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The Winter Solstice and Ancient Culture

The Calendar >

The reign of darkness is over. The unconquered sun is returning. Its marvelous light will again overcome the fell darkness. New life is coming.

Very few of us in this hectic, high-tech world think this way anymore, but there was a time when many of our ancestors took the winter solstice very seriously.

Known also as midwinter, the solstice is a time when a middling astronomical phenomenon takes on deep cultural significance. This is a time also for you to personally experience the ancient celestial event celebrated for millennia by nearly all people groups in the Northern Hemisphere.

For the first few days of this week the sun will rise at a heavy slant from its most southern point of the year. It will skim through the sky rising barely higher than about 30 degrees above the horizon. At about 4:50 PM it will set, a mere 10 hours after rising. Ten hours up, fourteen hours below --- it's almost like it wasn't worth the effort. Which may have been a concern for people in the elder days.

Imagine living thousands of years ago. You are in an agricultural community completely dependent on the regular life-giving energy of the sun. As time passes from summer to harvest to winter, the sun --- your bread and butter --- is slowly moving south, rising later, sinking earlier, with scarcely enough energy to climb into the sky.

That might be considered a foundation for trepidation.

This concern caused some, by means of religious ritual, to coax the sun to come back, to rise higher and stay longer, to bleed on them again its life-giving energy. Faith that the sun would return to claim the day for another year would be cause for celebrations throughout the North.

And the farther north one travels the more dramatic the difference. In northern Britain, for example, the midwinter daytime is only about 7 hours long. Travel far enough northward, into deep, cold Northern Europe or Siberia, and you'll eventually reach a place where the sun doesn't rise at all during this time!

It is no great leap then to see that a culture that relied on the sun and appreciated its presence would revere the midwinter solstice as a time set apart.

Cold science offers a reason for our deceleration into the solstice, and the lengthening of daytime afterwards. At blame is the venerable tilt of our home planet with respect to the sun.

Regular readers here will know that our tilt is at least partially responsible for all kinds of celestial and terrestrial phenomenon: our climate, the heat of summer, the cold of winter, the cyclical flow of all the seasons, the paths of the sun, moon, and stars across the sky, and so on.

Tilting over and away from the sun at this time of the year is the reason for our disappearing sun. Sunday night at 11 PM the Earth is in the point in its orbit when it is tilted most away from the sun for us in the Northern Hemisphere.

And since we are tilted away, our bright star is low and blinding in the sky in winter.

We may find this week's low sun a nuisance on our freeway commute but peoples in the past esteemed it enough to build vast monuments to it. There are whole sections of ancient edifices throughout the Northern Hemisphere purposely lined up with the midwinter sun.

For example there is the ancient mound at Maes Howe in Scotland, a tomb where the setting sun on that special day floods light down the main corridor, eerily illuminating the passageway.

Newgrange in Ireland, a chambered mound tens of thousands of years old, was built so that a tiny shaft of light from midwinter's rising sun beamed more than eighty feet through the mound to a tiny spiral carving on a wall in the inner chamber.

Other sites built at least in part to align with the sun on this day can be found in England (Stonehenge), France (Gavrinis), Egypt (Karnak), Japan (Hashihaka), China (Gao Cheng Zhen), and even here in North America (Chaco Canyon and Hoveneep in the southwest US, and Chichen Itza in the Yucatan). They are everywhere.

Why these people were so concerned about the alignment is not often clear. Were the alignments used as a call to worship or sacrifice to beckon the sun back? Were they to mark the start of festivities celebrating the returning sun? Perhaps some were just ancient versions of simple calendars, as in "Oh look, mom! The Great Shadow says it's midwinter!"

You and your family can mark the solstice in your own home. When the sun is on the horizon, rising or setting, mark where the shadow of a certain windowpane falls on an opposite wall. You might try placing a stone outside right in the shadow of a tree trunk some distance from it. There may be a hole in the fence where a beam of sunlight can fall on your house and you can indicate that spot in some decorative way.

Then see that every year on the solstice the sun will hit its mark. It may cause you to pause from the annual stress-filled holiday rush for a minute and be thankful --- thankful that the unconquered sun is returning to give its light to everyone. The dark days are ending. New life and hope are ahead.

Mark Ritter teaches astronomy at Temecula Valley High School and can be reached at mritter@firstlightastro.com.

Maes Howe image courtesy of Scottish History Online.

Posted by Administrator at 2003.12.20 12:55 PM | Comments (0)

Pegasus: Lopsided But Lovable

Observing >

In the world of convoluted classical myths, the story of Pegasus, our star constellation this month, is a classic.

Most of us recall that Pegasus is that grand winged horse of mythology, special enough to be granted a place in the autumn skies. To locate the final resting place of the great beast all one must do is go out in the early evening, face south, and look up. Just below the point directly above your head is a great square, slightly tilted.

That is the Great Square of Pegasus. Easy enough so far, but now it gets a little weird.

First, the ancients placed him upside down. Turn completely around, facing north now, and look up at the Square. His head and neck are that line of stars crawling out of the upper left corner of the Square towards the west. His two front legs are the two long strings of stars flowing westward out of the lower left.

Apparently poor Pegasus was at the end of the line when they were passing out constellation real estate. The Great Square is only his upper torso. This horse has no backside! And, scandalously, one of the stars of the Square really belongs to Andromeda!

Maybe he should just be happy he was honored at all.

His birth is steeped in lop-sided confusion, as well. Perseus, a hero in Greek mythology was sent out to slay Medusa, that none-too-attractive Gorgon with snakes for hair. Anyone who beheld her subdued beauty would be turned to stone. Perseus only managed to cut off her head while she was sleeping by looking at her reflection in his ultra-shiny shield.

What happens next is still being argued today in schools of Greek mythology. One story of several has it that as Perseus flew away with the head in a bag, some of Medusa's blood spilled out and into the foaming ocean waters below. Ta-da! Pegasus was born. Warning: Don't try to make winged horses at home this way. It doesn't work and only ends up making a big mess.

Pegasus has many interesting --- and conflicting --- exploits afterwards, not least of which is befriending a prince of Corinth named Bellerophon. (You can see the winged horse displayed on the ancient coins of Corinth.) In one alleged battle the two conquer the dreaded Chimaera, a monstrous beast with the fore part of a lion, the tail of a dragon, and the head of a goat.

After all the confusion of the Graeco-Roman stories, the myth of the Arawak Indians of Guiana is refreshing.

They saw the Great Square as a huge barbeque grill. Ah, sweet simplicity.

To readers interested in the science of the stars of Pegasus, lets go back to facing south again. As you look up at the lower right hand of the Square you'll see the brightest of the stars of the square, Markab. It pours out over 190 times more energy than our Sun, but is also 140 light years away, hence its dimness.

The star at the upper right corner is Scheat, a red giant more than 200 times bigger than our sun and pouring out more than 4000 times more energy! But, interestingly, all that energy is released through Scheat's amazingly large surface area which means, due to the laws of physics, it is relatively cool on the surface. So cool that it appears mere reddish.

At the lower left is Algenib from the Arabic "al janah," or "the wing." This bad boy is 30 times smaller than Scheat but still manages to emit nearly half the energy Scheat does! All that energy coming from a smaller star means a very, very hot surface --- blue hot in fact.

The last star of the Square is not of the horse at all, but part of Andromeda. Alpheratz is from the Arabic Al Surrat al Faras, The Horse's Navel, and is another high-energy hot star.

One final interesting bit of trivia regarding the Square: it was between Scheat and Markab in 1995 that the first planet outside of our solar system was detected revolving around a sun-like star called 51 Pegasi. Since then nearly a hundred others planets have been discovered.

Mark Ritter teaches astronomy at Temecula Valley High School and can be reached at mritter@firstlightastro.com.

Posted by Administrator at 2003.12. 6 12:58 PM | Comments (0)



Looking for something?	« November 2003 \| Main \| January 2004 » The Winter Solstice and Ancient Culture The Calendar > The reign of darkness is over. The unconquered sun is returning. Its marvelous light will again overcome the fell darkness. New life is coming. Very few of us in this hectic, high-tech world think this way anymore, but there was a time when many of our ancestors took the winter solstice very seriously. Known also as midwinter, the solstice is a time when a middling astronomical phenomenon takes on deep cultural significance. This is a time also for you to personally experience the ancient celestial event celebrated for millennia by nearly all people groups in the Northern Hemisphere. For the first few days of this week the sun will rise at a heavy slant from its most southern point of the year. It will skim through the sky rising barely higher than about 30 degrees above the horizon. At about 4:50 PM it will set, a mere 10 hours after rising. Ten hours up, fourteen hours below --- it's almost like it wasn't worth the effort. Which may have been a concern for people in the elder days. Imagine living thousands of years ago. You are in an agricultural community completely dependent on the regular life-giving energy of the sun. As time passes from summer to harvest to winter, the sun --- your bread and butter --- is slowly moving south, rising later, sinking earlier, with scarcely enough energy to climb into the sky. That might be considered a foundation for trepidation. This concern caused some, by means of religious ritual, to coax the sun to come back, to rise higher and stay longer, to bleed on them again its life-giving energy. Faith that the sun would return to claim the day for another year would be cause for celebrations throughout the North. And the farther north one travels the more dramatic the difference. In northern Britain, for example, the midwinter daytime is only about 7 hours long. Travel far enough northward, into deep, cold Northern Europe or Siberia, and you'll eventually reach a place where the sun doesn't rise at all during this time! It is no great leap then to see that a culture that relied on the sun and appreciated its presence would revere the midwinter solstice as a time set apart. Cold science offers a reason for our deceleration into the solstice, and the lengthening of daytime afterwards. At blame is the venerable tilt of our home planet with respect to the sun. Regular readers here will know that our tilt is at least partially responsible for all kinds of celestial and terrestrial phenomenon: our climate, the heat of summer, the cold of winter, the cyclical flow of all the seasons, the paths of the sun, moon, and stars across the sky, and so on. Tilting over and away from the sun at this time of the year is the reason for our disappearing sun. Sunday night at 11 PM the Earth is in the point in its orbit when it is tilted most away from the sun for us in the Northern Hemisphere. And since we are tilted away, our bright star is low and blinding in the sky in winter. We may find this week's low sun a nuisance on our freeway commute but peoples in the past esteemed it enough to build vast monuments to it. There are whole sections of ancient edifices throughout the Northern Hemisphere purposely lined up with the midwinter sun. For example there is the ancient mound at Maes Howe in Scotland, a tomb where the setting sun on that special day floods light down the main corridor, eerily illuminating the passageway. Newgrange in Ireland, a chambered mound tens of thousands of years old, was built so that a tiny shaft of light from midwinter's rising sun beamed more than eighty feet through the mound to a tiny spiral carving on a wall in the inner chamber. Other sites built at least in part to align with the sun on this day can be found in England (Stonehenge), France (Gavrinis), Egypt (Karnak), Japan (Hashihaka), China (Gao Cheng Zhen), and even here in North America (Chaco Canyon and Hoveneep in the southwest US, and Chichen Itza in the Yucatan). They are everywhere. Why these people were so concerned about the alignment is not often clear. Were the alignments used as a call to worship or sacrifice to beckon the sun back? Were they to mark the start of festivities celebrating the returning sun? Perhaps some were just ancient versions of simple calendars, as in "Oh look, mom! The Great Shadow says it's midwinter!" You and your family can mark the solstice in your own home. When the sun is on the horizon, rising or setting, mark where the shadow of a certain windowpane falls on an opposite wall. You might try placing a stone outside right in the shadow of a tree trunk some distance from it. There may be a hole in the fence where a beam of sunlight can fall on your house and you can indicate that spot in some decorative way. Then see that every year on the solstice the sun will hit its mark. It may cause you to pause from the annual stress-filled holiday rush for a minute and be thankful --- thankful that the unconquered sun is returning to give its light to everyone. The dark days are ending. New life and hope are ahead. Mark Ritter teaches astronomy at Temecula Valley High School and can be reached at mritter@firstlightastro.com. Maes Howe image courtesy of Scottish History Online. Posted by Administrator at 2003.12.20 12:55 PM \| Comments (0) Pegasus: Lopsided But Lovable Observing > In the world of convoluted classical myths, the story of Pegasus, our star constellation this month, is a classic. Most of us recall that Pegasus is that grand winged horse of mythology, special enough to be granted a place in the autumn skies. To locate the final resting place of the great beast all one must do is go out in the early evening, face south, and look up. Just below the point directly above your head is a great square, slightly tilted. That is the Great Square of Pegasus. Easy enough so far, but now it gets a little weird. First, the ancients placed him upside down. Turn completely around, facing north now, and look up at the Square. His head and neck are that line of stars crawling out of the upper left corner of the Square towards the west. His two front legs are the two long strings of stars flowing westward out of the lower left. Apparently poor Pegasus was at the end of the line when they were passing out constellation real estate. The Great Square is only his upper torso. This horse has no backside! And, scandalously, one of the stars of the Square really belongs to Andromeda! Maybe he should just be happy he was honored at all. His birth is steeped in lop-sided confusion, as well. Perseus, a hero in Greek mythology was sent out to slay Medusa, that none-too-attractive Gorgon with snakes for hair. Anyone who beheld her subdued beauty would be turned to stone. Perseus only managed to cut off her head while she was sleeping by looking at her reflection in his ultra-shiny shield. What happens next is still being argued today in schools of Greek mythology. One story of several has it that as Perseus flew away with the head in a bag, some of Medusa's blood spilled out and into the foaming ocean waters below. Ta-da! Pegasus was born. Warning: Don't try to make winged horses at home this way. It doesn't work and only ends up making a big mess. Pegasus has many interesting --- and conflicting --- exploits afterwards, not least of which is befriending a prince of Corinth named Bellerophon. (You can see the winged horse displayed on the ancient coins of Corinth.) In one alleged battle the two conquer the dreaded Chimaera, a monstrous beast with the fore part of a lion, the tail of a dragon, and the head of a goat. After all the confusion of the Graeco-Roman stories, the myth of the Arawak Indians of Guiana is refreshing. They saw the Great Square as a huge barbeque grill. Ah, sweet simplicity. To readers interested in the science of the stars of Pegasus, lets go back to facing south again. As you look up at the lower right hand of the Square you'll see the brightest of the stars of the square, Markab. It pours out over 190 times more energy than our Sun, but is also 140 light years away, hence its dimness. The star at the upper right corner is Scheat, a red giant more than 200 times bigger than our sun and pouring out more than 4000 times more energy! But, interestingly, all that energy is released through Scheat's amazingly large surface area which means, due to the laws of physics, it is relatively cool on the surface. So cool that it appears mere reddish. At the lower left is Algenib from the Arabic "al janah," or "the wing." This bad boy is 30 times smaller than Scheat but still manages to emit nearly half the energy Scheat does! All that energy coming from a smaller star means a very, very hot surface --- blue hot in fact. The last star of the Square is not of the horse at all, but part of Andromeda. Alpheratz is from the Arabic Al Surrat al Faras, The Horse's Navel, and is another high-energy hot star. One final interesting bit of trivia regarding the Square: it was between Scheat and Markab in 1995 that the first planet outside of our solar system was detected revolving around a sun-like star called 51 Pegasi. Since then nearly a hundred others planets have been discovered. Mark Ritter teaches astronomy at Temecula Valley High School and can be reached at mritter@firstlightastro.com. Posted by Administrator at 2003.12. 6 12:58 PM \| Comments (0)
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