CHAPTER 1 ASTRONOMY: A UNIVERSAL ACTIVITY

THE NAKED EYE SKY Astronomy, the study of celestial objects, is a universally human endeavor whose roots lie deeply buried in prehistory. For the skywatcher devoid of optical aid, the heavens can be thought of as a sort of earthcentered celestial sphere on to which have been sprinkled hundreds of tiny points of light we have called the stars. Half of this inverted bowl of blackness is almost completely dominated by the dazzling presence of the sun, the most prominent and important of the celestial objects. Such is the suns brilliance that any attempt to view this object directly is to risk serious eye damage or even total blindness. As a result of the earths spinning motion or rotation, an observer at a given location on the earth sees a sky that alternates between a daytime sky dominated by the sun and a nighttime sky characterized by its absence. As the earth turns on its axis, the sun appears to rise up from a given observers eastern horizon, pass through a high noon point or maximum angle above the horizon, and then descend toward the western horizon. Approximately onehalf an earth rotation later, the sun once more rises to repeat the cycle. This rising and falling effect is not limited to the sun. As the earth rotates relative to all celestial objects, they too appear to go through the rising and falling diurnal motions of the sun. Since the

Chapter 1: Astronomy: A Universal Activity

rate of the earths rotation is very nearly constant, this diurnal motion of the sun and stars has long been employed as an important and reliable way of measuring time. The earths rotation also creates the illusion that the stars of the celestial sphere seem to revolve about two imaginary points located exactly opposite each other. One, the south celestial pole, is visible only from the southern hemisphere of the earth, while the other, the north celestial pole, is visible only from the northern hemisphere. The earths long term precessional motion carries the locations of these celestial poles along a 47 degree diameter circular path among the stars once every 26,000 years. From time to time, a relatively bright star can be found near the position of one of the celestial poles for a few centuries. Such is the case at present for the north celestial pole, which is currently located near the fairly bright star Polaris, the Pole Star. In addition to its daily rising and setting, the sun also appears to travel along a great circle on the celestial sphere, which is called the ecliptic. This latter movement is the direct result of the earths orbital motion about the sun. As the earth arcs along in its orbital path, the apparent position of the sun relative to the more distant background stars appears to change. For an observer on the earth, the sun thus seems to creep gradually from west to east among the stars, completing an entire 360 journey around the ecliptic in exactly the same one year time interval it takes the earth to complete one orbital revolution about the sun. The background stars hence appear to be gradually overtaken in the western sky by the sun as it moves eastward along the ecliptic, engulfed by the solar glare for a month or so, and then reemerge in the predawn sky as the sun leaves them behind in its ongoing easterly movement. The overall result of this annual movement of the sun is a seasonal parade of the heavens in which different stars are visible at different times of the night at different times of the year.

Chapter 1: Astronomy: A Universal Activity

The earths axis of rotation is also found to be tilted at an angle of 23 degrees off the vertical to the earths orbital plane. As the earth orbits the sun, this tilt causes the sun to shine alternately more directly on the northern hemisphere and less on the southern hemisphere and then vice versa over the span of a simple year. This effect is observable as a yearly variation of the suns highest altitude above the horizon at a given location, and as a change in the time that the sun spends above the horizon. Thus when the sun is shining most directly on the northern hemisphere at the time of the summer solstice, the suns diurnal motion in the northern hemisphere is characterized by long days and short nights, and in the southern hemisphere by short days and long nights. Half an orbital revolution or six months later at the time of the winter solstice, when the sun is shining more directly on the southern hemisphere, the lengths of night and day are reversed. Halfway between these extremes the sun shines directly down on the earths equator twice each year. On these dates, the lengths of the days and nights all over the earth are equal, except at the poles, and hence these dates are said to be the equinoxes. It is this combination of the tilt of the earths axis of rotation and the earths orbital motion that gives rise to our cycle of seasons here on the earth. Firmly entrenched in second place in the brightness hierarchy of celestial objects is the moon. Although not as important as the sun, the moon, none the less, exerts several significant influences on the earth, most notably as the chief agent by which tides are produced in the worlds oceans. The reflected sunlight we receive from the moon is over one million times fainter than that emanating from the sun, and as a result, the moon can be readily viewed against the backdrop of the stars of the night sky. As the moon orbits the earth in space, it appears to traverse a great circle about the celestial sphere in a fashion not unlike the annual motion displayed by the sun. There are however some important differences between the lunar motion

Chapter 1: Astronomy: A Universal Activity

and that of the sun. The moon swings along an apparent path that is tilted at an angle of about five degrees to the ecliptic and takes onetwelfth of the suns time to make a single journey about the celestial sphere. The moon thus moves at an average rate of about half a degree per hour relative to the background stars, an angular speed easily detectable over the course of a single night by a naked eye observer. Although the moons half degree angular diameter is almost exactly the same as that of the un, the diminished brightness of the moon permits us to look directly upon its face without fear or danger. As a result, the moon presents a number of most interesting and fascinating phenomena to the naked eye observer. Perhaps the most familiar of these is the set of seeming shape changes or phases exhibited by the moon as it journeys about the celestial sphere. These phases arise from the fact that as the moon orbits the earth, the half of the moons spherical surface which faces the sun, and is hence illuminated by the suns light, is viewed at different angles by an observer situated on the earth. When the moon is very nearly lined up between the earth and the sun, almost all of the moons sunlit hemisphere faces away from the earth, and all we see of the moon is a very thin crescent of light. As the moon moves toward progressively larger angular distances from the sun, the thickness of the crescent grows or waxes until the angle between the moon and the sun as seen from the earth is 90. At this point we see exactly onehalf of the moons sunlit surface and the moon appears to have a semicircular or quarter moon shape. As the sunmoon angular separation increases past 90, the moon takes on a bulging or gibbous shape whose thickness continues to grow until the moon is very nearly opposite the sun in the sky. When this configuration occurs, the entire sunlit hemisphere of the moon face the earth, and the now circularshaped moon is said to be a full moon. After passing through the full phase, the moons shape changes now proceed to reverse order,

Chapter 1: Astronomy: A Universal Activity

successively passing through waning gibbous phases, a second of last quarter phase, and finally a waning crescent phase as the angle between the moon and the sun decreases from 180 to nearly zero. The waning crescent moon eventually slides into the predawn solar glare for a few days and then reemerges as a silvery crescentshaped new moon in the postsunset twilight. The moon is also unique among celestial objects in that it is the only one for which surface detail can be easily viewed with the unaided human eye. This detail manifests itself in the form of the dark areas on the moons disk which are called maria or seas and the light areas called continents. This terminology dates back to the Western European Renaissance observers of the moon who imagined the lunar surface to be divided between bright land and dark waters. In addition to the sun and moon, human beings have recognized since prehistoric times that five other naked eye objects also move about the sky relative to the background stars. These starlike wanderers are called planets, and historically have enjoyed the appellations of the gods and goddesses of ancient Greek and Roman mythology. The five socalled naked eye planets have been named, in order of their increasing distance from the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. A sixth planet, Uranus, possesses a brightness which is just at the limit of naked eye visibility, but the planetary nature of this object does not seem to have been recognized until the English astronomer William Hershel accidentally stumbled upon it while telescopically scanning the sky in March of 1781. Two of the planets, Mercury and Venus, have orbits about the sun which are interior to that of the earth. As a result of this orbital geometry and the suns gravitationally induced faster orbital speeds, these planets exhibit a marked pattern in their appearances in the earths sky. In a typical cycle, the planet is first visible as an evening star in the west after sunset, then appears to move out to a maximum angle of greatest elongation away from the sun before retreating back

Chapter 1: Astronomy: A Universal Activity

into the suns light. After several days or weeks, the planet reemerges from the solar glare, but this time as a morning star in the predawn sky. The planet once more moves out to an angle of greatest elongation and then drops back into the solar light. The swiftly moving planet Mercury goes through a complete cycle of appearances or synodic period in about four months, while Venus, whose orbital speed is more closely matched to that of the earth, takes a year and a half for its cycle of appearances. Typically Mercurys appearances as a morning or evening star last about three weeks, while those of Venus extend over several months at a time. Visually, the planet Mercury appears in the sky as a sparkling object having a somewhat reddishorange tint. Its apparent brightness is actually comparable to the brightest stars, but because it is almost always observed in twilight, it is usually not as impressive an object as it otherwise might be. The most spectacular of the naked eye planets and the third brightest object in the sky behind only the sun and moon is the planet Venus. The orbital path of Venus can carry it out to an angle of greatest elongation as large as 47 degrees, or about twice that exhibited by the planet Mercury. Thus it is possible to observe this splendid object for as long as four hours after sunset or before sunrise. At its greatest brilliancy, the soft white light of Venus has even been observed to cast very faint shadows as it gleams in the darkness of the predawn or postsunset night sky. The three remaining naked eye planets Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, move in vast orbit about the sun which are exterior to the orbit of the earth. As a result, these planets appear most of the time to move about the celestial sphere in a fashion similar to the west to east movement exhibited by the sun and moon. The times required for each of these planets to make a complete cycle about the celestial sphere, however, are far longer than those for the sun and moon. Mars, for example, completes a single journey around the celestial sphere in just under two years,

Chapter 1: Astronomy: A Universal Activity

while Jupiter and Saturn require nearly twelve and thirty years, respectively, to complete similar journeys. As the faster moving earth catches up to and passes one of these exterior planets, the planet exhibits an illusionary phenomenon in the earths sky called retrograde motion in which the given planet seems to stop its normal west to east motion among the stars, moves backward or east to west for several months, stops again, and then resumes its direct or west to east movement. In the midst of its retrograde motion, a given planet will appear to be opposite the suns position in the celestial sphere as sun from earth. When such a configuration occurs, the planet is said to be in opposition to the sun, or more simply, at opposition. At the time of a given planets opposition, the earth makes its closest approach to the planet, and as a result, the planet shines more brightly than at any other time. Moreover, at opposition the planet rises at sunset, sets at sunrise, and is thus visible throughout the night. Visually, the planet Mars is perhaps the most remarkable of the exterior planets owing to its distinctly reddish hue. At times of closest approach to the earth, the apparent brightness of this ruddy world is exceeded only by that of the Sun, Moon, and Venus. When Mars is not at a close opposition, the fourth brightest object in the sky is the yellowishwhite planet Jupiter which shines some ten times more brightly than the average of the brightest of the background stars. The goldencolored planet Saturn is the most distant of the naked eye planets from both the earth and the sun, and thus exhibits a reduced apparent brightness which is comparable to the average of the brightest background stars. While the paths of the planets about the celestial sphere are not coincident with the ecliptic, they are, none the less, nearly coplanar with it. As a result, the sun, moon, and five naked eye planets move about the celestial sphere in a relatively narrow band of sky centered on the ecliptic which is called the zodiac. Because the sun, moon, and planets move along the zodiac at

Chapter 1: Astronomy: A Universal Activity

differing rates, it is possible for objects in the sky to appear to pass close to other objects along the zodiac. When such a passage occurs, the resulting configuration of the two objects is said to be a conjunction. Conjunctions can occur among the sun, moon, and planets, as well as between these moving objects and the bright stationary stars which are to be found along the zodiac. From time to time conjunctions can involve three or more objects, and on rare occasions a conjunction can be so close that the two objects cannot be seen as separate with the unaided eye. In addition to the imaginary band of planetary paths that is the zodiac, there exists a quite real band of diffuse light, called the Milky Way, which is stationary relative to the stars and girds the celestial sphere like a gigantic faintly glowing heavenly belt. The Milky Way is the naked eye manifestation of the vast galactic system of gas, dust, and stars in which our sun is located. The Milky Way Galaxy, as this system is called, is in the shape of a huge, flat pinwheel which has a substantial bulge at its center. Our sun is situated about twothirds of the way toward the outer edge of this system, and as a result, our view of the summertime Milky Way in the northern hemisphere is the more prominent one, since at this time we are looking toward the direction in which most of our galaxy is located. On the other hand, in the northern hemisphere winter, our view is now directed away from the galactic center toward the less prominent regions of the galaxy, with the visual result that the wintertime Milky Way is much fainter than its summertime counterpart. Off the plane of the Milky Way, there exist approximately a dozen or so lesser diffuse objects which are visible to the naked eye and are also set in fixed positions among the stars. Modern telescopic observations reveal that these fuzzy patches of light are in reality quite a diverse lot, including clouds of glowing gas, star clusters, and even other galaxies well outside of our Milky Way.

Chapter 1: Astronomy: A Universal Activity

From time to time transitory apparitions and events occur in the sky which can be as awesome as they are spectacular. One such event is a total eclipse of the sun. When the moon passes directly between the earth and the sun, a moving shadow of the moon about 240 kilometers wide is cast upon the surface of the earth. An observer located in the shadows path will see the suns disk gradually covered by the dark lunar disk until the suns light is almost completely blotted out. During this total phase of the eclipse, only the light from the suns outermost atmospheric layers is visible and a darkness comparable to full moon night descends on the land for a time period ranging from a few seconds to as long as seven minutes. Finally the moon moves out of its direct alignment between the earth and the sun, and the sun reemerges to its full disk and full brightness. The sun, earth, and moon can also align in such a way that the moon passes into the earths shadow, thereby producing a total eclipse of the moon. When such an event occurs, an observer on the earth sees a full moon gradually enter the curved shadow of the earth. When the moon is totally immersed in the earths shadow, it can take on a variety of ruddy hues ranging from an almost totally darkened red to a bright coppery shade of redorange. This illumination even at the total phase of a lunar eclipse is caused by sunlight being refracted on to the moons surface by the earths atmosphere. The variety of colorations exhibited during various lunar eclipses is thus the direct result of the weather conditions in the earths atmosphere, especially the degree of cloud cover at key locations around the earth. Typically the eclipsed moon spends an hour or so in the total phase before reemerging from the earths shadow and regaining its full moon brilliance. Every few years or so the night sky is visited by a strange apparition, a diffuse long haired starlike object called a comet. Comets are known to be collections of ices, dust grains,

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rocks, and frozen gases which wheel about the sun in huge elongated orbits which alternately carry them from relative proximity to the sun out to the most distant parts of the solar system, thousands of earthsun distances away. As a comet approaches the sun, the suns radiant energy causes the ices and frozen gases to evaporate into a glowing comma which surrounds the dust and rocks at the comets nucleus. As this diffuse, starlike object draws ever closer to the sun, the solar proton wind and radiation pressure drive material out of the diffuse head into a long, streaming tail which can extend over millions of miles in space. For several weeks, like a cosmic messenger, a comet will approach the sun, blossom with a flowing tail, and then fade into the cold blackness that is the periphery of the solar system. The debris left behind by both these interlopers as well as from the formation process of the solar system permeates the interplanetary medium. As the earth sweeps along its orbit, it is constantly bombarded by objects ranging in size from tiny grains of dust up to small asteroids several kilometers in diameter. Fortunately collisions with the latter are extraordinarily rare! When a given interplanetary particle, called a meteoroid, strikes the earth, it does so at speeds as high as 50 km/sec. At such speeds, friction with the earths atmosphere causes the object to heat up quickly and glow brilliantly as it falls toward the earth. An observer at the earths surface sees this event as a falling star or shooting star. Most of the time, such objects disintegrate in the upper layers of the earths atmosphere, but occasionally a meteoroid is able to traverse the earths atmosphere and strike the earths surface. Such an object is then referred to as a meteorite. Occasionally the earth passes through a large stream of meteoric debris left behind by a comet. Under these conditions, large numbers of meteors can be seen in the form of a meteor shower. During a typical meteor shower, one can see anywhere from 1560 meteors per hour

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above the normal sporadic or background meteor counts of about six meteors per hour. About three or four times per century the earth strikes a particularly large and dense aggregate of meteoroids. Under these circumstances, thousands of meteors per hour flash across the heavens in a display of celestial fireworks which is unmatched anywhere else in the natural world. From time to time in the remote recesses of interstellar space a star will end its life in a spectacular event called a supernova explosion. For a few days the energy output of this dying object rivals that of all the stars in an entire galaxy. If a supernova detonation occurs at a distance sufficiently close to the earth, the observed result is the transitory appearance of a new star in the terrestrial night sky. For time periods ranging from a few days to several months, the star shines at or near its maximum brightness before fading back into naked eye invisibility. One of the more notable of these objects was observed in the year AD 1054. At its maximum brightness, the supernova of 1054 was nearly three times brighter than the planet Venus and could be readily seen in broad daylight. The remains of this stellar blast can be telescopically viewed today as the tattered and twisted gaseous cauldron called the Crab Nebula.

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EXPLAINING THE HEAVENS Unlike the mathematical monolithic universality which characterized the scientific philosophy emergent from the Western European Renaissance, the explanations tendered for the considerable array of celestial phenomena by nonwestern cultures as well as those of pre Renaissance Europe and the Mediterranean were far more qualitative in nature and represented a diversity of ingenious viewpoints that were nearly as numerous as the cultures from which they sprang. Generally such explanations appear in a given culture in the form of myths, legends, and folklore, and pay considerable homage to the observed characteristics of the sky and its resident objects. As such, they represent the beginning attempts on the part of human beings to provide rational explanations consistent with observations for the variety of events which occur in the physical world, thereby making that world more comprehensible. Perhaps the most familiar example of this process in action is to be found in the myths and legends pertaining to the fixed stars. Out of the more or less random distribution of stars in the night sky, one can imagine a variety of figures, shapes, and patterns not unlike the variety of faces and forms that one often fancies in the puffy clouds of a springtime sky. In some instances, a given pattern of stars can bear a striking resemblance to a familiar terrestrial entity. For virtually every culture, such similarities were not fortuitous, but in fact were intrinsic characteristics of the sky which were significant and demanded explanation. The most common approach was to regard the sky as a kind of Celestial Hall of Fame into which various legendary characters from a given cultures folklore had been inducted for various reasons. Such inductees thus became figures outlined in stars or constellations. The outline of some of the constellations are so compelling in their shapes that a variety of farflung cultures would often envision very similar portraits for a given star group. Thus, the stars of the highly prominent

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wintertime constellation of Orion, for example, seem to outline a very fit and trim individual possessed of considerable physical strength. Thus Orion, the mighty hunter of Greek mythology is also alBabdur (The Strong One) for the Arabs, the great hunter Bull of the Hills for the Blackfoot Tribe of the western Canadian plains, and the Slender First One to the Navajos of the American southwest. As one might expect, there is also a considerable amount of variation in the sky pictures of various cultures. Even though the Jshaped array of summertime stars which we call Scorpius the Scorpion has been widely depicted as a celestial version of its earthly arachnid namesake; there are many other interpretations of this asterism from other cultures. The Polynesians, for example, saw this star group as the fishhook of their great hero Maui, while the Chinese viewed it as the noble Azure Dragon, the Bringer of Spring. To the Mayas of Central America these stars represented the death god Yalahau, the lord of blackness and waters. The constellation through which the sun, moon, and planets travel in their respective journeys about the celestial sphere were quite naturally assigned a particularly significant status as the constellations or signs of the zodiac. Traditionally there are twelve such constellations, each of roughly equal extent along the zodiac, and which include Aries the Ram, Taurus the Bull, Gemini the Twins, Cancer the Crab, Leo the Lion, Virgo the Virgin, Libra the Scales, Scorpius the Scorpion, Sagittarius the CentaurArcher, Capricornus the SeaGoat, Aquarius the Water Carrier, and Pices the Fishes. In addition to the standard twelve constellation zodiacs employed by a majority of the worlds cultures, the zodiac has been variously divided throughout human history into as many as 28 constellations by the Chinese and as few as six by the early Euphratean cultures. The denizens of the zodiac exhibit a considerable variation from culture to culture. The Aztec zodiac was graced with the starry presence of a frog, a lizard, a

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rattlesnake, and a jaguar, while that of the Incas contained a tree, a bearded man, a puma, and the sacred cantua plant. Numerous explanations were offered for the observed movement of the sun, moon and planets along the zodiac, virtually all of which centered on the basic idea that only gods and goddesses could possess the power to move among the stars. In the case of the sun the concept was further reinforced by the fact that to look directly on the face of the suns disk was to incur the Sun deitys wrath in the form of severe damage to ones eyes. Thus the sun was the sun god AmonRa to the Egyptians, the sun goddess Amaterasu to the early Japanese, and so on. Eclipses and conjunctions in the sky have also inspired a number of mythologically based explanations. In the Hindu culture, for example, the mortal Rhu is said long ago to have attempted to partake of the forbidden nectar of immortality. The god Visnu was told of Rhus transgression by the sun and moon, and as punishment Visnu proceeded to decapitate Rhu. Ever since, Rhu was sought to take vengeance on the sun and moon by pursuing them across the sky in an attempt to eat them. Once in a while, at the time of an eclipse, Rhu actually catches either the un or the moon and attempts to devour his prey. As the sun or moon is devoured, it gradually disappears into Rhus throat for a time before reappearing at the base of his severed neck as Rhu attempts to swallow. The entire event is observed here on the earth as an eclipse of the sun or moon. The sky watchers of antiquity were able to identify a number of basic characteristics relating to the background objects of the celestial sphere. The recognition of the variety of intrinsic colors that characterize the stars, for example, is manifested in names for stars such as the Arabic Qalb aAqrab (Heart of the Scorpion) for the bright red star Antares located at the

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center of Scorpius and the Hindu Rohini (Red Deer) for the ruddy star Alphard in the chest of the constellation of Hydra the Sea Serpent. Bright stars near the celestial poles have held great meaning and significance to the watchers of the sky. In the third millennium BC the orth celestial pole was located in the constellation of Draco the Dragon near a second magnitude star called Eltanin. Because the heavens of the day appeared to rotate about this star, it was quite literally regarded as an object of pivotal importance. As a result, Eltanin was worshiped by a number of cultures, including the Egyptians who used this star to align a number of their important buildings and structures. As the earths axis of rotation has precessed, other stars have taken on the mantle of Pole Star, most notably by the stars Thuban in the constellation of Draco and Kochab in the constellation of Ursa Minor, the Lesser Bear, and in more recent cultures by the star Polaris at the tip of the tail of Ursa Minor. Both Kochab and Polaris were regarded by the Chinese as Da Di the Great Imperial Ruler of the heavens, about whom the other stars circled in homage. The Pawnee tribe of the American plains names Polaris The Star That Does Not Walk Around. To the Pawnee this star was related to the god Tirawahat, and as such, was chief over all the other stars. It was this star that saw to it the other stars did not lose their way as they moved across the sky. Attempts to explain the true nature of the diffuse objects that dot the sky are understandably less prolific in light of the difficulties that are often encountered in observing them. The major exception is, of course, the Milky Way. Of the diffuse objects detectable in the heavens with the unaided eye, the Milky Way is far and away the most extensive and prominent. This delicate band of light which is also highlighted by an array of brighter stars has thus inspired a variety of explanations which include its portrayal as a celestial river by the Chinese and Japanese, as a Path of Souls to an eternal home by the Algonquin tribe of the Lake Ontario

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region of southern Canada, and as a band of glowing cinders by which one could find ones way home when lost in the darkness by the Bushmen of Africas Kalahari Desert.

USING THE HEAVENS As imaginative and rational as they were, however, the explanations advanced by different cultures for the variety of celestial phenomena observed in the heavens generally became intertwined with the religious beliefs and societal mores of these cultures. As a result, there was a marked tendency for the explanations of celestial phenomena to take on dogmatic qualities in which they were seldom questioned or challenged by alternate points of view. Moreover, the lack of a telescopic astronomy placed severe and fundamental limitations on the level of insight that was possible regarding the nature of celestial objects. Thus, the explanations proposed for various celestial phenomena tended to remain largely unchanged in a give culture, and whatever changes that did occur were not so much the result of additional observational insights, but rather due to a gradual evolution brought on as these explanations were passed on from generation to generation or from culture to culture. Even while armed with an impressive instrumental technology, however, human beings still continue to struggle with questions relating to the fundamental nature of what we see in the sky. Certain observable aspects of the heavens readily lend themselves to practical usage here on the earth, and the greatest levels of achievement enjoyed by nonwestern astronomers have come in the discovery, recognition, and application of these characteristics. Systematic observations of the sky reveal, for example, that many celestial phenomena, most notably the diurnal and annual motions of the sun and the cycle of lunar phases, occur with precise and

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predictable regularity. This observable fact of the heavens has thus been employed by cultures worldwide as a method of accurate time keeping. The diurnal rising and setting of the sun, with its alternating cycle of daylight and darkness, is the shortest and most convenient unit of astronomical timekeeping, and as a result human beings the world over have employed it, quite literally, as an integral part of their daily lives. A second, much longer unit of astronomical time is defined by one complete journey of the Sun around the ecliptic. This annual astronomical cycle is of considerable importance owing to the fact that it is intimately related to the cycle of seasons which occur here on the earth. The cycle of seasons, in turn, is virtually identical to the cycle of vegetative growth and those of some animal activity and migrations. Thus agricultural methods and hunting techniques developed by various cultures were necessarily tied deeply to the cycle of seasons and the suns annual journey along the ecliptic. Intermediate in length between the day and the year is the time interval required for the moon to pass through one complete cycle of its phases. The lunar cycle is particularly attractive as a timing cycle due to the fact that the everchanging shape of the moon is readily observable on a daily basis. Sequences of shapes inscribed on CroMagnon cave walls and artifacts strongly suggest their use as lunar phase timing devices in just this fashion. Similar sequences carved by the inhabitants of Nicobar Island in the Bay of Bengal are known with certainty to be employed for this purpose. Unfortunately these cycles are not quite numerically compatible with each other. For example, there are about 365 days in a year, but in reality it takes the sun precisely 365.242199 days to complete one cycle around the ecliptic. Similarly there are 29.530588 days to a cycle of lunar phases and 12.36827 cycles of lunar phases in a year. These discrepancies can create difficulties if one wishes to reckon the time of the year, the start of a given season, or

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the date of an important religious holiday by simply counting the number of days which have elapsed from some defined starting point such as the day of a solstice or equinox. If one counts the number of days as the year progresses, for example, one would find that after 365 days had passed, the sun would not quite yet have completed its journey around the ecliptic, and after 366 days had elapsed, the sun would have moved slightly past one complete cycle. Over several years time such an effect can add up to a significant discrepancy between the suns actual position along the ecliptic and the position dictated by the day count. As a result, a variety of schemes, called calendric systems or calendars, have been developed by various cultures around the world which are designed to synchronize two or more astronomical cycles. The most familiar of these is the addition of one day to our calendar every fourth or leap year in order to keep the day count in a given year in agreement with the suns actual position along the ecliptic. A number of ingenious techniques were developed by various cultures to monitor the astronomical timekeeping process. The Aztec Temple Mayor, now buried beneath modern Mexico City, was designed in the fifteenth century with two spires that provided a Vshaped notch through which the rays from a sun rising at the time of an equinox shone on the temple of Quetzalcoatl. At no other times of the year would a rising sun produce this effect. Thus the Aztec temples served quite nicely and deliberately as a device with which the Aztec calendar could be corrected whenever necessary. Similar structural alignments are to be found at Stonehenge in England, in the temples of ancient Egypt, and among the buildings of the ancient peoples of the American Southwest. The Mayas of ancient Mesoamerica developed not only astronomical alignments for many of their structures, but also an incredibly accurate but somewhat complicated astronomical calendar which was based on the annual solar cycle and the synodic period of the planet Venus. The Maya calendar was accurate to within one day every

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5000 years. By contrast, the simpler Gregorian calendar used by contemporary society is accurate to within one day in 3300 years. In addition to the structural alignments, various cultures have also employed natural terrain as calendar correctors. On the top of Fajada Butte at the mouth of Chaco Canyon in the American Southwest, for example, there stand three rock slabs, each of which is about three meters in height. On the rock wall behind these slab a first millennium AD people called the Anasazi carved a spiral petroglyph in such a way that precisely at noon of the day of the summer solstice, a daggershaped beam of sunlight would neatly slice the petroglyph exactly through its center. Through this clever manipulation of sunlight, the Anasazi were able to precisely mark the time of summer solstice. The Hopi and Zuni tribes, also of the American Southwest, make use of a socalled sunrise horizon calendar. As the sun moves along the ecliptic, the points of sunrise and sunset along the horizon at a given location exhibit an annual cyclic shift in which the sunrise and sunset points appear to migrate along the horizon from south to north while the sun is moving from the winter solstice to the summer solstice and then north to south along the horizon while the sun is moving from the summer solstice to the winter solstice. As the sunrise and sunset points pass over various key landmarks along the horizon, each passage is taken as a signal to begin the appropriate agricultural activity such as planting various crops, harvesting, etc. In addition to timekeeping, earthsky relations can also be employed to find ones way about the surface of the earth. Such techniques are referred to in general as celestial navigation and have been of considerable importance to human cultures, particularly those which are maritime in nature. There are a number of aspects of the heavens which readily lend themselves as navigational aids. As the earth spins on its axis, for example, a star at or near the celestial

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pole will not appear to change its position in the sky significantly. More importantly, the point on the horizon directly beneath such a star will also remain in a relatively fixed position as well. Thus for observers in the northern hemisphere, the relatively bright star Polaris is located very close to the north celestial pole, and the point on the horizon directly beneath this signpost star has been used for centuries by northern hemisphere peoples to mark the direction we call north. Other cultures took advantage of the fact that the angular distance of the pole star above the horizon as well as the locations of the rising and setting points of bright stars and constellations along the horizon changed with ones location on the earths surface. Thus the Caroline Islanders of the central Pacific skillfully navigated by means of this star compass in which 32 points on the horizon were defined by the rising and setting points of bright stars and constellations such as Vega, the Pleiades, Antares, and the Southern Cross. The Polynesians employed a device called the sacred calabash, which was a gourd into which four holes were bored at the same height near the neck. The gourd was then filled with water to the level of the holes. Using the water level as a horizon, altitudes of stars were then measured by sighting through one of the holes over the opposite edge of the gourd. Thus armed with what was in effect the equivalent of our modern sextant, the Polynesians became most adept at deepwater navigation. Systematic observations of the heavens also reveal that there exist a number of correspondences between celestial events and configurations and natural phenomena here on the earth. For example, the Egyptians recognized that the annual flooding of the allimportant Nile River was at hand when the bright star Sirius made its helical rising or first appearance out of the predawn solar glare. The Incas of the South American Andes Mountains noticed that the cantua plant blossomed beautifully each year when the sun was located in our zodiacal

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constellation of Cancer, but which they named appropriately from their observations as the asterism of the sacred cantua plant. The helical rising of the bright stars Rigel, Aldebaran, and Sirius served to warn the tribes of the high plains of western America that cold weather was at hand. In the light of such readily observable earthsky correspondences, it was very logical to assume that similar correspondences exist between celestial phenomena and human affairs. Thus evolved the endeavor which we now call astrology. Whether the astrological leap of logic from earthsky to humansky correspondences is a valid one has, of course, been a topic of considerable debate for many centuries, and since the 1600s the premise that such humansky correlations exist has been emphatically rejected by western science. Nevertheless, astrology, more so than either timekeeping or celestial navigations, demands access to careful and ongoing observations of the entire heavens for the purpose of interpreting the significance here on earth of what is seen to occur in the sky, and whenever possible, to predict future events in the sky as well. Thus a welldeveloped astrology in China was certainly an important factor in the preparation of the earliest known star catalogue in the fourth century BC, and in the recording of a variety of celestial events, most notably the transitory appearances of sunspots and astrological omens such as comets, which were referred to as huixing (broom stars or sweeping stars) and of novae and supernovae explosions, which were called kexing (guest stars or visiting stars). So detailed were the records of the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean observations of the supernova event in AD 1054, for example, that modern astronomers were easily able to identify its present remains as the Crab Nebula in the constellation of Taurus, despite the fact that the event went virtually unobserved and unrecorded in Western Europe.

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Chapter 1: Astronomy: A Universal Activity

From some cultures, most notably those of the Mayas, Egypt, China, and the Islamic world, careful observations of the sky combined with centuries of relative social and political stability to make possible the discovery of much more subtle and longterm astronomical cycles. The Mayas, for example, were aware of the longterm reappearances of the planet Venus and built the planets 584day synodic period into their calendar. Both the Chinese and Islamic observers were aware of the fact that the lunar nodes, or the points on the celestial sphere where the moons orbit crosses the ecliptic, drift in a westerly direction along the ecliptic at a rate of one complete revolution every 18.6 years and used this knowledge to predict the occurrences of both lunar and solar eclipses. The Chinese and Islamic observers also recognized that the suns equinox points drift in a westerly direction along the ecliptic at a rate of nearly one degree per year and made appropriate adjustments in their respective star catalogues and calendric systems in order to account for the protracted effect of this equinotical precession. Awareness of the shifting equinoxes may have also been the province of the Egyptians as well. A number of additions and reconstructions are found to exist in Egyptian temples and other structures which strongly suggest an architectural response to just such longterm changes in the positions of the equinoxes. Although rich in remarkable achievement, the astronomy of antiquity possessed some very fundamental limitations. Observations of astronomical phenomena were decidedly ad hoc and pragmatic in their intent, and as a result, astronomical knowledge was in large measure fragmented and disjoint. The explanations offered for astronomical phenomena tended, for religious and political reasons, to be quite resistant to change, thus precluding the adoption of alternate and more successful explanations. Such was the state of affairs in astronomy for millennia until the seventeenth century saw the emergence of an ingenious philosophy of

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knowledge gathering which would profoundly impact the world and forever change our perceptions of the night sky and its fascinating inhabitants.