• Announcements
  • Problem With AOL Subscriptions
  • "Pagan Influences" Series Continues Next Update
• Astronomical Topics
  • Can you see the Flag on the Moon?
• Signs of the Seasons
  • A Very Early Easter in 2008

Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all ye lands.  Serve the LORD with
 gladness: come before his presence with singing.  Know ye that the
LORD he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves;
we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. - Psalm 100:1-3

 Welcome to the Classical Astronomy Update!

This past Sunday, we set our clocks ahead one hour to daylight savings time.  Like a lot of people, we're still getting to used to switching this early.  Over the years, we would "spring forward" in April and "fall back" in October.  Now the dates are pushed back one month on either side, to March and November, so that we are now on standard time for less than four months of the year. 

In the USA, the timing of DST is legislated by an act of Congress, and I personally think March is way to early to switch.  Here in Cleveland, we just had the worst winter storm in 30 years.  We are still digging out from that storm and that lost hour actually goofed us up pretty good!  If nothing else, it sure doesn't feel like spring when there's two feet of new snow on the ground! 

Most of all, switching the clocks is disruptive to everyone's routine, and confuses our natural sense of the seasonal changes in daylight as established by the LORD.  I would personally prefer if we stayed on either standard time or daylight savings time year-round and not change our clocks at all.   

On another note, we ask everyone to pray and get involved however possible in connecion with the California homeschool court decision.  HSLDA is currently circulating an online petition as a show of support.  We hope that California homeschoolers will draw reassurance from the knowledge that this situation is the LORD's hands and families all over the country are earnestly praying for this.  


Announcements 

Problem with AOL Subscriptions
We're observing a problem lately with Update readers using AOL.  Apparently, AOL is spontaneously unsubscribing people from the Update without their knowledge or permission.  Worst of all, some of these spontaneous unsubbings are accompanied by a spam complaint report.  Upon contacting the subscribers in question, we were told that they did no such thing.  In addition to everyone being puzzled by this, such a trend could be bad for our long-term prospects in providing this free newsletter, since enough spam complaints may result in this newsletter getting banned. 

If you are an AOL user and find that you are no longer receiving the Update, please drop us a line and we'll look into it.  Also, if we receive a spam complaint from an AOL subscriber, we will contact you to confirm your intentions.  Additionally, if you are ever unsatisfied with this newsletter, please drop us a line with your concern so that we can address it directly, rather than file a spam complaint.  Thanks for your cooperation.     

"Pagan Influences" Series Continues Next Update
If you've been reading the Update for a while, you'll know that we've been doing a series on supposed "pagan influences," in astronomy and elsewhere in our culture.  The purpose of this series has been to dispel some common misconceptions and to challenge some of the "fakelore" that has long circulated in Evangelical Christian circles.  We only seek to help God's people to walk in truth and to think critically rather than accepting third-hand rumors and "urban legends." 

In past articles of this series, we have shown that the solstices and equinoxes are simply part of the natural astronomical cycles created by the LORD, representing the days of the year when daylight was longest and shortest or equal with the nighttime.  We showed that these important dates were closely monitored for calendar keeping by all pre-industrial cultures, Christian and pagan alike.  For more information and to read the articles in this series, please visit the "Pagan Influences?" archive. 

In the next Update, we will once again challenge the popular notion that Easter, the feast of the LORD's resurrection, is actually based on the worship of the Babylonian fertility goddess Ishtar, and was imposed on both early Christians and pagans by the Roman emperors.  If you hold this view, I ask that you remain objective and open to confronting some facts not commonly circulated on the subject.  Thanks in advance for your ongoing support of the Classical Astronomy Update.


Astronomical Topics 

Can you see the Flag on the Moon?
We received this email from our friend Kathy in Minnesota:
 
I was wondering if it is possible to see the flag that the astronauts put on the moon.  I'm not sure if they left it there.  I have heard from some that it is visible with a telescope and they have seen it.  Others have said it's not there.  I am aware of the controversy surrounding whether or not we ever even landed people on the moon, and I'm not asking you to divulge which side you fall on, unless, of course, you want to.  If you can answer my question about the flag, though, that would be great.

Hi Kathy, I don't mind declaring my opinion -- I'm solidly on the side of accepting that Neil and Buzz et al. actually did walk on the Moon in 1969.  The so called "proofs" that the critics usually cite are easily answered and only reveal their naivete and poor understanding of astronomy and physics. 

I was eight years old in 1969, and like I always say, if NASA was going to fake a Moon landing, they could have made it more exciting!  The news coverage at the time was very technical and esoteric.  If the Moon landing really was faked, it sure wasn't a very good Hollywood production!  (If anyone wants to inquire about any specific "proofs" that the Moon landing was faked, send 'em along and I'll answer them in an upcoming Update.)
 
Anyway, it's not possible to see the flag on the Moon because it's way too small.  The Moon is about 240,000 miles away and the flag was maybe about 5 feet across.  The short answer is, the flag would be too small to be visible from that distance with even the best high power telescopes. 

In astronomy and also optics, we use angles to measure the size of a field of view.  If your eyes could see everything in front of you from far left to far right, you would be able to see a 180 degree field of view.  Each degree is divided into 60 arcminutes, each of which are divided into 60 arcseconds, so that there are 3600 arcminutes in a degree. 
 
Anyway, a five foot flag seen from nearly a quarter million miles away would have a visible angular size of only 0.000001 arcseconds -- one-millionth of an arcsecond!  The Hubble telescope at maximum magnification can only make out features about 0.05 arcseconds -- about 1/20 of an arcsecond.  So the American flag on the Moon is about 1/50,000 of the smallest size object that can be seen by the Hubble.  Based on that arithmetic, the Hubble can resolve features on the Moon only about 40 miles across, which means that even the larger lunar landers flown by the astronauts are also much too small to seen by the Hubble, let alone a backyard telescope.
 
Of course, the conspiracy theorists are not dissuaded by these facts, insisting that such pat explanations are very conveniently trotted out to conceal the truth that we never actually landed on the Moon!  But some people can't be troubled with facts anyway!  When I was eight years old in that humid week of July, 1969, gazing at the waxing gibbous Moon while Neil and Buzz were there, I was convinced that I could just barely see the flag with my naked eye!  Funny thing is, as a 46 year old adult, I still remember it that way!

Kathy wrote back to say:

Isn't that cute that you could "see" the flag when you were 8?  You know, it would be just like God to give a little boy the ability to see that flag at that moment.  Hee hee  What a cute memory!
 
The fact is, being able to see the flag on the Moon -- with or without a telescope -- would be like looking at a satellite weather map of the United States and seeing yourself in your backyard cutting the grass with your lawn mower.  Even the highest resolution satellite photos available on Google Earth won't allow such views, and those pix are taken from satellites only about 100-some miles up in Earth orbit, not a quarter million miles away.  We can all learn a lot about "urban legends" just by doing some arithmetic!


Signs of the Seasons 

A Very Early Easter in 2008
The Feast of Easter, when many Christians celebrate the LORD's resurrection, will fall on March 23 in 2008.  This is nearly the earliest possible date upon which Easter can fall.  It is possible for Easter to land one day earlier, on March 22, but each of these early dates are extremely rare.  2008 will have the earliest Easter that anyone alive today will ever see!

Traditionally, Christians in the western world all celebrate Easter on the same date.  Protestants and Evangelicals use the same method for calculating the date for Easter as used in the Roman Catholic church.  This method is essentially based on the astronomical cycles of the Moon's phases and the seasons of the Sun. 

The general rule is that Easter lands on the first Sunday following the Full Moon after the vernal equinox, i.e. the first day of spring.  However, the actual computational method follows certain mathematical rules that enable the dates of Easter to be tabulated many years in advance, and there can be dates for Easter that depart from the astronomical rule.

Some today -- Christians and unbelivers alike -- detect a whiff of "pagan influence" in the use the cycles of the Sun and Moon to establish a calendar for religious holidays and common secular timekeeping.  But as we've seen in previous editions of the Classical Astronomy Update, the LORD did in fact create the Sun and Moon for this very purpose:
 
. . . for signs and for seasons, and for days and years. -Genesis 1:14 

In the long centuries before the advent of mechanical clocks and calendars, there actually was no other method besides the LORD's celestial cycles to objectively measure the passage of time.  People in our modern world, who have the technological convenience accurate time of day available at a glance, should consider that just because pagan religions also used these cycles in pre-industrial times, this does not subvert the LORD's creative purpose for the Great Lights in the heavens.      

Passover and Easter
In the Torah, the Israelites were commanded to keep the Passover according to the cycles of the Sun and Moon: 

Observe the month of Abib, and keep the passover unto the LORD thy God: for in the month of Abib the LORD thy God brought thee forth out of Egypt by night. - Deuteronomy 16:1

Let the children of Israel also keep the passover at his appointed season.  In the fourteenth day of this month, at even, ye shall keep it in his appointed season: according to all the rites of it, and according to all the ceremonies thereof, shall ye keep it. - Numbers 9:2-3

The name Abib means "budding" in Hebrew, and represents the first month of spring in the Hebrew calendar.  According to the Hebrew lunar calendar, the "fourteenth day" represents the Full Moon, so that Passover is reckoned as falling on the Full Moon of the first lunar month of spring.

Easter, the feast of the LORD's resurrection, is essentially based on the Passover commemoration, using a similar method of timing based on the cycles of the Sun and Moon.  In Hebrew, the word for "Passover" is pesach, which in New Testament Greek is given as pascha.  A variant of this Greek name is used in nearly every European language, and the name "Easter" is strictly an idiosyncracy of the English language.  For more on this, check out the Update article The Astronomy of Easter.

The Date of Pascha in 2008
One of the factors determining the early date of Easter in 2008 is the leap year.  Since February, 2008 had 29 days instead of the usual 28, the vernal equinox arrives a day earlier, on March 20 instead of March 21.  It also so happens that the Full Moon in this month lands on March 21, earlier than in most years.  Since March 21 is a Friday, the following Sunday is March 23, and it is on this date that Easter is celebrated in 2008.  

The earliest theoretical date for Easter is March 22, which would happen in a leap year if the Full Moon were the day after the equinox on a Saturday.  This circumstance is very rare.  According to this Wikipedia article, Easter has not landed on March 22 since 1818 and will not fall on that date again until 2285.  And Easter will not again fall on March 23 until 2160!  So 2008 will be the earliest Easter for everyone alive today, since it will not fall this early again for another 152 years!  So kids, be sure to tell your great-grandchildren about the early Easter of 2008!

In another interesting development, Easter 2008 actually lands a month before Passover!  The modern Jewish calendar follows the 19 year cycle of the Sun and Moon, and the year 5768 (corresponding to A.D. 2008) is also a "leap year" in which an extra month is added to make the counting of lunar months agree with the Sun's seasons.  As a result, in 2008, the first day of Hebrew month of Nisan (Rosh Chodesh Nisan) is scheduled for April 8, when a thin waxing crescent Moon appears in the evening sky.  Passover follows at the Full Moon on April 20.  

Another interesting twist of Easter 2008 is that the Eastern Orthodox church celebrates the Pascha on April 27.  The Eastern Orthodox church does not follow the Gregorian calendar used in the west, and still uses the Julian calendar used since antiquity.  The Orthodox church follows similar rules for computing the date of Pascha from the cycles of the Sun and Moon.  However, the Orthodox church maintains a requirement, established at the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325, that the Pascha shall always follow after Passover.  Therefore, the Orthodox Pascha of 2008 falls on the Sunday following the Full Moon of Passover, a month later than the first Full Moon of spring.

Keep in mind these ancient methods of computing Easter as you commemorate the LORD's resurrection in the coming weeks.


 Coming in future Classical Astronomy Updates:

• Continuing with our "Pagan Influences?" series, we'll delve some more into the misconceptions and "urban legends" over the supposed pagan origins of the Christian celebration of Easter.
• We'll also dicuss the usual monthly conjunctions of the Moon and the visible planets for April, 2008. 

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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