Mon June 19, 2023 ANCIENT SUN TEMPLES
Stonehenge, built over forty centuries ago, is one of over a thousand circles of standing stones that can be found throughout the British Isles and Europe. On the first day of summer, the sun can be viewed perched above an outlying heelstone, as viewed through a central arch of stones. In ancient Egypt, temples were built so that at the summer solstice, the sun’s rays shone through tall columns to sanctuaries within. At the Bighorn medicine wheel in Wyoming, piles of carefully placed stones point toward the summer sunrise. For hundreds of years in New Mexico, a slender ray of sunlight – the sun dagger of the Anasazi – sliced through a petroglyph spiral on the first day of summer. And there is the Sun Temple, built by the Incas at Machu Pichu – but of course Peru is south of the equator, and now it is the winter solstice sun that is framed in this ancient observatory’s window.
Tue June 13, 2023 IROQUOIS CREATION MYTH
In an old Iroquois story, the world began when the great tree of light was plucked out of the ground of heaven, and Ataensic, the sky woman, who was wife to earth-holder, came down to the world below. Now at that time there was no land, only water as far as the eye could see. The birds of the air and the creatures of the water came together in council to decide where the sky woman would live. The mud turtle was chosen to support her, and Ataensic was set down on his shell. The others brought gravel and mud up from the bottom to place upon the turtle's back; and the land grew. Sky woman planted seeds from the great tree of light, so that the earth became a green place too. Now sky woman’s daughter had two sons: the Great Spirit and the Evil Spirit. From his mother’s face the Great Spirit made the sun; and from her body he made the moon and stars in the sky. And so it has been to this day.
Wed June 14, 2023 FLAG DAY
On June 14, 1777, our national flag was adopted by the Continental Congress. The flag held thirteen stars, one for each of the original colonies. The current U.S. flag has 50 stars, one for each state. The arrangement of stars on flags does not as a rule correspond to any actual constellation in the sky, and the U.S. flag has gone from a circle pattern to a series of rows and columns, and of course there was even an arrangement where the stars were made into a great star image, such as the one that flew over the fort in Fort Pierce when it was built back in 1838. Sometimes the stars on flags do reflect actual star patterns, such as the use of the Big Dipper and the North Star in the state flag of Alaska, or the use of the Southern Cross in the flags of Australia and New Zealand; and Brazil’s flag features the Southern Cross, Canis Major and Scorpius.
Thur June 15, 2023 HERCULES OVERHEAD
Late this evening, look toward the top of the sky. Up there is an undistinguished star pattern which looks something like a simple letter H. The H stands for Hercules, and while the constellation is not very prominent, the ancient Greek hero it represents was. Nearby constellations represent some of his 12 labors. There’s his first labor, the conquest of the Nemean lion – the constellation Leo, to the west of Hercules; or the second task, the destruction of the Hydra, below Leo. Hyppolyte, the queen of the Amazons, whose golden belt was task number 9, is represented by Virgo to the south. To the north is Draco the dragon who guarded the golden apples of the Hesperides, the three stars in the handle of the Big Dipper. And the great, carnivorous Stymphalian birds are present as the three bright stars of the summer triangle, Vega, Deneb and Altair, over in the eastern sky.
Fri June 16, 2023 WILLIAM PARSONS, LEVIATHAN BUILDER
William Parsons was born on June 17th, 1800. Forty years later, he built the Irish Leviathan. At sixteen tons, and with a primary mirror six feet across, the Leviathan would remain the world’s largest telescope for the next seventy years. It was so big that it couldn’t be rotated, so by leaning the instrument east to west, Parsons could observe objects for over a half hour. The Irish Leviathan was so powerful that he could actually see individual stars in distant galaxies like M51, the Whirlpool, roughly 40 million light years away! A lot of the colorful descriptive names of nebulas and galaxies were made up by Parsons – the whirlpool galaxy, the crab nebula, the Saturn nebula. Parson’s son continued his work, but his grandson had no interest in astronomy, and Leviathan was dismantled. But it was rebuilt in 1999.
