2020: The Year the Universe Got a Little Closer

To any casual observer, 2020 has been an unprecedented year insofar as awfulness is concerned and with regards to the sheer scale and multitude of compound tragedies and crises that have befallen humanity in general, and specific countries in particular. This year is unsurpassed in living memory. My country, Lebanon, has had to endure more tragedies than most. But, since the start of the year, I have turned my eyes heavenward to the velvet pitch blackness of the clear skies far away from city lights to observe the only reassuring predictable constant in our turbulent lives: the universe and the amazing show it puts on nightly. And it has been a uniquely bountiful year for astronomers, professional and amateur, as well as for astrophotographers and casual stargazers. 

Jupiter


In the summer, we saw C/2020 F3, otherwise known as Comet Neowise, grace the northwestern skies just above the horizon. It was the brightest comet in the northern hemisphere since Hale-Bopp in 1997. It could be seen even by people living in city centers and around areas with serious light pollution. Also in late summer and autumn, we saw Mars, our closest doppelganger planet, appear at its biggest and brightest follow the line of the ecliptic nightly, traversing the spine of night from east to west. Jupiter and Saturn dominated the summer sky as their orbits brought them closest to Earth in July and they were the brightest objects in the night sky. Even with my modest six-inch reflector and a very basic planetary camera, and without calibration or tracking to facilitate long exposure shots, the few images I took of the planets were reasonably impressive for an amateur of amateurs I consider myself to be. 


Mars

Our Moon


In fact, the year was chockfull of celestial events, including two solar eclipses and two super moons, and all crowned with the celestial event of the millennia in the closing days of the year, a once-in-860-year event, the great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. The planets appear in the south-western sky as two star-like objects very close to each other, a bright star and a dimmer one on top. The planets were closest to one another from our Earthly perspective on December 21, but they will remain visible just above the horizon, at or just after sunset up until New Years, after which the planets will appear too low in the horizon to be clearly visible.  



The conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn


While these events are of little scientific significance to “serious” astronomers with ‘PhD’ after their names, they have helped distract humans on our benighted planet from the anxiety causing events that define our every waking moment. They remind us that there is something greater than human kind’s petty problems, that the universe is a wonderful and beautiful place worth exploring, even if as yet most of us can’t travel beyond the gravitational prison of our home planet. Astronomy is the entry level science for most lay people, especially the young and easily bored, you could say it’s a glamorous science, the frontline cadre of bespectacled math and physics geniuses who will likely be the first to make first contact with any aliens, whether they arrive in a spaceship as little green men or aboard an asteroid fragment as single cell organisms. 


Saturn


It is so important right now that we keep interest in the sciences top of mind for governments, for education authorities and for the young, despite the crippling chaos gripping the global system. Science education is the future for any society seriously planning to reemerge from this depression as a productive and useful member of the global community. Through science innovation and applied technologies countries generate proprietary technologies that are used to produce innovative products and services that will be needed by other countries. This is how countries become more productive and less consumptive. So, if the night sky stirs the imagination of the next generation of science geniuses, then astronomy has done its job.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Adultery and the western media's attitude towards Dubai

Here we go again... another British woman charged with adultery in Dubai and the whole of the British and UAE press jump all over it as if its the scoop of the season. I wonder what readers think and in particular British readers? Do they feel ashamed that a compatriot is behind bars because she could not control her animal urges? Well they should be, because this is far from a crime she committed against her husband, with whom she exchanged marital vows, it is a crime against the laws of the UAE. It shows a total lack of regard and respect for the traditions of this conservative Muslim country and it is a slap in the face of every Emirati. Why does the press seem compelled to give such people extensive coverage? One hopes to enlighten the British public as to the pitfalls of sleeping around and its legal repercussions, but in truth its all about money, headlines and a public hungry to devour such shameful scandal. The press are complicit with the mob in elevating such individuals, who
Read more

Orosdi-Back: A lost Beyrouth department store from an elegant age

Image
My mother told me it was located on ‘ Banks Street ’ in Down Town Beirut , the road that leads up to Riad el Solh Square . On most maps the street is also named after Riad el Solh. The store was located opposite Bank Intra, or so I was told. Presumably the location of the store was indicative of the high end goodies on sale inside. The closest comparison to Orosdi Back is the old Allied’s department store in Dubai , for those who remember Dubai in the 1980s. But Orosdi Back was a store from a different age, an age of elegance as opposed to the vulgar modern excesses of the nouveau-riche, something Beirut ’s Down Town is synonymous with! A wonderful blog dubbed ‘language hat’ published some information about the founders of this chain of department stores. According to the blog the chain of stores came about as a result of a partnership between Adolf Orosdi, a Hungarian army officer and his sons who opened a clothing store in Galata in 1855, and the Back family, who were Austro-H
Read more

Lebanon searching for deliverance from the wolves of war, chaos and collapse

Image
There is little to do in Lebanon, little paid work to be done, and what work there is, is pointless and poorly paid. Here we live in the hope that we shall eventually be delivered from the monsters, the wolves of our Lebanese government, Cabinet and Parliament and all the power-brokers that manipulate our lives. I once asked a political science professor “why do politicians always wear suits and ties?” He answered jokingly: “so you don’t see their snake’s skin”, I guess if they wore hats it would be so we don’t see their devil’s horns, or is that meant only for men of the cloth…?   Regardless of which political side you ask about our country’s future, the answer would likely be the same, that things are looking bleak and the blame is always laid at the door of the “other side”, because your interlocutor will never make the mistake of accepting that his/her side shares any of the blame for catastrophe. Lebanese society remains highly polarized politically and ideologically. Archaic reli
Read more