This is the
Classical Astronomy Update, an email newsletter especially
for Christian homeschool families (though everyone is welcome!) Please feel free to share this with any interested
friends.
But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, And the stars of heaven shall fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall be shaken. And then shall they see the Son of man coming in
the clouds with great power and glory. -- Mark 13:24-26 IN THIS UPDATE The Pereid Meteor
Shower Hello Friends, Welcome to all the new subscribers! So many people have signed up recently, thanks for your interest in Classical Astronomy. Hope you learn a few interesting things from this newsletter and learn to become an observe of the LORD's beautiful sky. Please don't mind the Bible verse cited above for this edition. I thought it was amusing to cite this passage in a newsletter about a meteor showers. Many Christian sources dwell heavily on end times prophecy and hype up any astronomical event that points to the last days. But that's not what we do
here at Classical Astronomy. There may or may not be a meteor shower after the tribulation described by the Lord Jesus in those Gospel passages, or there may be an even more spectacular supernatural
occurrence that will fulfill this prophecy. But whatever the case, we need to appreciate that meteor showers are natural events that occur annually, so therefore not every meteor shower is a "sign of the end," any more than a naturally-occurring eclipse of the Sun or Moon. It has happened in church history that believers have been startled by a particularly awe-inspiring meteor shower and have been "blown by every wind of doctrine" into an apocalyptyic frenzy. This especially happened in the 1830s and 40s following the Great Leonid Meteor Storm of 1833, which spawned several millennialist movements. Instead, I'd encourage everyone to stay calm and enjoy the celestial
fireworks that the LORD has places overhead to declare His glory. ECLIPSE WEBSITE! I especially encourage everyone to order Eclipse Shades solar viewers. You'll want to have these for the annular eclipse of Saturday, October 14, 2023 and keep them handy for the total solar eclipse of Monday, April 8, 2024. Visit Eclipse Over
Cleveland to learn the differences between these eclipses. Order your Eclipse Shades early and don't wait. These are always a high demand item and the sellers always runs out before eclipse time. Check out our new online Eclipse Store. We currently offer Cleveland-branded Shades, Ohio-branded Shades, and standard non-branded Shades if you're not from the Buckeye State. Our Classical Astronomy site is still having technical problems and we cannot
directly sell our Signs & Seasons homeschool astronomy curriculum at this time. But the S&S pages on the site are still active and include links to our resellers where you can order the curriculum at a discounted
price. For more information about topics from Classical Astronomy discussed in this newsletter,
please check out a homeschool astronomy curriculum (but popular with adult readers too!) Visit our archive of previous editions of the Classical Astronomy Update newsletters, going back to 2007. *****
The Perseid Meteor Shower The Perseid meteor shower is always reliably one of the best meteor showers of the year. Also, being in August, it certainly has the most reliable nice weather of any other annual
meteor shower visible from North America. 2023 is a great year for the Perseids because of a favorable Moon phase. The Moon is currently in a waning crescent phase, only visible in the early morning before sunrise, and will not shine brightly to spoil the darkness of the night sky. And as a special bonus, the peak of the Perseid meteors will be this weekend, August 12 and 13, instead of a weeknight as is often the case. So if you have clear skies this weekend,
spend some time outside after dark looking for the Perseids! Meteor showers are the result of debris left behind from the passage of a comet. Comets are "dirty snowballs" made of ice mingled with small solid particles,
which range in size from dust to sand to gravel. When the comet passes close to the Sun, the ice melts and the particles stream off from the comet in the direction pointing away from the Sun, resulting in the "tail" of the comet. So after the comet passes through the inner solar system, it leaves a trail of this debris that continues to orbit the Sun as a stream of cometary particles. Most comets do not have orbits that intersect the orbit of the Earth but some do. Only comets with Earth-intersecting orbits result in meteor
showers. The entire solar system is strewn with comet debris from all the comets that have ever passed, but only a small percentage leave behind remnants we can observe. As the Earth goes around the Sun each year in its orbit, it passes through the streams of these past comets. And as those small particles collide with the Earth's atmosphere at high speeds, they burn up and produce a long, bright trail across the sky, visible as a meteor. For most meteor showers, you see a meteor here and there streaking across the sky. With the Perseids you can often see 60 per hour. Some
people expect meteor showers to be an ongoing fireworks display, with shooters streaking continuously across the sky. That's not what it's like. Instead, the meteors are intermittent. You see one and after a while you see another. You have have to be patient. But your patience will be rewarded since those streaking meteors are always breathtaking. On rare occasions you might see a rare fireworks display in a meteor storm, with several zipping across the sky at a time. The Leonid meteors that happen in November have been known to produce such a display every 33 years or so. The last time was in 2001, so maybe they will happen again like that in the
2030s. Most meteor showers like the Perseids are not at all dense, as depicted in these images. The Earth moves in its orbit about 18 miles a second, so if you see a meteor every 60 seconds, that's like grains of sand
that are each 1000 miles apart. The peak of the shower lasts for a couple days. Since the Earth travels 3 million miles each day around the Sun, a typical meteor shower is formed of small particles widely dispersed over a vast empty volume of tens of millions of miles of space. The Perseids are the remnants of Comet Swift-Tuttle, which has an orbital period of about 133 years. It was discovered in 1862 and returned to the inner solar system round about 1993. The shower was especially strong in the years following the comet's passage, and the Perseids remain a strong shower to this day. The Perseids are given that name because their radiant is centered in the constellation Perseus, rising in the northwest sky near the constellation Cassiopeia. Cassiopeia is one of the northern circumpolar constellations, sharing the northern sky with the Big Dipper as explained in our
Signs & Seasons curriculum. The radiant is the point in the sky from which the meteors appear to radiate, hence the name. It's not a bad plan to face east, though the meteors can appear in any part of the sky.
However, their straight-line path always extends backward towards the radiant. Here's what you do: pitch a blanket in your backyard and lay down for about a half-hour to an hour. Just lay back and gaze up at the sky. Bring some popcorn or other snacks and make an event out of it. Better yet, get away from the city
and travel to a rural location with dark skies (if you can find any left in the USA). Your family might see a few rewarding shooters and you'll woop and laugh and have a memorable time. But some people just lean their heads out their back door for 5 or 10 seconds and see nothing. That never works out. You have to invest some time. And as with anything in astronomy, sometimes it pays off and sometimes it doesn't. So just have a nice outdoor time appreciating
the beauty of the night sky and consider any meteors a bonus. Traditionally, Perseid meteors have been called "The Tears of St. Lawrence." The traditional church calendar commemorates August 10 as the Feast of St.
Lawrence, who was an early martyr of the Christian church, murdered by the Romans. According to the traditional haggiography, St. Lawrence was tortured to death upon a glowing hot griddle. In the midst of his agony, Lawrence cried out to his murderers that they should flip him over, that he was roasted enough on the one side. The Perseid shower closely coincides with the Feast of St. Lawrence each year. Hope the rest of your summer goes well. Please drop me a line sometime of if you see anything of interest in the sky, or if you have any
questions. Till next time, God bless and clear skies, - jay The Ryan Family Cleveland, Ohio, USA When I
consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained, what is man that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? - Psalm 8:3-4, a Psalm of David
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