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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.
IN THIS UPDATE:
- Announcements
- Classical Astronomy on Leadership Radio in Pittsburgh
- Signs & Seasons Now Available in the Ichthus UK Catalog
- Reader Question - Responding to Evolution
- Signs of the Seasons
- See the Orionid Meteor Shower!
- Astronomical Topics
- The Story of Halley's Comet
Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of
my mouth. My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil
as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the
showers upon the grass: Because I will publish the name
of the LORD: ascribe ye greatness unto our God.
- Deuteronomy 32:1-3
Welcome to the Classical Astronomy Update!
Hello Friends,
The autumn leaves are changing color here in Ohio. Our family is very busy with many things since we joined a new homeschool support group. My oldest son Happy has just made Life Scout in our Christian homeschool Boy Scout troop. Everything in life is just careening along as 2007 winds down.
Hope you all have some time to glance up at the sky on a clear night. Skywatching can be very relaxing, and there's no better way to "stop and smell the roses" than to observe the signs of the seasons that we can see in the sky.
Announcements
Classical Astronomy on Leadership Radio in Pittsburgh
This week I was interviewed by Bob Cranmer of Leadership Radio in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The program is on 101.5 WORD-FM in Pittsburgh and will be broadcast Saturday, October 20, 2007 at 7:00 AM. If you live in "The Burgh," please tune in. The show is also available on podcast, so I'll let you all know when that is online.
Signs & Seasons Now Available in the Ichthus UK Catalog
I'm happy to report that our astronomy curriculum Signs & Seasons has been added to the catalog of Ichthus Resources in the United Kingdom. If you live in the UK or anywhere in Europe, please visit the Online Catalog at their web site if you're interested in ordering a copy.
Reader Question - Responding to Evolution
Though my wife and I are "young earth" creationists who hold to a literal reading of Genesis 1, we rarely discuss creation versus evolution in the Update. There are already a number of writers and web sites out there covering that beat, and we are don't have many original things to say on the subject of origins. Instead, we emphasize a "here and now" approach to science from a Biblical perspective. However, we do occasionally comment on evolution, such as our response to Mrs. Ford, who graciously gave permission for her question to be included in the Update. She writes:
My daughter is in public school. 8th grade. Her science teacher told them about how it took 8 billion years for light from a distant star to make it to earth so we could see it today. Her question to me was, if God created everything the same time why do we believe the earth is only about six thousand years old? Faith is not enough of an answer for kids these days. I'm fighting to keep her mind. Do you have an answer for this?
Our work is devoted to "classical astronomy" but your question relates to the field of "modern astronomy." In the long history of astronomy, this is a relatively new approach that was unknown for the many centuries when everyone followed the "signs and seasons" for telling time and finding direction.
The entire edifice of modern astronomy is based on an analysis of starlight. The color spectra of stars is studied in excruciating detail to determine the chemical composition of the stars. This in itself is an interesting approach to studying God's creation and has allowed astronomers to determine that stars are mostly made of hydrogen and helium, with some carbon and iron and other trace chemical elements.
The problem with this approach is that scientists extrapolate their conclusions and speculate about many things based on the observed proportions of these chemical elements. They draw conclusions of how large the stars are and how old they must be, assuming that nuclear fusion is occurring within these stars. From there, they figure how bright the stars must be, and how far way they must be in order to be seen at their observed brightness from Earth. Additional minor variations and discrepancies are observed in the spectra of starlight. Sweeping inferences are made to construct a grand mechanistic scheme that presumes to account for the origins and destiny of the universe.
I'm basically not impressed with this process of inference done by professional astronomers. There's no direct way to confirm these conclusions, since they are all performed from the Earth. Professional scientists tend to "reverse engineer" theories about the size and age of the universe from the scanty variations of starlight to fit their preconceived notions. So I therefore reject the whole pile outright. My attitude is different from most creationist astronomers who work within the framework of modern astronomy and seek alternative interpretations of the scanty data.
I'd encourage your daughter to ask her teacher questions like "how do we know that?" Have the teacher explain the scientific methodology that leads to this conclusion. Very likely the teacher will not want to take the time to explain, or else she won't know the answer herself. I'd expect the teacher to get flustered and make comments like "you're confusing the class" and appeal to the authority of mainstream science.
This will tell the class quite a lot about the weakness of the evidence. Students shouldn't have to play defense and the burden of proof should be shifted onto the science teacher where it belongs. At any rate, your daughter will someday have to choose between the authority of the secular establishment and the authority of Scripture. Our family avoids these situations through homeschooling.
You might want to direct your question to Answers in Genesis since they have many books and materials and are well set up for fighting these sorts of battles.
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Order online at our website or from one of our fine distributors.
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Signs of the Seasons
See the Orionid Meteor Shower!
As long-time Update readers are aware, we LOVE to see the constellation Orion in the night sky. There's hardly an outdoor sight that gladdens me more than to see the bright stars of this famous constellation glittering like jewels in the sky on a frosty winter night. I first learned to find this constellation when I was seven years old, and Orion has always been like an old friend to me. As the years of life have passed, almost everything has changed, but Orion is still there, like he has been down through history, as he was seen to the Old Testament prophets:
Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night: that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The LORD is his name. - Amos 5:8
To our young readers, if you make friends with Orion while you are still young, he can be a life-long friend of yours too. In our curriculum Signs & Seasons,we use Orion as a starting point for learning all the constellations, and as a guide to understanding the Sun's apparent motion through the constellations. Orion surely is one of the God-given "signs" that help us keep track of the seasons.
In the current season, Orion is rising in the east sometime around midnight. Orion climbs the sky during the wee hours, and is high in the sky near the meridian in the hours before sunrise. The days have grown so short that the sky is still dark these days at 6:00 AM when many people are awake. Be sure to spot Orion with the red-orange planet Mars hanging above Orion and to the east in the constellation Gemini.
If you're up early on any of the upcoming mornings, take some time to watch the sky for the Orionid meteor shower. This is one of the better meteor showers of the year, though not the best. Nonetheless, if skies are clear and if you're away from the city lights, you might see as many as 40-60 meteors per hour on the peak mornings of October 20-22 -- about one each minute or so.
As we've seen in previous Updates, meteor showers result from the Earth passing through the dust trail left behind by a comet. It so happens that the Orionid meteors come from the dust trail left behind by the famous Halley's Comet. This comet won't return until the year 2061 (when this writer will be over 100!) So if you catch the Orionid meteors, it's the best chance that many of us will ever have to see some part of Halley's Comet!
Astronomical Topics
The Story of Halley's Comet
Comets have been seen in the night sky down through history. In ancient and medieval times, comets, meteor showers, auroras, and other sights in the sky were usually interpreted as supernatural signs rather than natural wonders with physical cause:
A comet appeared again, and the sky seemed particularly black where it passed the heavens. It shone through the darkness as it is were at a bottom of a hole, gleaming so bright and spreading wide its tail. From it there issued an enormus beam of light, which from a distance looked like a great pall of smoke over a conflagration. It appeared in the western sky during the first hour of darkness. - Gregory of Tours (circa A.D. 600)
Comet Halley is by far the most famous comet. The name is properly pronounced with a short "a," to rhyme with "Sally." In our generation, most people mispronounce Halley's Comet with a long "a" to sound like "hay-lee." This confusion is believed to have begun in the 1950s after the famous early rock-n-roll song "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley and the Comets.
Comet Halley is the first discovered "periodic comet" -- a comet discovered to have an elliptical orbit around the Sun and thus repeatedly visits the neighborhood of the Earth. It is named for the great English astronomer Edmund Halley, friend and younger contemporary of Isaac Newton. It was Halley who first understood that many comets observed through history were actually the same comet revisiting the Earth in periods of roughly 76 years:
Indeed, there are many things which make me beleive that the Comet which Apian observ'd in the year 1531, was the same with which Kepler and Longomontanus more accurately describ'd in the Year 1607; and which I myself have seen return, and observ'd in the Year 1682.... And since looking over the Histories of Comets I find, at an equal interval of Time, a Comet to have been seen about Easter in the Year 1305.... Hence I think I may venture to foretel, that it will return again in the Year 1758. - Edmund Halley (A.D. 1715)
Halley's Comet did indeed return as predicted in A.D. 1758, twelve years after the death of Halley, who had become the famed second Astronomer Royal of the Greenwich Observatory. Since that time, Comet Halley has returned to Earth right on schedule every 76 years. Halley made many important contributions to early modern astronomy, and his prediction of the comet's periodic nature and return was still another posthumous feather in his cap.
Comet Halley Through the Centuries
 Halley's Comet has been sighted many times in many generations, and has actually had an impact in history. It was sighted in the year A.D. 1066 prior to the famous Battle of Hastings, when the forces of England were defeated by the Norman invader William the Conqueror. Comet Halley is featured in this famous portion of the Bayeaux Tapesty, a medieval comic strip that details the Norman conquest of England.
 As noted by Halley, the comet also appeared in A.D. 1305. This event apparently made an impression on the Italian artist Giotto di Bondone. Giotto's famous fresco Adoration of the Magi, painted that very year, included a very comet-like depiction of the Star of Bethlehem. Interestingly, astronomical arithmetic reveals that Comet Halley would have revisited the Earth in 12 B.C., very near the time of the birth of Jesus. But as we have always pointed out in the Update, there are numerous celestial events and other physical explanations that people always trot out in an attempt to give a natural explantion for the Star of Bethlehem. None fit all the available facts of science, history, and Scripture, so we caution everyone against investing heavily in any of these theories. As for me and my house, we choose to understand the Star of Bethlehem to be a supernatural event rather than get bogged down these rationalistic explanations.
Halley predicted his comet would return in 1758, and the next appearance after that was in 1835. American author Mark Twain was born right around the time when Comet Halley was visible in the night sky. In a quote reported in the Wikipedia, Twain wrote:
I came in with Halley's comet in 1835. It's coming again next year (1910), and I expect to go out with it. The Almighty has said no doubt, 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.'
For whatever providential purpose that no one can imagine, Mark Twain did indeed die as Comet Halley returned to the night sky in 1910.
Many of us who were alive in the late 20th century had anxiously awaited the return of Comet Halley in 1986. Being the first apparition of Comet Halley in the space age, NASA studied the comet up close with the Giotto spacecraft, named after the famous medieval painter. Those of us who anxiously awaited this return were very disappointed. Comet Halley was on the opposite side of the Sun from the Earth during its closest approach, and was lost in the Sun's glare. Even when it was visible low in the southern sky, it was hidden by the light pollution caused by extensive ground lighting.
Today's kids will have another crack at seeing Comet Halley when it returns again in 2061. But at a college lecture in 1986, I was told by the late Nick Sanduleak, a Cleveland-based professional astronomer, that the next apparition of Comet Halley -- in A.D. 2137 -- should be spectacular! So should Jesus tarry, be sure to tell your great-grandchildren to tell theirs!
Coming in future Classical Astronomy Updates:
- We'll take a look at the fall constellations in the coming weeks as they begin to roll overhead in the early evening.
- Mars will rise earlier in the morning and will soon be visible in the evening skies, approaching opposition on December 24, 2007.
Til 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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