideas of Aristarchus were revived by Copernicus.

Postscript
In the year 1600, William Gilbert, physician to Britain's Queen Elizabeth I and the first investigator of magnetism, published De Magnete ("On the Magnet" in Latin, in which the book was written). That book marks the end of medieval thought, built largely on citations of ancient authors, and the start of modern science based on experiments. (For a large web site containing two reviews of the book and the history of the Earth's magnetism from Gilbert to our time, see here.) Gilbert was a staunch supporter of Copernicus (see section #9c), but it is interesting to note that he still quotes the result of Aristarchus (Gilbert's "Book 6", section 2, about 2/3 through the section), writing "The Sun in its greatest eccentricity has a distance of 1142 semi-diameters of the Earth." Aristarchus estimated the Sun's distance to be slightly below 20 times that of the Moon, which was at a distance of about 60 Earth radii, and 20x60 = 1200, close to Gilbert's figure. In 1800 years, no one had checked that result! The introduction to Gilbert' book was written by Edward Wright, who used that value to derive the velocity of the Sun, if it were to circle the Earth every 24 hours, ariving at a speed so high that he considered it impossible: Then whether it would seem more probable, that the aequator of the terrestrial globe, in a single second (that is, in about the time in which one walking quickly will be able to advance only a single pace) can acomplish a quarter of a British mile (of which sixty equal one degree of a great circle on the Earth), or that the aequator of the primum mobile in the same time should traverse five thousand miles with celerity ineffable... swifter that the wings of lightning, if indeed they maintain the truth which especially assail the motion of the earth. This is the same argument Aristarchus could have made, and probably did.

(9a) May Earth be Revolving around the Sun?

Aristarchus of Samos, an early Greek astronomer (about 310 to 230 BC), was the first to suggest that the Earth revolved around the Sun, rather than the other way around. He gave the first estimate of the distance of the Moon (section (8c)), and it was his careful observation of a lunar eclipse--pin-pointing the Sun's position on the opposite side of the sky--that enabled Hipparchus, 169 years later, to deduce the precession of the equinoxes). Except for one calculation--an estimate of the distance and size of the Sun--no work of Aristarchus has survived. However, one could guess why he believed that the Sun, not the Earth, was the central body around which the other one revolved. His calculation suggested that the Sun was much bigger than the Earth--a watermelon, compared to a peach--and it seemed unlikely that the larger body would orbit one so much smaller. Here we will develop a line of reasoning somewhat like the one Aristarchus used (for his actual calculation, see reference at the end). Aristarchus started from an observation of a lunar eclipse (section (8c)). At such a time the Moon moves through the Earth's shadow, and what Aristarchus saw convinced him that the shadow was about twice as wide as the Moon. Suppose the width of the shadow was also the width of the Earth (actually it is less--see below, also here). Then the diameter of the Moon would be half the Earth's.

Aristarchus next tried to observe exactly when half the moon was sunlit. For this to happen, the angle Earth-Moon-Sun (angle EMS in the drawing here) must be exactly 90 degrees. Knowing the Sun's motion across the sky, Aristarchus could also locate the point P in the sky, on the Moon's orbit (near the ecliptic), which was exactly 90 degrees from the direction of the Sun as seen from Earth. If the Sun were very, very far away, the half-moon would also be on this line, at a position like M' (drawn with a different distance scale, for clarity). Aristarchus estimated, however, that the direction to the half-Moon made a small angle with the direction to P, about 1/30 of a right angle or 3 degrees. As the drawing shows, the angle ESM (Earth-Sun-Moon) then also equals 3 degrees. If Rs is the Sun's distance and Rm the Moon's, a full 360 circle around the

Sun at the Earth's distance has length of 2Rs ( = 3.14159...). The distance Rm = EM is then about as long as an arc of that circle, covering only 3 or 1/120 of the full circle. It follows that Rm = 2Rs/120 ~ Rs/19 Therefore Rs/Rm ~ 19 making the Sun (according to Aristarchus) 19 times more distant than the Moon. Since the two have very nearly the same size in the sky, even though one of them is 19 times more distant, the Sun must also be 19 times larger in diameter than the Moon. If now the Moon's diameter is half the size of the Earth's, the Sun must be 19/2 or nearly 10 times wider than the Earth. The effect described in the figures of section (8c) modifies this argument somewhat (details here), making the Earth 3 times wider than the Moon, not twice. If Aristarchus had observed correctly, that would make the Sun's diameter 19/3 times--a bit more than 6 times--that the Earth. Actually, he had not! His method does not really work, because in actuality the position of the half-Moonis very close to the line OP. The angle , far from being 3 degrees, is actually so small that Aristarchus could never have measured it, especially without a telescope. The actual distance to the Sun is about 400 times that of the Moon, not 19 times, and the Sun's diameter is similarly about 400 times the Moon's and more than 100 times the Earth's But it makes no difference. The main conclusion, that the Sun is vastly bigger than Earth, still holds. Aristarchus could just as well have said that the angle was at most 3 degrees, in which case the Sun was at least 19 times more distant than the Moon, and its size at least 19/3 times that of Earth. In fact he did say so--but he also claimed it was less than 43/6 times larger than the Earth (Greeks used simple fractions--they knew nothing about decimals), which was widely off the mark. But it makes no difference: as long as the Sun is much bigger than the Earth, it makes more sense that it, rather than the Earth, is at the center. Good logic, but few accepted it, not even Hipparchus and Ptolemy. In fact, the opposite argument was made: if the Earth orbited the Sun, it would be on opposite sides of the Sun every 6 months. If that distance was as big as Aristarchus claimed it to be, would not the positions of the stars differ when viewed from two spots so far apart? We now know the answer: the stars are so far from us, that even with the two points 20 times further apart than Aristarchus had claimed, the best telescopes can barely observe the shift of the stars. It took nearly 18 centuries before the ideas of Aristarchus were revived by Copernicus.

Postscript
In the year 1600, William Gilbert, physician to Britain's Queen Elizabeth I and the first investigator of magnetism, published De Magnete ("On the Magnet" in Latin, in which the book was written). That book marks the end of medieval thought, built largely on citations of ancient authors, and the start of modern science based on experiments. (For a large web site containing two reviews of the book and the history of the Earth's magnetism from Gilbert to our time, see here.) Gilbert was a staunch supporter of Copernicus (see section #9c), but it is interesting to note that he still quotes the result of Aristarchus (Gilbert's "Book 6", section 2, about 2/3 through the section), writing "The Sun in its greatest eccentricity has a distance of 1142 semi-diameters of the Earth." Aristarchus estimated the Sun's distance to be slightly below 20 times that of the Moon, which was at a distance of about 60 Earth radii, and 20x60 = 1200, close to Gilbert's figure. In 1800 years, no one had checked that result! The introduction to Gilbert' book was written by Edward Wright, who used that value to derive the velocity of the Sun, if it were to circle the Earth every 24 hours, ariving at a speed so high that he considered it impossible: Then whether it would seem more probable, that the aequator of the terrestrial globe, in a single second (that is, in about the time in which one walking quickly will be able to advance only a single pace) can acomplish a quarter of a British mile (of which sixty equal one degree of a great circle on the Earth), or that the aequator of the primum mobile in the same time should traverse five thousand miles with celerity ineffable... swifter that the wings of lightning, if indeed they maintain the truth which especially assail the motion of the earth. This is the same argument Aristarchus could have made, and probably did.

(9a-1) The Earth's Shadow

In a lunar eclipse, if the width of the shadow of the Earth is twice the width of the Moon, then the width of the Earth itself is (very nearly) three times that of the Moon--not twice, as one might perhaps think. Here is why. The Sun is not a point of light but an extended source, with a disk covering a circlular patch in the sky, about 0.5 across. This makes the shadow of the Earth not a cylinder, stretching to infinity without narrowing down, but a cone, with an angle of 0.5 across its apex C (drawing). AB is here the diameter of the Earth, and the directions AC and BC represents rays from opposite edges of the Sun's disk, rays whose directions differ by 0.5.

If x is the diameter of the Moon and R its distance, then according to Aristarchus, the width ED of the shadow at distance R equals 2x (actually, 2.5x comes closer to the mark). We add to the drawing points H and K so that HA = KD = x. The width of the Moon as seen from point H is KD = x, and since the Moon's size in the sky is about the same as the Sun's, the angle KHD (shaded) should also equal 0.5. We now extend the line AD = R a further distance R to point F. Then the two shaded triangles HKD and KFD are congruent (= same in size and shape) and have the same 0.5 angle as the angle at C. Indeed, one can prove now that the triangles GFC and AHD are also congruent to the two shaded ones. It follows then that AC = 3R, and from simple proportions (see drawing) AB = 3x.

(9b) The Planets

Most stars we observe form fixed constellations in the sky, undergoing daily motion (e.g. rising and setting) but maintaining fixed positions relative to each other--like the stars of Orion, or the Big Dipper. The ancients however noted that 5 stars constantly moved--all following close to the paths of the Sun and Moon across the heavens, i.e., close to the ecliptic. The Greeks called them planets, i.e. wanderes, a name still used.

Venus and Mercury

The five planets known to the ancients were named after principal Greek gods, later replaced by their Roman equivalents: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. They were relatively bright-Venus and Jupiter can be brighter than any fixed star--though their brightness seemed to vary. Venus and Mercury never appear far from the Sun and (outside the polar regions, at least) are only visible just after sunset or before sunrise, suggesting that those planets were confined near the Sun. The Greeks called Venus "Hesperus" when it

appeared as the evening star and "Phosphorus" when as morning star it rose before sunrise, though they realized both were the same object. Mercury, which is fainter and closer to the Sun, is particularly hard to detect by eye and this only when its visible position is far from the Sun's. All planets seemed to move among the stars in the same direction as the Moon (and of the Sun)--with one strange variation: sometimes their apparent motion is temporarily reversed ("retrograde motion"). That is most evident with Mercury and Venus, which shuttle back and forth across the position of the Sun. As the Sun moved among the stars--along the constellations of the zodiac--these planets sometimes move the same way and add their motion to that of the Sun, but sometimes their apparent motion opposes the one of the Sun, causing them to seem to move backwards or "retrograde."

Mars, Jupiter and Saturn

The other three planets visible to the eye can be seen anywhere along the ecliptic--even at midnight, directly opposite the Sun, which was when they appear brightest. Mars seems to move the fastest, Jupiter next, and Saturn the slowest. But all exhibit that puzzling quirk--near the point of their celestial path exactly opposite the Sun ("opposition"), their motion among the stars temporarily turns around.

Schematic drawing of the apparent reversal of motion (retrograde motion) observed with Mars. Positions 1...7 of the Earth correspond to positions 1...7 of Mars, which moves more slowly. As the Earth overtakes Mars (positions 4 and 5) the planet's position in the sky moves backwards.

Today we undestand all that very well (see image above). Planets are spherical objects like Earth--Venus, Mercury and Mars are smaller, Jupiter and Saturn much bigger. Earth is a planet too and others exist as well (too faint to be seen without a telescopes), all orbiting the sun on or near the plane of the ecliptic. Their speed however varies--the closer to the Sun, the faster (see section 10a and in particular Kepler's third law). Therefore, when the three outer planets are near opposition, the Earth orbiting closer to the Sun overtakes them, and they seem to move backwards. The retrograde motion of the two inner planets has a similar cause. Being closer to the Sun, they overtake the Earth in their motion.

Summary of what is now known about Planets

A section is being added to "Stargazers" about planets of the solar system, but for completeness, here is a quick summary of the components of the solar system--

besides the fact that all of them orbit the Sun, including Earth and two major planets too dim for ancient astronomers to have seen. Four distinct classes of objects are usually recognized: 1. Major planets, in order of distance from the Sun--Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. All but the inner two have satellites, and all four outer ones have rings as well, composed of small orbiting chunks of matter. Asteroids or minor planets, most but not all between Mars and Jupiter. Ranging in diameter up to about 500 km. The "Kuiper Belt" of icy objects outside the orbit of Neptune, of which the best known (though as of now only the second largest) is Pluto, discovered in 1930 and about the size of our Moon. The belt is named after the Belgian astronomer Gerard Kuiper, may extend to twice the distance of Neptune and is estimated to consist of as many as 100,000 objects (about 1000 of them identified so far), many only 100 km across or smaller. Comets, traditionally divided into "non returning" (official name, "long period comets") and "periodic" ones." Non-returning comets are believed to come from the "Oort cloud," a huge near-spherical collection of frozen chunks on the distant fringes of the solar system. They are loosely bound to the Sun, and now and then the gravity of a distant star is believed to slightly change the motion of some and send them sunwards. They become visible as comets when sunlight evaporates some of their surface to create the comet's glow and tail. Periodic comets were once believed to have started as non-returning ones but to have been diverted by the pull of one of the larger planets. They are now widely held to arrive from the Kuiper belt as a class of objects known as Centaurs.

2. 3.

4.

Early History, False Leads

As noted earlier, Aristarchus of Samos proposed that the Earth revolved around the Sun, but the idea was rejected by later Greek astronomers, in particular by Hipparchus. Ptolemy, living in Egypt in the 2nd century AD, expressed the consensus when he argued that all fixed stars were on some distant sphere which rotated around the Earth. Ptolemy tried to assemble and write down all that was known in his day about the heavens in "The Great Treatise," now known as the "Almagest," a corruption of its Arab name. (An annotated translation by G.J. Toomre was published in 1984 by Princeton University Press and is now available in paperback for $39.50. See p. 120, Nature vol. 397, 14 January 1999.) To explain the motion of planets, Ptolemy used a theory which started with

Hipparchus. Following the work of Aristarchus and Hipparchus, it was already accepted that the Moon moved around Earth. Ptolemy assumed that the Sun, planets and the distant stars (whatever those were) also moved around the Earth (For a dissenting opinion, see here). To the Greeks, the circle represented perfection, and Ptolemy assumed Moon, Sun and stars moved in circles too. Since the motion was not exactly uniform (later explained by Kepler's laws, sect.#12a), he assumed that these circles were centered some distance away from the Earth. While the Sun moved around Earth, Venus and Mercury obviously moved around it, on circles of their own, centered near the Sun. But what about Mars, Jupiter and Saturn? Cleverly, Ptolemy proposed that like Venus and Mercury, each of them also rotated around a point in the sky that orbited around Earth like the Sun, except that those points were empty. The backtracking of the planets now looked similar to the backtracking of Venus and Mercury. The center carrying each of those planets accounted for the planet's regular motion, but to this the planet's own motion around that center had to be added, and sometimes the sum of the two made the planet appear (for a while) to advance backwards. This "explanation" left open the question what the planets, Sun and Moon were, and why they displayed such strange motions. But worse, it was also inaccurate. As the positions of the planets were measured more and more accurately, additional corrections had to be introduced. Yet Ptolemy's view of the solar system dominated European astronomy for over 1000 years. One reason was that astronomy almost stopped in its tracks during the decline and fall of the Roman Empire and during the "dark ages" that followed. The study of the heavens continued in the Arab world, under Arab rulers, but of all the achievements of Arab astronomers, the one which exerted the greatest influence was the preservation and translation of Ptolemy's books, and thus of their erroneous views.

P-1) The Solar System--Links and Tables

Beta version, February 2008. If changes are needed, please tell! This section opens a collection of 13 additional sections on selected members of the solar system. This is no more than an introductory overview, supplementing "From Stargazers to Starships." Much more can be found in books and on the web, in particular in www.nineplanets by Bill Arnett (the "nine" on its heading is crossed out and overwritten with an "8", but the old URL remains) and in various Wikipedia web pages. Please note that these sections were added after the rest of "Stargazers" was in place. Some links therefore direct the

user to material covered in later sections. Sorry! The central question in science is not "what are the facts?" but "how do we know?" and these web pages tell of many discoveries. Such information may not have many applications (unlike the laws and math in other sections of "Stargazers"), but instead provides insight into the way science works, into its community and its instruments. Readers whose interest is aroused (may their numbers increase!) can find much more in books, web sites and even journals. This summary (with several tabulations below) is followed by 13 additional sections: 2. Mercury--hottest, small, closest to the Sun, moon-like, magnetic, with odd axial spin. 3. Venus--thick atmosphere, hot, non-magnetic, very slow spin which may even be locked onto Earth. 4. Earth--abode of life, benefiting from moderate temperatures, oceans of liquid water and nitrogen-rich atmosphere. Large moon, magnetic core and well-developed magnetosphere. 5. Mars--the one most like Earth, but smaller, cold, very thin atmosphere, polar caps, giant volcanoes, non-central magnetism, 2 tiny moons. 6. Asteroids--Small and numerous orbiting rockpiles. A rare possibility of one hitting Earth. 7. Jupiter--largest, most strongly magnetized, huge radiation belt, polar aurora, colorful active atmosphere 8. Io and other Jupiter moons--4 big moons: outer ones icy, innermost Io volcanic. Many small moons and a thin ring 9. Saturn--Second to Jupiter in mass and magnetism, famous rings, many moons. --------------------10. Telescopes--The astronomer's prime tool, indispensable in studying the distant solar system (and the rest of the universe). The first ones to observe the sky, in 1609, revolutionized astronomy. --------------------11. Uranus--Gas giant discovered 1781, axis almost in the ecliptic, magnetic axis steeply inclined to it. 12. Neptune--Gas giant resembling Uranus, magnetic axis steeply inclined, its largest satellite in retrograde orbit. 13. Pluto and the Kuiper Belt--Small icy planets, quite numerous. 14. Comets and other small objects--Some come from the distant "Oort cloud," swing around the Sun, then return to deep space. Others are periodic, depleted and young, and may have come from the Kuiper belt, perhaps as "Centaur objects." And there is Sedna, still unclassified.

Tables of the Major Planets

Note: These lists may limit accuracy. All angles are in reference to the ecliptic, the orbital plane of

the Earth (or rather, the perpendicular to that plane). The orbital inclination, for instance, is the angle between the perpendicular to the orbital plane and the perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic. Orbits of major planets are inclined only slightly to each other. Many entries in these tables compare properties to those of Earth. The measured values for Earth: Mean distance from the Sun ("Astronomical Unit") 149,598,000 km (usually rounded to 150 million); Orbital period, 365.256 solar days; mean radius, 6371 km; mass 5.9736 1024kg; acceleration due to gravity 9.8 m/sec2, surface magnetic field at the equator about 30,000 nT. Oblateness if the ratio between (requatrpolar) and requat. Notice also how eccentric the orbit of Mercury is! Mean Mean Orbital Orbital Orbital Planet Dist. from radius, rel. Oblateness: eccentricity period inclination Sun, AU to Earth Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune 0.381 0.7233 1 1.624 5.204 9.582 19.23 30.1 0.2056 0.0068 0.0167 0.0934 0.04877 0.0557 0.0444 0.0112 87.97 d. 0.6152 yr. 1 yr. 1.88 11.86 29.66 84.32 164.79 7.005 3.3947 0 1.85 1.3 2.49 0.77 1.768 0.3829 0.9499 1 0.532 10.86 9.0 3.97 3.86 small small 0.003353 0.0059 0.06487 0.098 0.0229 0.0171

Note on table below: Gravity, escape velocity and absolute surface temperature are for the visible outline. At Mercury, day and night temperatures differ greatly; for the gas giants, parentheses indicate that temperature increases rapidly with depth in the observed atmosphere. Note that the rotation of Venus is very slow, and technically (minus sign) in the opposite sense. Abs. Mass gravity Mean Escape Rotat. Planet surface (Earth=1) (Earth=1) density vel. period temp. Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune 0.055 0.815 1 0.107 317.8 95.15 14.54 17.15 0.38 0.907 1 0.377 (2.364) (0.916) (0.886) (1.14) 5.427 5.204 5.515 3.934 1.326 0.687 1.27 1.638 4.25 km/s 10.46 11.186 5.027 59.5 35.5 21.3 23.5 58.646 d. 243.02d. 1436 min 1477 min 9.925 hr. 10.7 hr. 17.2 16.1 100(night) 700 (day) 735 287 227 (120) (88) (60) (55)

Note on table below: Magnetic polarity opposed to Earth's is indicated by minus sign. Since all angles are relative to the perpendicular to the ecliptic, the fact that Uranus and Venus have axes tilted above 90 means

that technically they spin in opposite direction from Earth. Note however that the axis of Uranus is almost in the ecliptic (inclin. near 90), while Venus spins very slowly. Where the field is dominated by a dipole near the center, its strength is given, relative to the Earth's; note that the inclination of the Earth's magnetic axis, often quoted at 10-11, has been rapidly decreasing in recent years. Magn. Rotat.axis Centr. dipole axis inclin (Earth=1) inclin. ~0 177.36 23.43 25.19 3.13 26.73 97.77 28.32 ~0.0006 ~0 1 off-center ~20,000 ~500 ~50 ~25 9.6 ~0 59 47 ~5 1 2 63 60+ 27 13 ? Surface press. (atm.) -93 1 .007 ---------

Planet Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune

Moons --