Skyward by our Guest Blogger, Dr. David Levy

 

Skyward for June 2025

 

David H. Levy

 

A Tail of Three Comets!

 

 

          In just the last few months, we have enjoyed a parade of no fewer than three comets.  Last fall there was Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, discovered by the Purple Mountain Observatory in east China, near Nanjing. The comet sported a very long tail and it was visible without a telescope for several weeks.    It was the highlight of an observing session a local high school shared with its students.  As the students sat and gazed at the sky, they could easily spot the tail stretching proudly across the western heavens.

 

          Just a few weeks later, in December a second ATLAS comet began to brighten significantly. I tried hard to see it as it was apparently visible for less than an hour during evening twilight, but couldn’t find it.

 

          My close friend Steve Edberg, however, did.  He and his family had to evacuate their home in La Canada during to the fires burning at the time.  On the evening of 14 January, while strolling along San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, he spotted Comet Atlas low in the west.  He is one of the very few observers in the northern hemisphere to see it.  He was so excited about it that he called me over the telephone. Our conversation was the first in more than two years but it resumed a friendship that has lasted for decades.  I was proud of him that night over his sighting, and still am.

          Over the next few days, until Comet ATLAS sank below the southern horizon, I attempted unsuccessfully to spot the comet.  But then, on 25 January, I was outside looking at some cirrus clouds.  Behind them, in the southern portion of the sky, there ss something else—strange, misshapen.  It might have been the tail of Comet ATLAS.     I recorded it as a possible sighting.                                 

  When Sky & Telescope’s June issue appeared with its pictures of the great “ghost comet,” meaning that the bhead had disintegrated, the actual tail looked identical to what I saw on photographs taken just two days earlier than my sighting.  I changed my record from “possible” to “probable.”  Comet ATLAS is the 236^th comet I have seen since Comet Ikeya-Seki in 1965.

 

          There was yet a third comet.  Comet Swan (C/2025 F2) was discovered in March 2025.  The discoverers used the Solar and Hemispheric Observatory spacecraft’s SWAN (Solar Wind Anisotropies) instrument.  The SWAN instrument has discovered over five thousand comets.  I saw this lovely comet on the morning of 10 April 2025, andit is the 237^th comet I have seen.  This SWAN instrument aboard SOHO, and SOHO itself, by the way, has discovered more than five thousand comets.

 

Three wonderful comets over just a few months is unusual, interesting, and fun:  But all three have departed. As Hopkins wrote in 1864,

 

 But then her tether calls her; she falls off,

And as she dwindles sheds her smock of gold…

And then goes out into the cavernous dark.

So I go out; my little sweet is done:

I have drawn heat from this contagious sun:

To not ungentle death now forth I run.”

Dr. E's Doll Museum Blog: Happy St Patrick's Day

Dr. E's Doll Museum Blog: Happy St Patrick's Day:  Monday will once again celebrate one of my favorite holidays.   I've always worn green, or had a St. Pat's sweater.  I love all thi...

Solstice

 Tomorrow at around four am the winter solstice arrives. Blessed be. I recommend Rosamund Pilcher's novel, Winter Solstice.

Skyward for by our Guest Blogger, David Levy

 

Skyward for November 2024

 

David H. Levy

Palomar Mountain Observatory.

 

Last month I drove all the way from my Vail, Arizona home to Palomar Mountain Observatory.  As most of this column’s readers know, I have visited this place many dozens of times from my first encounter in March of 1974, and regularly from the late summer of 1989 to the late spring of 1996.  I have always loved this magical place.  Each visit, as I would drive in, I would pass the expansive dome of the mighty 200-inch Hale Telescope.  As I drove by I felt the telescope waving at me.  It and I are the same age.  The telescope was officially inaugurated on June 3, 1948, just thirteen days after my birth on May 22 that year.  We are both 76. (I was probably too young to give a speech, with a poetic quotation, at that event.) 

                The purpose of this visit was to watch the September 16^th partial eclipse of the Moon with my close friend Jean Mueller.    I have known Jean for decades.  Jean operated telescopes at Palomar, mostly the 48-inch Samuel Oschin Schmidt telescope which opened just before the giant 200-inch. While there, she exposed many photographic plates for the second POSS (Palomar Observatory Sky Survey)  survey.  Mueller would scan the plates for stars that appeared in and around galaxies and mark a galaxy. She would then compare that galaxy with a picture from earlier to see  if the star had newly appeared. If it had, she would measure the position of the star, and then an astronomer would confirm her discovery on the 200-inch. This meticulous work enabled Mueller to discover 107 supernovae in addition to fifteen comets and thirteen now-numbered  asteroids.  Jean Mueller is a prime, absolutely first-rate astronomer and observer of the night sky, and she is admired and highly respected around the world.

                It has been thirty years since I last visited Palomar, and I was overdue for a return.  As I cruised by the colossal dome housing the 200-inch Hale telescope, at one time the largest in the world; this was not my reason for visiting Palomar all those years ago.  Instead, I drove on some meters on to see the 18-inch Schmidt camera telescope.  This beautiful instrument was the first and is the oldest telescope on this mountain, and its record of discovery is dazzling.  It helped Fritz Zwicky discovered 121 exploding stars, or supernovae, in distant galaxies.  It has a historic record of discovery of asteroids and comets, by far the most important of which is Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 on March 23, 1993.  In July of 1994 the pieces of this shattered comet slammed into Jupiter.  Colliding at a velocity of 37 miles per second, each fragment left a very bright flash and a large brownish cloud that persisted for months.

                During my March visit I learned how the 18-inch was moved to the observatory museum where it has become a lovely exhibit.  Whwen I saw my old friend again; I almost cried.  I then visited the outside of the dome that was our home for so long, and while there the treasured memories of working with Gene and Carolyn flooded back like an incoming ocean tide.  This time I could not hold back the tears of joy.

                With the possible exception of our discovery of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, this was by far the most emotive visit I’ve ever had to Palomar.  For the first time in my long association, the overwhelming history of the place really struck me.  I felt I was standing next to Russell Porter as he drew a sketch of the telescope, even before its mirror was installed, pointed towards the north.   He even flashed me his legendary grin.  Porter became famous long before he helped design the 200-inch.  In the November 1925 issue of Scientific American,  he published its lead article “The Heavens Declare the Glory of God.”  That piece of writing also marked the opening of Stellafane, the telescope makers conference still held every year atop Breezy Hill in Vermont. Last year Stellafane celebrated 100 years of its legendary pink clubhouse.

                On that incredible evening of September 17, we watched a wonderful partial lunar eclipse.  Only 7% of the Moon was covered in the Earth’s central or umbral shadow, but the outer penumbra shadow dimmed much of the rest of the Moon.  And just five weeks later, mighty Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS painted its rosy picture across the evening sky.    May these haunting events add to our joy in the night sky that shall be remembered forever.

The monstrous dome of the Hale 200 inch telescope on Palomar Mountain, as seen through the 18 inch Schmidt Camera Dome at Twilight.

Comet Tsuchinshan Atlas 19 October 2024

 

               

 

Samhain

 It is Samhain.  Blessed be.

Skyward for October 20-24 by David H. Levy, our guest blogger

 

Skyward for October 20-24

 

 

Elm Tree at Acadia

David H. Levy

 

    Morello's outline there is wrongly traced,

    His hue mistaken; what of that? or else,

    Rightly traced and well ordered; what of that?

    Speak as they please, what does the mountain care?

    Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,

    Or what's a heaven for? 

Robert Browning,  Andrea del Sarto, 1855.

 

Decades ago during the fall of a year that I recall might have been 1972, I attended Yom Kippur services at our family synagogue in Montreal, Congregation Shaar Hashomayim.  The Congregation had instituted a new feature that year, a Yom Kippur Teach-in.  I decided to give it a try.  The topics were completely open that year, and the audience applauded every comment.  I was a trifle nervous about saying anything, but I stood up and made a comment about God, and how our concepts of God are as different as each of us might be.  I ended my comment with these two lines from Robert Browning’s famous Andrea del Sarto:

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,

Or what's a heaven for? 

 

My comment did get a smattering of applause.  Afterward my life went on, and on, until few days ago, when writing a book featuring poetry about the night sky, I chanced upon Browning’s poem again.

     This Browning poem is surely one of his most famous and insightful.  The poet suggests that Mount Morello, in Italy near Florence, is “wrongly traced.”   Hed then supposes that the mountain itself, if it has consciousness, wouldn’t care if its outline was correct or not: “what does the mountain care?” In the final two lines of this section the poet transcends geographically from Morello to infinity, from earthly cares to the outermost reaches of space and time”--  “Or what’s a heaven for?”

      It is not often that someone can compare the reading of a great and fabulous poem with a sporting event, but here I try : 

I like to compare these lines of “Andrea del Sarto” with watching a baseball game.  In my experience a typical baseball game consists of lengthy stretches of strike-outs, some walks, breaks between innings, and other trivia.  But these breaks are interspersed with exciting base hits, doubles, triples, and home runs.  These events often happen without warning, and a large crowd in the stands can be electrified instantaneously, rising to its feet as the ball heads off the field, into the stands. It does seem odd to compare a work of English Literature to a baseball game, but in this case, it works.

Writing about ball games, I have missed a football game to see a deep partial eclipse of the Moon On August 26, 1961, there was an eclipse in which 99.2 percent of the Moon was embedded in the Earth’s umbral shadow.   In this way the stadium offers us yet another way to enjoy the night sky, and to remember that even during sporting events, we can enjoy the night sky by looking at it briefly from our stadium chairs.  When we do that during the most important game of all, we are truly winners.

 

Fall

The leaves have begun to fall. they are changing color, too. early in some cases I live for 🍂 🍁 autumn. so many great memories, of country drives to find pumpkins and carmel apples, fall festivals, scarecrows and Halloween 🎃. Soon, it will be time to plant bulbs, rake leaves, and remember good times long gone.