This is the
Classical Astronomy Update, an email newsletter especially
for Christian homeschool families (though everyone is welcome!) Please feel free to share this with any interested
friends.
The day is thine, the night also is thine: thou hast prepared the light and the sun. Thou hast set all the borders of the earth: thou hast made summer and winter. - Psalm 74:16-17 IN THIS UPDATE The First Day of Summer The Green Flash Venus and Mars -- Reprise Hello Friends, Time is whizzing by, like it always does. 2023
is nearly half over, can you believe it? Hope your family is enjoying the warm season. Lots to cover in this newsletter so let's dive in. ATTENTION OHIO! Who lives here in the Buckeye State? I recently connected closely with our home state by pedaling the Ohio to Erie Trail (OTET). This is a 326 mile network of connected bike trails spanning
the distance from Cleveland to Cincinnati. It took my aging body 6 days, but I did it! I rode my bike from Edgewater Park on the shores of Lake Erie in Cleveland to Riverfront Park on the shores of the Ohio River in Cinicinnati. I recommend every Ohioan make this excursion, what a wonderful way to experience our beautiful state. CLEVELAND RADIO! On Wednesday morning, June 21 (the first day of summer), I'll be on the Mornings With Brian Show on WCRF, the local Moody Radio affiliate here in Cleveland. We're scheduled to begin at 7:37 AM EDT. We'll mainly be talking about the TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE SUN that will pass over Cleveland and the USA on Monday,
April 8, 2024, but I'm hoping we can also sneak in some Classical Astronomy. This station is broadcast over various repeater stations all over Northeast Ohio and Northwestern Pennsylvania and you can listen online at the link above. DAYTON AREA HOMESCHOOLERS! I've been communicating with Pat from the Stillwater Stargazers, an
astronomy club in Troy, Ohio, about scheduling an astronomy program for homeschoolers in that area. Details are unclear at this time but we're hoping to have that program on either Sarturday, July 22 or Saturday, July 29. I'll have a slideshow presentation about the eclipse and there might be some telescope observing afterwards with the club. Details TBA. If you live in or around Dayton and might be interested in attending, send me an email and I'll keep you posted as the
plans unfold. ECLIPSE WESBITE IS LIVE! Our new website Eclipse Over Cleveland is finally live! This site has everything you need to know to be prepared for the 2024 total solar eclipse. While there are many national eclipse websites, this is the only one dedicated especially to my hometown of Cleveland, Ohio. It's a
funny feeling to know that after so many eclipses have happened at exotic locations around the globe, my humble little hometown will soon have a turn under the Moon's shadow, the only such instance over a 600 year span. I'm epecially praying that lives will be touched for Jesus by this amazing event. Though the site is Cleveland-centric, there is lots of info to help everyone, and includes a special page for Eclipse Over Ohio to equip everyone else in the Buckeye State. I especially encourage everyone living everywhere to watch the 9-minute animated video, The Eclipse Experience, a walkthrough of what to look for during the total solar eclipse, all the interesting phenomena you can watch out for to enhance your appreciation of this
rare and precious event. I'll be adding to the site and including other videos over the next few months. You can visit Eclipse Over Cleveland to get our special Cleveland-branded commemorative design Eclipse Shades. We'll soon be adding Eclipse Over Ohio branded Shades so stay tuned for more info on that. If there are any entrepreneurial Ohio homeschool families who might be
interested in making a buck helping to sell Eclipse Shades in your local area, please send me an email. I'm sorry to report that our Classical Astronomy site is having some technical problems. We cannot directly sell our Signs & Seasons homeschool astronomy curriculum at this time. But the S&S pages on the site are still active and include links to our resellers where you can order the curriculum at a discounted price. Our eclipse site will also be adding
generic, non-branded Eclipse Shades, and the Classical Astronomy site will have a Shades page linking that page, for anyone who does not want Cleveland-branded eclipse viewers. Stay tuned for details! Meantime, please follow our special Eclipse Over Cleveland Twitter account. If you're still on that Facebook site, please follow the special Eclipse Over Cleveland Facebook page. For those who recall my withdrawal from FB a while back with much fanfare, all I can say is that I've been counseled to bite the bullet to reach the many people on that platform who still need to know about the eclipse, my personal feelings notwithstanding. This page will only cross-post everything from
the Twitter page, which will be the main social media account. And it'll only be through April 8, 2024! Yeah, I know, what can I say? Thanks for understanding. For more information about topics from Classical Astronomy discussed in this newsletter,
please check out a homeschool astronomy curriculum (but popular with adult readers too!) Visit our archive of previous editions of the Classical Astronomy Update newsletters, going back to 2007. *****
The First Day of Summer For some reason, a lot of things seem to be happening this year on the first day of summer. It's been a while since this newsletter has explained about this seasonal cardinal point.
On June 21, 2023, at 10:58 AM EDT, the Sun reaches the point in the sky of the summer solstice. This is a point on the celestial sphere having the equatorial coordinates of 23.5 degrees north and 6H of right
ascension. Long story short, this the northernmost point along the ecliptic, which is the Sun's apparent path through the zodiac constellations, and corresponds to the plane of the Earth's heliocentric orbit around the Sun. As the Earth orbits the Sun each year, the Sun appears to move north in the sky and then south, resulting in the annual cycle of the seasons, the warming and cooling which everyone observes over the span of 12 months. The summer solstice is the northernmost extreme along the Sun's annual path. As a result, the Sun rises and sets at its northernmost points along the horizon, and reaches its highest noon elevation above the horizon of any day of the year.
For this reason, the Sun is above the horizon for the maximum amount of time for any day of the year. Thus, the day when the Sun reaches the point of the summer solstice is also called by this name, and it is
the longest day of the year, which traditionally signifies the first day of summer. So on the day of the summer solstice, the Sun reaches the point of the summer solstice in the sky, the most northerly location, on which the maximum
amount of sunshine covers the northern hemisphere. These seasonal aspects and the ecliptic are explained in detail in our Signs & Seasons curriculum. Some people are sad that after the first day of summer, the days become slightly shorter, and will continue to do so until the winter solstice in December. But don't be too sad! The Sun's declination does not change very much for an entire month, and you won't really notice much shortening
of the length of daylight until late July and early August. So enjoy these long days over the next month while they last! The Green Flash This is a "leftover" topic from last summer, but I didn't want to omit it altogether. I often ride my bike to Edgewater Park along Lake Erie to watch the
sunset in clear evenings in the spring and summer. Last year I was on a roll and saw several impressive sunsets. There is a large variety of optical phenomena due to refraction of the Earth's atmosphere. There are "squashed" sunsets where the Sun appears flattened as it hits the horizon. There are "ice cream cone" sunsets where the bottom of the Sun appears melted and flattened along the horizon before setting. There are "melted wax" sunsets where the Sun appears to drip down onto the horizon and flatten out before disappearing. And there are many distorted sunset images, including "box" sunsets where the Sun appears rectangular as it sits on the horizon.
Sometimes the image of the Sun persists for several minutes after the physical time of sunset, sometimes as long as 10 or 15 minutes. All of these phenomena are due to atmospheric refraction, where thermal layers
of air trap the Sun's rays, acting as a "waveguide" similar to a fiber optic cable. So the Sun's rays can bounce around between these layers and produce a variety of mirage effects, like you can see over a hot road in the summertime. One type of mirage effect is the green flash. In 30 years of watching sunsets from Edgewater, I've seen the green flash over Lake Erie a total 8 times, but 4 of those times were in the summer of 2022. So here's what happens: as the Sun sets, the last little piece of the Sun's image acts as a prism, breaking the Sun's rays into a spectrum, as also happens in a rainbow. As the Sun goes down, the last piece of the Sun appears rounded, like an oval shape, due to refraction. The oval appears yellowish, with a greenish tinge around the edge. As the Sun vanishes, the oval becomes smaller and more green. The oval finally
shrinks and transforms into a bright, minty shade of green just as the last speck disappears over the horizon. Not sure if the above animated GIF will work properly in the newsletter. If not, check out this post on my Twitter where I know it works for sure. Haven't seen the green flash yet in 2023, and it may be years before it appears again, if ever. It is a very elusive natural phenomenon. Be on the lookout if you live somewhere where the Sun sets over water, like
the West Coast, the Gulf Coast of Florida, or along a northern or western shore of the Great Lakes, like western Michigan. Venus and Mars -- Reprise The last newsletter explained how to watch the planets Venus and Mars as they twirled around in an elegant evening dance after the sunset.
This celestial ballet continues into the current season, though it will soon be drawing to a close. Venus and Mars are moving closer each night. While Venus is still the blazing-bright Evening Star,
Mars has dimmed considerably in brightness, and is now a smallish little orange speck near the brighter planet. This pair will be joined this week by the waxing crescent Moon, which will align with these planets on the evening of Wednesday, June 21. So this is still one more thing happening on the first day of the summer of 2023. You might still be able to spot Castor and Pollux, the twin stars of the constellation Gemini, above the horizon before they vanish
into the Sun's glow with the seasonal progression of the constellations, as explained in our Signs & Seasons curriculum. You can also look for the constellation Leo, which is above this celestial trio. After that, these planets will draw apart, since Venus will be in retrogradation, and will disappear into the sunset before its inferior
conjunction on August 13. Hope everyone has a pleasant summer. Please drop me a line sometime of if you see anything of interest in the sky, or if you have any
questions. Till next time, God bless and clear skies, - jay The Ryan Family Cleveland, Ohio, USA When I
consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained, what is man that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? - Psalm 8:3-4, a Psalm of David
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