Searching for Identity in Our Little Corner

So that little orange light is Mars! I`ve been noticing it for quite sometime now and had a feeling that it could be a a planet, Mars or Venus. The night sky of 11th August 2003 was beautiful with a full moon towards the western part of the sky and the orange light of Mars directly overhead. I followed the motion of the orange light and observed that it travelled from the east towards the west, and forms an arc which symmetrically slices the night sky into two.

This is a Lahori`s observation... would like to know what others see at various locations.

A wonderful subject elegantly presented. A breath of fresh air as always. A much needed respite from the usual unsanitary banter of desi political muck which contaminates the streets of Chowk.com on any given day.

And while we are on the subject of cosmology, let me bring up something that is happening right now, much closer to home.

Attention sky gazers:

This month the Earth is catching up with Mars (their orbits pulling closer), an encounter that will culminate in the closest approach between the two planets in recorded history. The next time Mars may come this close will be in 2287.

Due to the way Jupiter`s gravity tugs on Mars and perturbs its orbit, astronomers can only be certain that Mars has not come this close to Earth in the last 5,000 years, but it may have been much longer. The encounter will culminate on August 27th, when Mars comes to within 34,649,589 miles and will be (other than the moon) the brightest object in the night sky. It will attain a magnitude of minus 2.9 and will appear 25.11 arc seconds wide. Mars will look as large, at a modest 75-power magnification, as the full moon will to the naked eye.

Mars will be easy to spot. Earlier part of the month (until last week), Mars was rising in the east at 10:00 PM and reached its azimuth at about 3:00 AM, but by the end of August, when the two planets are closest, Mars will rise at nightfall and reach its highest point in the sky at 12:30 AM. That`s pretty convenient when it comes to seeing something that no human has seen in recorded history.

So, step outside at night and see Mars grow progressively brighter and brighter throughout the month. Share this with loved ones and particularly with children and grandchildren. No one alive today will ever see this again.

Fascinating. And if I remember my Roman mythology, isn`t Mars the god of war! How very apt…

(The technical details came from a friend who knows such things.)

…SR

Welcome back Salman Hameed after a long break.

The vast universe and our place in it are the most fascinating knowledges to learn. Once readers actually start understanding it with reasonable details, many knowledges of esteemed disciplines start to look dwarf and dwarfer with more and better understanding of astronomy, astrophysics, mathematics, chemistry and biology. Sadly or gladly, scientific knowledge and knowing more lead straight to truth and thus a divorce from marriage of generations with pre-modern, classical logic - from believing is seeing to seeing is believing.

The coming to conclusion of the spiral shape of milkyway galaxy without ever seeing it from outside in itself is a remarkable systematic approach making use of available data. However, I may be mistaken here but I recall reading that Hindu and many native American mythological signs of inverted swastika are actually their understanding of spiral milkyway galaxy - our home.