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Mars, the Bringer of War

The Solar System >

There's just something about the Red Planet that has held us in awe of it for literally thousands of years. The name of the Roman god of war, Mars, is of course the name of the fourth rock from the sun, the first planet outside our own orbit --- and the one planet that has been visited three times by two space agencies in the last five weeks.

One need not look too far to see Mars' influence today in things that have no immediately obvious connection to the planet. We see, for example, the name of Mars inherited in names like Mark and Martin and Marcella. Although most people named after Mars don't know that.

Why aren't associations like these obvious anymore? Michael Seeds, author and professor of astronomy at Franklin and Marshall College suggests the problem. "Modern people live in a world isolated from nature, so they don't understand the connections our culture still has with the earth and sky." The ancients did.

The Romans named the third day of the week "dies Martis," the day of Mars, in honor of the god. Most of the Romance languages that came down from Latin have a similar name for the third day. In Spanish it is Martes, in French Mardi, in Italian Martedi.

Even our English name for the third day of the week finds its origin in Mars. When the Germanic peoples adopted the Roman seven-day week they named their days similarly. Closely related to the war god Mars was their northern god of war, Tyr. In Anglo Saxon he was called Tiw, and our third day was christened "the day of Tiw." In their language it was "Tiwes daeg," in ours Tuesday.

To the ancient Greeks and Romans there was an association of the planets and gods to basic elements of life. For example, the metal associated with Mars was iron, the metal of war. Mars' precious stone was ruby and the color connected with the god was red. We still call Mars the Red Planet. And, coincidentally, it is because of oxides of iron covering the planet that it appears so reddish in those stunning color images coming back from the landers.

In modern times Mars has starred in other major roles. Johannes Kepler, the renowned late Renaissance astronomer, discovered his great laws of planetary motion while "waging war with Mars." Using astronomer

Tycho Brahe's twenty years of data on the precise motions of the planet, Kepler was first to discover that planets don't travel in circles but ellipses, and that they orbit faster when close to the sun.

Kepler's seemingly trivial discoveries helped break astronomy out from the prison of an ancient belief system steeped in Aristotelian philosophy and into a new age of intense scientific inquiry and discovery. Professor Owen Gingerich of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics puts it this way: Tycho's attempt (to describe Mars' orbit) was a failure, but from the ashes of that failed campaign came Kepler's reform of astronomy, truly the ‘new astronomy.' Thank you, Mars.

You can go out today after sunset and catch a glimpse of Mars aloft. Drag a line from where the sun has set to Venus --- the brightest object in the sky, and Mars' mythological lover --- and continue on that line to the next brightest object. It is from that pale reddish dot that the tiny orbiters and landers are now communicating with the men and women of NASA.

This writing would hardly be complete without mention of all the hoopla concerning life on Mars. One of the first to suggest --- maybe "preach" is a better word --- the possibility of life on Mars was Percival Lowell.

Through a great telescope in Arizona at the turn of the last century, this highly influential amateur astronomer swore he saw canals on Mars. These canals, along with the darkening and lightening of the surface of Mars that we know now are due to dust storms, convinced Lowell that Mars was full of life.

It was his influence, and cultural phenomena like the 1938 radio broadcast of War of the Worlds and a multitude of Hollywood productions of adventures to Mars or invasions by its green-hued inhabitants which has pretty much cemented in a lot of minds the hope that life exists on the Red Planet.

True to its mythological nature, Mars is involved in a new war. On one side of the spectrum are those who believe that just adding water to a rocky planet will spring forth life, and that therefore life must have once existed on Mars, and maybe does still. On the other side are those who believe that there are infinitely more parameters needed just to give life anywhere any chance at all, even here on this perfectly suitable little planet of ours.

Perhaps today's Martian spacecraft will provide extra information we need to come to some more black and white conclusions regarding the history of the Red Planet and whether or not it ever harbored life.

We no longer believe the fourth planet represents deity, but the ancient cultures that did continue to influence us unawares. And though we today approach the tiny planet with a cold logic and scientific reserve, Mars will certainly continue to hold our attention and awe for generations to come. Such seems to be the nature of our ruddy neighbor.

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

Images courtesy NASA.

Posted by Administrator at 2004.01.24 12:50 PM | Comments (0)

Winter = Cold Weather = Good Seeing

Observing >

So you got a new telescope for Christmas, eh? Well, even if you didn't, winter is a perfect time to get the old light bucket out, dust it off, and take it for a spin. There are some heavenly wonders out there waiting to be wondered at.

One reason it is such a good time to observe is that it gets dark so early, giving one more time to absorb it all. And, believe it or not, cold, clear nights can allow better "seeing." That's fancy astrospeak for "there isn't as much turbulence in the atmosphere making it feel as if we're looking at the stars and planets from the bottom of a pool."

Starting off easy let's first take a look at the Moon. Unfortunately, it is essentially full at the moment. Despite the fact that it seems like a Full Moon would be the best moon to spy on, it is not. It appears through a telescope as a flat, dingy disk. And the fuller moon has this annoying tendency to brighten the sky --- bad news for astronomers.

The quarter Moons --- the week before and after Full Moon --- are the best for using your scope to see the striking details of the surface craters and valleys and the long shadows streaking across the lunar surface.

Just after sunset, look to the southwestern skies for that big bright "star" following the sun only about 20 degrees above horizon. Through your scope you'll be looking at the mostly illuminated bright disk of our nearest neighbor, Venus. Its brightness and gibbous lighting make it look like a very small version of our Moon.

But you'll also see firsthand why observing objects down near the horizon can be so frustrating. There is a lot more of our interfering atmosphere for Venus' light to go through and the day's heat is still rising off the land. Thus it is not the clearest, steadiest image you can get.

You can see the differences in bad and good "seeing" when you next take a look at Saturn, the jewel in the January skies. Finding it is easy. If you know where Orion is follow a line from his bright blue star, Rigel, through the Belt, then through the big orangey star Betelgeuse, right to Saturn.

Bright and golden, Saturn shines right between the twins of Gemini, very near the Moon now. If this is the first time you have used a scope you will be more than pleasantly surprised when you first spot The Lord of the Rings. An annual favorite at star parties, the rings have an aesthetic jaw-dropping beauty all their own.

See for yourself, if you have the time and a clear night, the difference that altitude makes in the image you see. When Saturn is near the eastern horizon after sunset, rising with Orion, the heat rising from our surface will cause the notorious underwater look --- bad seeing. When Saturn reaches near overhead around midnight, the disk and rings should be tack sharp --- good seeing --- and worth staying up for.

If you can stay up into late night, you'll see the return of the king, Jupiter, as it makes its almost-ready-for-primetime comeback after being gone since early last summer. It is the very bright "star" in the eastern sky.
Even with binoculars you can easily spot four of Jupiter's moons --- the Galilean satellites, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto --- spotted first by master Galileo himself 400 years ago.

With a scope, though, you can see the bands of cloud patterns belting the planet, a reminder of Jupiter's terrifying atmospheric conditions. A very good telescope may spot the Great Red Spot, a storm raging for centuries now. How great is it? Several Earths could fit into it with plenty of legroom.

As the Moon begins to wan in the next couple weeks, you can begin to pick out the less conspicuous --- but still beautiful --- celestial wonders, including the Orion Nebula, the Pleiades, globular clusters, and other galaxies.

And after that there is the beautiful spring sky and then the summer spectacles and then ...

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

Posted by Administrator at 2004.01. 3 12:52 PM | Comments (0)



Looking for something?	« December 2003 \| Main \| February 2004 » Mars, the Bringer of War The Solar System > There's just something about the Red Planet that has held us in awe of it for literally thousands of years. The name of the Roman god of war, Mars, is of course the name of the fourth rock from the sun, the first planet outside our own orbit --- and the one planet that has been visited three times by two space agencies in the last five weeks. One need not look too far to see Mars' influence today in things that have no immediately obvious connection to the planet. We see, for example, the name of Mars inherited in names like Mark and Martin and Marcella. Although most people named after Mars don't know that. Why aren't associations like these obvious anymore? Michael Seeds, author and professor of astronomy at Franklin and Marshall College suggests the problem. "Modern people live in a world isolated from nature, so they don't understand the connections our culture still has with the earth and sky." The ancients did. The Romans named the third day of the week "dies Martis," the day of Mars, in honor of the god. Most of the Romance languages that came down from Latin have a similar name for the third day. In Spanish it is Martes, in French Mardi, in Italian Martedi. Even our English name for the third day of the week finds its origin in Mars. When the Germanic peoples adopted the Roman seven-day week they named their days similarly. Closely related to the war god Mars was their northern god of war, Tyr. In Anglo Saxon he was called Tiw, and our third day was christened "the day of Tiw." In their language it was "Tiwes daeg," in ours Tuesday. To the ancient Greeks and Romans there was an association of the planets and gods to basic elements of life. For example, the metal associated with Mars was iron, the metal of war. Mars' precious stone was ruby and the color connected with the god was red. We still call Mars the Red Planet. And, coincidentally, it is because of oxides of iron covering the planet that it appears so reddish in those stunning color images coming back from the landers. In modern times Mars has starred in other major roles. Johannes Kepler, the renowned late Renaissance astronomer, discovered his great laws of planetary motion while "waging war with Mars." Using astronomer Tycho Brahe's twenty years of data on the precise motions of the planet, Kepler was first to discover that planets don't travel in circles but ellipses, and that they orbit faster when close to the sun. Kepler's seemingly trivial discoveries helped break astronomy out from the prison of an ancient belief system steeped in Aristotelian philosophy and into a new age of intense scientific inquiry and discovery. Professor Owen Gingerich of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics puts it this way: Tycho's attempt (to describe Mars' orbit) was a failure, but from the ashes of that failed campaign came Kepler's reform of astronomy, truly the ‘new astronomy.' Thank you, Mars. You can go out today after sunset and catch a glimpse of Mars aloft. Drag a line from where the sun has set to Venus --- the brightest object in the sky, and Mars' mythological lover --- and continue on that line to the next brightest object. It is from that pale reddish dot that the tiny orbiters and landers are now communicating with the men and women of NASA. This writing would hardly be complete without mention of all the hoopla concerning life on Mars. One of the first to suggest --- maybe "preach" is a better word --- the possibility of life on Mars was Percival Lowell. Through a great telescope in Arizona at the turn of the last century, this highly influential amateur astronomer swore he saw canals on Mars. These canals, along with the darkening and lightening of the surface of Mars that we know now are due to dust storms, convinced Lowell that Mars was full of life. It was his influence, and cultural phenomena like the 1938 radio broadcast of War of the Worlds and a multitude of Hollywood productions of adventures to Mars or invasions by its green-hued inhabitants which has pretty much cemented in a lot of minds the hope that life exists on the Red Planet. True to its mythological nature, Mars is involved in a new war. On one side of the spectrum are those who believe that just adding water to a rocky planet will spring forth life, and that therefore life must have once existed on Mars, and maybe does still. On the other side are those who believe that there are infinitely more parameters needed just to give life anywhere any chance at all, even here on this perfectly suitable little planet of ours. Perhaps today's Martian spacecraft will provide extra information we need to come to some more black and white conclusions regarding the history of the Red Planet and whether or not it ever harbored life. We no longer believe the fourth planet represents deity, but the ancient cultures that did continue to influence us unawares. And though we today approach the tiny planet with a cold logic and scientific reserve, Mars will certainly continue to hold our attention and awe for generations to come. Such seems to be the nature of our ruddy neighbor. Mark Ritter teaches astronomy at Temecula Valley High School and can be reached at mritter@firstlightastro.com. Images courtesy NASA. Posted by Administrator at 2004.01.24 12:50 PM \| Comments (0) Winter = Cold Weather = Good Seeing Observing > So you got a new telescope for Christmas, eh? Well, even if you didn't, winter is a perfect time to get the old light bucket out, dust it off, and take it for a spin. There are some heavenly wonders out there waiting to be wondered at. One reason it is such a good time to observe is that it gets dark so early, giving one more time to absorb it all. And, believe it or not, cold, clear nights can allow better "seeing." That's fancy astrospeak for "there isn't as much turbulence in the atmosphere making it feel as if we're looking at the stars and planets from the bottom of a pool." Starting off easy let's first take a look at the Moon. Unfortunately, it is essentially full at the moment. Despite the fact that it seems like a Full Moon would be the best moon to spy on, it is not. It appears through a telescope as a flat, dingy disk. And the fuller moon has this annoying tendency to brighten the sky --- bad news for astronomers. The quarter Moons --- the week before and after Full Moon --- are the best for using your scope to see the striking details of the surface craters and valleys and the long shadows streaking across the lunar surface. Just after sunset, look to the southwestern skies for that big bright "star" following the sun only about 20 degrees above horizon. Through your scope you'll be looking at the mostly illuminated bright disk of our nearest neighbor, Venus. Its brightness and gibbous lighting make it look like a very small version of our Moon. But you'll also see firsthand why observing objects down near the horizon can be so frustrating. There is a lot more of our interfering atmosphere for Venus' light to go through and the day's heat is still rising off the land. Thus it is not the clearest, steadiest image you can get. You can see the differences in bad and good "seeing" when you next take a look at Saturn, the jewel in the January skies. Finding it is easy. If you know where Orion is follow a line from his bright blue star, Rigel, through the Belt, then through the big orangey star Betelgeuse, right to Saturn. Bright and golden, Saturn shines right between the twins of Gemini, very near the Moon now. If this is the first time you have used a scope you will be more than pleasantly surprised when you first spot The Lord of the Rings. An annual favorite at star parties, the rings have an aesthetic jaw-dropping beauty all their own. See for yourself, if you have the time and a clear night, the difference that altitude makes in the image you see. When Saturn is near the eastern horizon after sunset, rising with Orion, the heat rising from our surface will cause the notorious underwater look --- bad seeing. When Saturn reaches near overhead around midnight, the disk and rings should be tack sharp --- good seeing --- and worth staying up for. If you can stay up into late night, you'll see the return of the king, Jupiter, as it makes its almost-ready-for-primetime comeback after being gone since early last summer. It is the very bright "star" in the eastern sky. Even with binoculars you can easily spot four of Jupiter's moons --- the Galilean satellites, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto --- spotted first by master Galileo himself 400 years ago. With a scope, though, you can see the bands of cloud patterns belting the planet, a reminder of Jupiter's terrifying atmospheric conditions. A very good telescope may spot the Great Red Spot, a storm raging for centuries now. How great is it? Several Earths could fit into it with plenty of legroom. As the Moon begins to wan in the next couple weeks, you can begin to pick out the less conspicuous --- but still beautiful --- celestial wonders, including the Orion Nebula, the Pleiades, globular clusters, and other galaxies. And after that there is the beautiful spring sky and then the summer spectacles and then ... Mark Ritter teaches astronomy at Temecula Valley High School and can be reached at mritter@firstlightastro.com. Posted by Administrator at 2004.01. 3 12:52 PM \| Comments (0)
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