If I Could Turn Back Time

5

Mood: The Music of the Spheres (432Hz)

My God, it’s full of stars!

I have always been fascinated with the night sky. From an early age, such things as meteors, comets, earthshine and eclipses have had a hold on my wondering mind. Learning that comets are chunks of ice and rock and their tails always point away from the sun, that metros are comets that fell to earth, that earthshine is the light from the sun reflecting off of the earth and making the moon barely visible, and that a solar eclipse is the moon moving in front the sun (casting an incredible shadow on the planet!) and a lunar eclipse was the shadow of the earth falling across the moon; all of these things, as mentioned, absolutely fascinated me!

Somehow, maybe simply a further fascination of history, I came to learn that we, as humans, have been interested in astronomy since before recorded times. There are what are termed ‘medicine wheels’ all over the western United States and Canada, stone circles laid on the ground that mark the solstices and equinoxes and stars important to the people who built them.

Then there are the massive stone circles that do the same.

There are even ancient astronomical observatories.

These places exist around the world! From time immemorial, we as a people, all from disparate cultures, have been attuned to the heavens! That is amazing to me. Especially as different as cultures can be, we still built structures and mechanisms to understand what goes on above our heads. This curiosity certainly extends to so many other sciences and areas of study, of course, but as we rapidly approach that midway point between solstices, are about to lose the hour of day we gained four months ago, these astronomical whimsies once again occur to me.

Daylight Savings Time is a bizarre outlier of astronomy, really only becoming a ‘thing’ just over 100 years ago, and mainly began in earnest during WWII in a few countries to help offset energy needs, strangely enough, though there are many other reasons of economics and so forth and so on; take your pick. For most of us, I think it almost always comes down to the joy of gaining that extra hour of partying or sleep, or the grumbling of losing the same.

libris:
The celestial heavens are amazing, this universe never fails to astound me.  And it truly is amazing that every culture on the face of the earth had some way to keep track of what was going on in the night sky since time immemorial.  I think people have been fascinated with the stars and space weather since we could tilt our heads back to appreciate what is up there.  I was listening to a podcast where the speaker noted how every story in the bible ties back to a story that coincides with astronomy, and the stories of of the constellations.  I've been meaning to discuss this with one of the rabbis, but I know this is going to be one of those conversions that will tie up a bunch of their time, plus I'd like to dig a little deeper so I can possibly explain it better.
bradmax:
@libris We always search for answers, either on a personal level for our own betterment (I hope!) or for that in Nature we do not understand. Look what such searching hath wrought! Fascinating, amazing and scary.  It is very interesting that all religions, at least in part, have to do with some sort of astronomy or other, isn’t it? How can they not, with, as we now understand, the Sun has a direct influence on the planet’s weather, it’s ocean currents, along with the Moon influencing the tides and such and the magnetosphere controlling birds to an extent and so on? Should you care to, once you have the time to speak with your rabbi, it would be wondrous to know the gist of what you learn. Peace and good health to you and your Mom!

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