A New Book: The Planets
"In all the history of mankind, there will be only one generation that will be the first to explore the Solar System, one generation for which, in childhood, the planets are distant and indistinct discs moving through the night sky, and for which, in old age, the planets are places, diverse new worlds in the course of exploration." -Carl Sagan, from The Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective
I love books. I have so many books it is mind-boggling. Staggering. A thing to overthrow all other things! I have piles of them and all over the house. We have a bedroom downstairs that is "the library". It has bookshelves lining the walls and every shelf is groaning under the weight of many, many books. Between Luis and I we have thousands of books. I have a bookcase in my office; Luis has one in his; the eating room off the kitchen/sun room has three or four bookcases and one DVD case. The dining room has three big CD cases. I take my music, my shows and most especially my books seriously - very seriously!
I have a bookcase that is almost entirely devoted to the ...For Dummies and The Complete Idiot's Guide to... books. I have many favourite authors who never, ever go downstairs: Anne McCaffrey, Madeleine L'Engle, Tom Clancy, John Grisham and many others. I have my atlas, historical atlas, EMS books and English reference books here in my office. I have collections of Calvin & Hobbes, Dilbert, For Better or For Worse, Peanuts, Fox Trot and Mother Goose & Grimm. I have boatloads of reference books on a multitude of topics, favourites including (but definitely not limited to: astronomy, paganism/religion, superstitions, Old English, history (American, English, Italian, European, Middle Eastern, world, take your pick), handwriting analysis, crime scene investigation, the list goes on and on.
Right now I am reading a book called "The Planets" by Dava Sobel. It is wonderful. It has one chapter each on the Sun (Genesis), Mercury (Mythology), Venus (Beauty), Earth (Geography), the Moon (Lunacy), Mars (Sci-Fi), Jupiter (Astrology), Saturn (Music of the Spheres), Uranus and Neptune (Night Air), and Pluto (UFO).
It opened up with:
At night I lie awake
in the ruthless Unspoken,
knowing that planets
come to life, bloom,
and die away,
like day-lilies opening
one after another
in every nook and cranny
of the Universe...
- Diane Ackerman, from The Planets: A Cosmic Pastoral
I have always been in love with and fascinated with the planets since before I can recall. I have always wondered what was out there, can we get to it, what would it look like on [pick a planet, any planet]. Sure, Earth is my home, but we are obviously not spinning along alone and lonely in the solar system, but with our brethren and all of their violently formed or caught moons.
I have read the opening chapter and Genesis (the Sun) and I love it so far. I have no reason to believe that I will be anything less than entranced and besotted by the rest of it. I have a very detailed knowledge of the Solar System's inhabitants (see postings "Club Planet: It's Not Hard to Join" and "Now It's Much More Exclusive to Join Club Planet" dated 08.16.06 and 08.27.06); maybe not an astrophysicists, but still a better one than most people. There is not a lot in the above mentioned postings that I had to look up. This book takes all those facts and puts them into a fascinating and almost poetic look at them. It is not just a listing of the different details and aspects of each planet, but one that captures the reader with imagery, not just numbers.
Here is an excerpt from Genesis (The Sun):
"At totality, when the Moon is a pool of soot hiding the bright solar sphere, and the sky deepens to a crepuscular blue, the Sun's magnificent corona, normally invisible, flashes into view. Pearl and platinum-colored streamers of coronal gas surround the vanished Sun like a jagged halo. Long red ribbons of electrified hydrogen leap from behind the black Moon and dance in the shimmering corona. All these rare, incredible sights offer themselves to the naked eye, as totality provides the only safe time to gaze at the omnipotent Sun without fear of requital in blindness."
When I was ten years old, in 1978, there was a very unusual thing: a total eclipse of the sun that was completely visible from the northeastern United States. I was witness to it and it was the most incredible thing I have ever seen. I can recall it with perfect detail. Never again has such an amazing sight been given to New Jersey - it seems that Hawaii and the Pacific Ocean are consistently graced with full solar eclipses, while the rest of us go without. One of these days, though, I will be one of those crazy people who will save up her money to go to one of these distant, remote islands to see just this sight.
Total eclipses are fast and fleeting things. Seven minutes at most, the earth and moon are quickly on the move and zipping along their cosmic paths and determined to not stop to prolong that magic moment that people hold their breath for. Partial eclipses (I have seen two) are longer, slower creatures but most people are not even aware of them. I made it a point to take my lunch, with a coworker, during the partial solar eclipse of 1991, on 11 July, at 1400 - the start of the partial eclipse (totality was only seen over - big surprise - the island of Hawaii, the southern coast of Maui and the Baja Peninsula), I put together a crude viewing tool of a pinhole through a piece of cardboard and held it over a piece of white paper. The partial eclipse was delightfully visible that way. But more than that...
I don't know if I will ever, as witty and wordy and verbose as I am, find the right words to describe the way things looked during that partial eclipse. The sun was not visibly blocked except by the view through the cardboard projected onto paper; and yet, there was some strange "dimming" of the light around us. The quality, the look, the feel, the temperature of the stupefyingly hot air was... different. It got a tiny bit cooler. A breeze cropped up from the thin unmoving air. The light was... somehow less... not as strong. Things looked odd, had a strange shadow. Most people were wholly unaware of any change in things around them, but I could see it, could feel it. Magic. Amazing. Mystical. Incredible.
I love books. I have so many books it is mind-boggling. Staggering. A thing to overthrow all other things! I have piles of them and all over the house. We have a bedroom downstairs that is "the library". It has bookshelves lining the walls and every shelf is groaning under the weight of many, many books. Between Luis and I we have thousands of books. I have a bookcase in my office; Luis has one in his; the eating room off the kitchen/sun room has three or four bookcases and one DVD case. The dining room has three big CD cases. I take my music, my shows and most especially my books seriously - very seriously!
I have a bookcase that is almost entirely devoted to the ...For Dummies and The Complete Idiot's Guide to... books. I have many favourite authors who never, ever go downstairs: Anne McCaffrey, Madeleine L'Engle, Tom Clancy, John Grisham and many others. I have my atlas, historical atlas, EMS books and English reference books here in my office. I have collections of Calvin & Hobbes, Dilbert, For Better or For Worse, Peanuts, Fox Trot and Mother Goose & Grimm. I have boatloads of reference books on a multitude of topics, favourites including (but definitely not limited to: astronomy, paganism/religion, superstitions, Old English, history (American, English, Italian, European, Middle Eastern, world, take your pick), handwriting analysis, crime scene investigation, the list goes on and on.
Right now I am reading a book called "The Planets" by Dava Sobel. It is wonderful. It has one chapter each on the Sun (Genesis), Mercury (Mythology), Venus (Beauty), Earth (Geography), the Moon (Lunacy), Mars (Sci-Fi), Jupiter (Astrology), Saturn (Music of the Spheres), Uranus and Neptune (Night Air), and Pluto (UFO).
It opened up with:
At night I lie awake
in the ruthless Unspoken,
knowing that planets
come to life, bloom,
and die away,
like day-lilies opening
one after another
in every nook and cranny
of the Universe...
- Diane Ackerman, from The Planets: A Cosmic Pastoral
I have always been in love with and fascinated with the planets since before I can recall. I have always wondered what was out there, can we get to it, what would it look like on [pick a planet, any planet]. Sure, Earth is my home, but we are obviously not spinning along alone and lonely in the solar system, but with our brethren and all of their violently formed or caught moons.
I have read the opening chapter and Genesis (the Sun) and I love it so far. I have no reason to believe that I will be anything less than entranced and besotted by the rest of it. I have a very detailed knowledge of the Solar System's inhabitants (see postings "Club Planet: It's Not Hard to Join" and "Now It's Much More Exclusive to Join Club Planet" dated 08.16.06 and 08.27.06); maybe not an astrophysicists, but still a better one than most people. There is not a lot in the above mentioned postings that I had to look up. This book takes all those facts and puts them into a fascinating and almost poetic look at them. It is not just a listing of the different details and aspects of each planet, but one that captures the reader with imagery, not just numbers.
Here is an excerpt from Genesis (The Sun):
"At totality, when the Moon is a pool of soot hiding the bright solar sphere, and the sky deepens to a crepuscular blue, the Sun's magnificent corona, normally invisible, flashes into view. Pearl and platinum-colored streamers of coronal gas surround the vanished Sun like a jagged halo. Long red ribbons of electrified hydrogen leap from behind the black Moon and dance in the shimmering corona. All these rare, incredible sights offer themselves to the naked eye, as totality provides the only safe time to gaze at the omnipotent Sun without fear of requital in blindness."
When I was ten years old, in 1978, there was a very unusual thing: a total eclipse of the sun that was completely visible from the northeastern United States. I was witness to it and it was the most incredible thing I have ever seen. I can recall it with perfect detail. Never again has such an amazing sight been given to New Jersey - it seems that Hawaii and the Pacific Ocean are consistently graced with full solar eclipses, while the rest of us go without. One of these days, though, I will be one of those crazy people who will save up her money to go to one of these distant, remote islands to see just this sight.
Total eclipses are fast and fleeting things. Seven minutes at most, the earth and moon are quickly on the move and zipping along their cosmic paths and determined to not stop to prolong that magic moment that people hold their breath for. Partial eclipses (I have seen two) are longer, slower creatures but most people are not even aware of them. I made it a point to take my lunch, with a coworker, during the partial solar eclipse of 1991, on 11 July, at 1400 - the start of the partial eclipse (totality was only seen over - big surprise - the island of Hawaii, the southern coast of Maui and the Baja Peninsula), I put together a crude viewing tool of a pinhole through a piece of cardboard and held it over a piece of white paper. The partial eclipse was delightfully visible that way. But more than that...
I don't know if I will ever, as witty and wordy and verbose as I am, find the right words to describe the way things looked during that partial eclipse. The sun was not visibly blocked except by the view through the cardboard projected onto paper; and yet, there was some strange "dimming" of the light around us. The quality, the look, the feel, the temperature of the stupefyingly hot air was... different. It got a tiny bit cooler. A breeze cropped up from the thin unmoving air. The light was... somehow less... not as strong. Things looked odd, had a strange shadow. Most people were wholly unaware of any change in things around them, but I could see it, could feel it. Magic. Amazing. Mystical. Incredible.
I found a Web site that has a description of an eclipse and at one point the author wrote: "The light had taken on that flat steely grey character that is so difficult to describe unless you have actually seen it for yourself. The shadows were getting sharper as the illuminated fraction of the Sun got smaller and smaller." That is exactly right!
As with every astronomical wonder I have ever had the pleasure to see, I felt awed and amazed and euphorically happy. As if I have been invited to the best ever, one-time only performance of an actor or an opera or whatever you wish to equate it with. An invitation just for me, delivered personally by Bono to my hand, to see U2 perform right in front of me - just me. Just like that.
Astronomical...
The other partial eclipse was in 1994, 10 May - ironically, that is Bono's birthday. It was visible to all of North America - east coast, west coast, the north, the south, the middle - everyone had a shot at seeing this amazing thing. I did, too, although the weather was not clear for all of it. It began around 1100 EST, and a narrow band of it was the annular phase, but I was not in the narrow band that could see it. In fact, I was about a hundred miles from it. Still. I did see some of the partial phase, and I was not unhappy with that.
Maybe I will take out my beloved telescope tonight...
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