Go outside at 7:00p.m. and face the southwest. The crescent moon is easy to spot. Look just
below the crescent moon for a bright slightly reddish star like object. This is the planet Mars. Below the Moon and Mars is the bright red
star Antares, the brightest star in the constellation Scorpius. Further to the
West, or further to the right, almost out of view is the planet Saturn.
This is a multi dimensional view. The apparent close
positions of the Moon, Mars, Antares and Saturn is an illusion.
A beam of light takes only one second to travel
eight times around the earth. That same
beam of light traverses the distance from the sun to the earth in just 8
minutes. The light from the moon takes 1.26 seconds, Mars 12.7 minutes, Saturn
1.4 light hours. These four objects are
members of the family of objects that belong to the solar system.
The star Antares however, is so far away the light
that strikes your eye this evening left the star 553 years ago. That is to say it was produced when
Christopher Columbus
was but a boy of ten years old. The world had yet to hear of the artist known
as Michelangelo.
What will the world be like in the year 2567 when the beams of
light now leaving the star reach the earth? Just about everyone inhabiting the
earth now would have been long forgotten including those whose names are
regularly displayed in the headlines of today's morning news.
 |
| Christopher Columbus |
 |
| Michelangelo |
The name Antaries means the "rival of Mars." Easier to understand when we use the Greek word for Mars which is "Aries," That is, "Anti-Aries." Every two years the planet Mars and Aries can be seen riding the sky together. Since Aries is a red star and Mars is a red planet the question will arise as to which of them will outshine the other. The keen observer might note Mars wins the battle this time because it does appear slightly brighter than Antares.
If you wait until the next evening the moon would
have moved some 12 degrees to the East of its current location, Mars seems to
stand still with Antares and Saturn. It
will take a few evenings to establish Mars eastward movement with respect to
Antares but Saturn appears stationary
Our second scene takes place two years later. Mars has completed one circuit around the
sun, in front of each of the twelve Zodiacal constellations and once again
appears close to Antares. But now we see
in two years the Moon is replaced by the planet Saturn. It took Saturn two
years to appear to move from the right hand side of our first image to this,
the second image. It will take Saturn nearly thirty years before it makes it's
circuit around the Zodiacal constellations to once again appear with
Antares. Where will you be thirty years
from now? Will this approach of Saturn in 2016 be your first and last view of
the event?
We have to wait until September 8, 2016 for the
appearance of the moon. We observe Mars
has moved to the East, and Saturn has taken the place of the Moon, Mars and
Antares from the first view Monday evening.
With just these simple illustrations it is easy to
understand how the Greeks interpreted the motions in the sky as clockwork. The Antikythera mechanism mentioned in
previous posts lend verification to the concept that far off beyond the Eastern
horizon lies a mechanism capable of moving the real sky and all its individual
elements at their correct speeds and headings. The mechanism was cranked by
three goddesses known as the Fates.
Observers of the skies 10,000 years ago or more
noted the set of five wandering "stars." Today we call these planets: Mercury, Venus,
Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Attempts were made to try to predict the position of
these five with respect to the background stars. Always their predictions had a measurable
error.
"Build better measuring devices... change the
mathematical and physical models to fit the observations..." was the
solution. The same holds true
today. The positions of the planets are
known to great accuracies... but there is still today an observational error.
We can determine the distance from the center of
Earth to the center of the Moon to an accuracy whose error is equal to about
the distance across a paper clip. Why do we need to improve on this? Because
there is a measurable error. It may take
a more accurate set of gravitational laws than what Einstein provides, or
perhaps there are influences we have not yet taken into account. But there is
an error.
An excellent description on how we can measure Earth
- Moon distance to such great accuracy can be found on Google: "Einstein the Moon and the Long - Lost Soviet Reflector."
