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O give thanks unto the Lord; for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever.
O give thanks unto the God of gods: for his mercy endureth for ever.
O give thanks to the Lord of lords: for his mercy endureth for ever.
To him who alone doeth great wonders: for his mercy endureth
for ever. To him that by wisdom made the heavens: for his
mercy endureth for ever. To him that stretched out the
earth above the waters: for his mercy endureth for
ever. To him that made great lights: for his
mercy endureth for ever: The sun to rule
by day: for his mercy endureth for ever:
The moon and stars to rule by night:
for his mercy endureth for ever.
- Psalm 136:1-9
IN THIS UPDATE: Announcements
CHEO Workshop
Christian Boaters Association
Smartphone Astronomy?
Sherlock Holmes Quote
"Consider Thy Heavens" Pennsylvania Meetup Report
Dear Friends,
This newsletter is really overdue! We've been so busy with year-end stuff in our homeschool, including the graduation of son Rick, the second of our five kids. And the pace of life just keeps on flying along into the summer! Do any of you other homeschool parents also get tired of the "go, go, go" homeschool family lifestyle?
CHEO Workshop -- Next Weekend - Saturday, June 21
If any of you dads get tired of working at your jobs and taking care of family business, try adding a homeschool curriculum business to the mix! I've been asked to present a workshop at CHEO, our Ohio state homeschool convention. The talk is during Session #4 on Saturday, June 21, 2014, from 10:30 AM til 11:30 AM, in the McKinley Room at the John S. Knight Center in Akron, Ohio. If you're an Ohio homeschooler, please attend this session, and also drop by our booth in the Exhibitor Hall. Here's a workshop description:
Classical Astronomy: The Biblical Purpose for the Sun, Moon and Stars - Jay Ryan
From their very creation, the Sun, Moon and stars had been made by the LORD for the practical purposes of finding direction and for telling time... "for signs and for seasons and for days and years." (Genesis 1:14). Down through history, the cycles of the Sun, Moon and stars had been used to mark the days, months and years. Everyone from common folk to scientists understood the signs in the sky. As part of the Quadrivium of sciences, Classical Astronomy was part of the classical liberal arts education, learned by everyone from ancient philosophers through the Founding Fathers of the American Republic. However, somewhere down the line, this knowledge was forgotten, and is now neglected or even omitted in contemporary classrooms and curricula. A knowledge of Classical Astronomy can be easily regained by Christian homeschoolers through systematic observation of the Sun, Moon and stars. Perhaps in so doing, our generation can truly come to appreciate how "The Heavens Declare the Glory of God." (Psalm 19:1).
Christian Boaters Association
I recently joined the CBA (Christian Boaters Association). This is an organization for Christians who own boats, and who have a heart for using them in ministry. The members use their boats for service to churches and missions and for educational outreach, in addition to support and encouragement.
I don't even own a boat, and have hardly even been on water in my life. But I am hoping to serve the membership by helping them learn astronomy, for the glory of God, to help them add that to their ministries, and for acquiring practical skill in celestial navigation, to add this time-honored tradition to their talents.
Are you a Christian boater? Or do you know any Christian boaters? Even if you do not own a boat, are you interested in Christian boating? If so, please consider joining CBA. Here's a link to the CBA Facebook page.
Smartphone Astronomy?
I recently got an email from Patty in Chicago....
After reading your newsletter this month, I realized that, while I can usually identify a planet (though I didn't necessarily know which planet it was) I don't have a clue about constellations. I've been looking at them for a long time without even knowing it!
However, just sharing, it seems you go to great lengths to help readers identify the basics. I've discovered an app to help out. If readers have an android smart phone, there is an app (Google Sky) that will help to identify planets in the sky.
I explained to Patty that I've been familiar with these phone apps for years, but have not found them to be useful in helping novice skywatchers learn their way around the sky. I can see that a phone app might be helpful, as long as one puts down the phone and keeps looking at the sky without it. Otherwise, one is just relying on the technology as a crutch and not really learning anything independently. One can use any tool, like a star map or a my newsletter, but there is no substitute for doing the hard work to learn the constellations, which is necessary to understand why the seasons change and why daylight is longer in summer and shorter in winter, among other things. Patty replied....
The phone helps me to pinpoint planets, and then I can locate the constellations - just the opposite of instructions in your newsletter. The phone has also helped me map out the planet movements as related to the sun (where in orbit is Saturn, etc) and earth.
I found it interesting that Patty's phone helped her identify planets first, and then she reverse-engineered the constellations from there. I can see that might be a useful approach, especially in a light-polluted area, since the planets are so much brighter and more conspicuous than the actual stars. Since this phone app has helped Patty learn the sky, maybe it can help you too. I do not own a smartphone (nor do I care to), but many such users have recommended and demonstrated the StarWalk app to me, and apparently this is a very popular astronomy app.
An important caveat: one problem I have with these phone apps is the same as regular star maps, they show more stars than one can expect to actually see, and include elaborate "connect the dot" patterns between bright and faint stars without distinguishing between stars that are conspicuous, and those that are faint or even invisible. This clutters up the field of view and creates confusion by giving a false impression that stars of differing brightnesses naturally appear connected, which is not the case in actual sky observation. It would be a real innovation to have a phone app that could automatically detect light pollution levels, and create a realistic depiction on the phone that delineates between stars that are visible and invisible.
Many people write to explain to me that they cannot learn the stars at all because of light pollution. Sorry, I don't accept that excuse! Our family lives within city limits of Cleveland, Ohio, a very well-lit big city, two blocks from a major freeway, so light pollution in our backyard is intense. I'm here to tell you that you can still learn a lot under such conditions, as long as one is willing to invest the time and effort. Also, I first learned astronomy when living in Washington, D.C., one of the most light-polluted places in the world, so it can be done. But apparently most people do not wish to put forth the effort, and give up before learning the constellations. I'd like to encourage you all to make that effort, as it's very worthwhile and rewarding.
Thanks, Patty, for your email!
My son Rick recently had the title role in our homeschool co-op's dramatic presentation, "Sherlock Holmes." Since then, our family has been on a Holmes kick, and we have been watching the BBC series, "Sherlock." Some of us have tackled the 1200 page volume of "The Complete Sherlock Holmes" by Arthur Conan Doyle. I ran into this passage early on in "A Study in Scarlet," the first Holmes story. This dialogue was also adapted into a humorous vignette in the TV program (Doctor Watson speaking of Holmes):
His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however,
when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to be to me such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.
"You appear to be astonished," he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. "Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it."
"To forget it!"
"You see," he explained, "I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman
is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing
out the useful ones."
As I've gotten older, it certainly seems true that new facts tend to push out the old ones in my own brain!
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For more information about topics from Classical Astronomy discussed in this newsletter,
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.
Visit this page to subscribe to the Classical Astronomy Update and the Northeast Ohio Astronomy (NEOastro) newsletters.
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"Consider Thy Heavens" Pennsylvania Meetup Report
On Memorial Day weekend, May 23-24, eight other families joined ours at Cherry Springs State Park for our first "Consider Thy Heavens" astronomy meetup. It was very cold in the hills of PA, and it was cloudy and drippy on Friday, the first night. I was pretty discouraged, as the weather forecast was not favorable. So I prayed and asked God that it would clear out anyway, not for my sake, since I was already an experienced sky observer, but for the novice families who traveled all that way to join us. The LORD answered that prayer abundantly! Saturday was a GORGEOUS day, and the skies became crystal clear by sunset, and remained so all night! Thanks be to God for His blessings!
Our participants for this wonderful evening under the stars included David and Angela McClain. You'll all remember Angela for her fabulous meteor photo from last September. Angela and her friends were taking some wonderful time-lapse exposures of the night sky at Cherry Springs, such as this excellent video, which compresses 3 hours and 45 minutes, into 47 seconds (from about 11:45 PM til about 3:30 AM).
Angela gives these strict instructions for properly viewing her video....
Please be sure to instruct your subscribers to view in Full Screen Mode and in HD (highest quality) if they possibly can!
An embedded link to this video cannot be included in this email newsletter, due to the buggy interface at the email service, which causes my browser to crash. Please don't pass up this video, everyone should see this to get an idea of the sky we experienced at Cherry Springs.
CONSTELLATION LEARNING PROJECT!
Here are some still images provided by Angela, to which I have added constellation lines and names. You might want to study these images closely to familiarize yourself with the patterns of the constellations of spring and summer, that are visible in the current season. You can then rewatch the video with an understanding of the constellations, to get a fuller picture of how the stars rise over a period of hours.
Image #1 - Midnight: This image shows the constellations of late spring that are visible looking south and southeast at about midnight in late May. This view features Mars and Saturn, which are currently passing through Virgo and Libra, respectively. These constellations are shown on pp. 123-126 of our Signs & Seasons curriculum. The Summer Triangle is coming up in the east. This is the same view of the sky that you can see at about 11:00 PM here in June.
CLICK PIC FOR A LARGER IMAGE IN A NEW WINDOW
Image #2 - 1:30 AM: In this image, the Summer Triangle constellations are labeled individually. Mars and Virgo have moved outside the field of view, and Saturn and Libra have moved to the west. Scorpius has risen above the southern horizon, and the "teapot" of Sagittarius has risen above the trees. These constellations are shown on pp. 126-128 of Signs & Seasons.
CLICK PIC FOR A LARGER IMAGE IN A NEW WINDOW
Image #3 - 3:00 AM: By this late/early hour, Saturn has moved out of the scene. Sagittarius and the Summer Triangle constellations
, as part of the Milky Way, have moved high into the sky. The autumn constellations Pegasus and Cassiopeia have risen, and are above the treeline. A sharp eye might detect M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, as a faint smudge between Pegasus and Cassiopeia. These stars are depicted on pp. 129-130 of Signs & Seasons.
To the experienced observer, the rising of these constellations at this hour, in this season, is a clear sign that the Sun will soon be rising.
CLICK PIC FOR A LARGER IMAGE IN A NEW WINDOW
Angela has very kindly made available a gallery of her images from CSSP. Please visit this gallery for some large, high-resolution still images of several frames from the video, including some extra pics, including a star trail. Thank you, Angela, for your contributions!
We still have other astronomy gatherings planned for 2014, such as a sky program at the Creation Museum, and an Ohio gathering at Beulah Beach, on Lake Erie (details TBA). We also have two more "Consider Thy Heavens" meetups, in Virginia and Michigan. Basic info is shown in the graphics below, which are linked to the event pages at Facebook. Details for these events, including daytime activities, are posted at these Facebook pages. If you are not on Facebook, please drop me an email, and I will provide you with the information. Please come on down and join us!
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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