We arrive on Tuesday September 22 at the equinox: when day and night hang equal. The Sun crosses into the southern half of the sky, at a point still traditionally called the First Point of Libra (it was anciently at the beginning of Libra, the Balance, though now it has been moved by precession into Virgo). Here is the equinoctial evening scene.
See the end note about enlarging illustrations.
You can see that 90 degrees away from the September equinox point is the December solstice point, which the Sun will reach at the depth of winter. Near it is the antapex, away from which Earth is hurtling at the present moment in in its orbit. The exact moment of the equinox was 13:30 Universal Time, so during the preceding daylight for America.
I’ve taken to putting fuller discussion and illustration of recurring events like this into the “Astronomical Calendar Any-Year,” which you can see by clicking that tab in the menu at the top. Please look for the new page on “Seasons: the equinoxes and solstices”, or go directly to that page by clicking here.
If you read to the end of that page, you’ll discover that day and night are not quite equal at the date of the equinox. In fact there is more day than night.
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Home Planet Department
Five more Tuesdays bring us to another moment of balance.
Scientific American has, for the first time in its 175-year history, endorsed a presidential candidate.
The editors of the respected journal have taken this step “not lightly,” because of the seriousness of the situation. One candidate is criminally (my modifier) irresponsible about humanity’s health crisis and the world’s environmental crisis. The other has well prepared plans for action on these problems, based on scientific advice.
I hope you will read through this powerful mid-length article, whose every statement is documented.
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ILLUSTRATIONS in these posts are made with precision but have to be inserted in another format. You may be able to enlarge them on your monitor. One way: right-click, and choose “View image”, then enlarge. Or choose “Copy image”, then put it on your desktop, then open it. On an iPad or phone, use the finger gesture that enlarges (spreading with two fingers, or tapping and dragging with three fingers). Other methods have been suggested, such as dragging the image to the desktop and opening it in other ways.
Sometimes I make improvements or corrections to a post after positing it. If you click on the title, rather than on ‘Read more’, I think you are sure to see the latest version.
This weblog maintains its right to be about astronomy or anything under the sun.
Thanks very much Guy. It’s now a few days after the equinox and I’ve been feeling the turning of the seasons. Sunrise comes a minute later, and sunset earlier, day by day. The noon Sun is lower day by day. The light has had a unique golden hue. Everything turns around the equinoxes.
The Scientific American editorial is sober, well reasoned, and compelling.
I’m afraid that the polity of the United States is losing the intellectual rigor needed for a democracy to function effectively. Rather than honestly considering each question on it’s own terms, too many of us choose to believe whichever “facts” support our a priori partisan allegiances. Our lazy credulity leaves us vulnerable to manipulation and subjugation by repressive foreign autocracies and domestic elites who value their own greed and vanity above the general welfare and the interests of future generations.
Sadly, the editors of Sky & Telescope (see their editorial in the October edition) have also taken a highly partisan political stance, in this case effectively endorsing Black Lives Matter and — by extension — Critical Race Theory and the 1619 Project.
As others have noted, there is no place for this kind of partisan ideology in our popular science journals, but in Sky & Telescope’s case, their virtue signaling editors would seem to be advocating the creation of different kinds of science for different racial and ethnic groups. (One wonders what Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson would make of this. Or, for that matter, Dr. Martin Luther King.)
The political situation here in America is “complicated,” and there is probably a greater division of thinking about the goals and purposes of government than at any time since the Civil War. One side appears to believe — per the tenets of Critical Race Theory and the 1619 Project — that the very founding of our nation was so steeped in racism and oppression that our current system of government and all of its supporting institutions are beyond redemption, and they must be replaced with some kind of a “woke” dictatorship of the enlightened elites.
On the other hand, many people believe that despite all of the flaws and imperfections in our history — and they are legion — the arc of American history HAS bent toward justice and equality, and there is no need to discard our form of government, our history, and our institutions merely to expiate an hypothesized original sin.
Thus while a lot of people are justifiably focused on how to best safeguard our common environment, there are most certainly other existential questions involved here as well. As other observers have noted*, even after Germany and Japan were defeated at the end of World War II, they were still allowed to essentially keep their national cultures, albeit without the militaristic and ideological elements that unleashed such havoc on the world. Now, in America in 2020, many people — rightly or wrongly — believe that they are being called upon to renounce their own history, culture, and system of government in order to placate a small group of Marxist ideologues. Again, something that German and Japanese citizens were NOT called on to do even after their countries lay in ruin and defeat.
*For more on this, see Samuel P. Huntington’s Who Are We: The Challenges to America’s National Identity, 2004.
Life is complicated, and we as Americans face many difficult choices in November beyond who might be the best steward of the environment. Indeed, there is a very real question as to whether or not the United States as we have known it will continue to
exist. Americans, among other things, will have to decide whether we are living in “a shining city on a hill” where individual freedom, opportunity, and equal justice under the Rule of Law obtain for everyone, or if we are, instead, living in a cesspool of racism and oppression that needs to be “burnt down.”
The world — for the sake of the environment and everything else — ought to hope that we get this right.
Equinox and light, they relate somehow.
Here a filler about light by Gustav Flaubert.
…et dans l’espace flotte une poudre d’or tellement menue
qu’elle se confond avec la vibration de la lumière.
…and in this expanse floats a golden powder so minute
that it intermingles with light’s vibration.
It’s from Flaubert’s The Temptation of St. Anthony.
From the opening page where the hermit is set in his desert quarters.
The author worked for a good part of his life on this novel.
I rarely read Scientific America but I am guessing that it is not Donald Trump who they have endorsed?he seems to regard the scientific method with suspicion and even simple common sense things like masks might reduce the spread of coronovirus,along with the flu and common cold.quite obviously really for although they can’t trap viruses they can trap the heavy particles,spital and such like,they most easily travel in.i would say, being English, Donald Trump doesn’t really effect me but not so as the spreading of the California smoke to England proves will live on one world and it’s like one big organic organism.theres an interesting article out about how if the Czar hadn’t sold Alaska, Alaska wouldn’t have been taken by Lenin and become the Alaskan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.i wonder how this would have changed the history of the USA and Canada? although would it have become it’s own ASSR as Alaska would have been an integral part of Russia therefore it probably would have become part of the Russian Federated Soviet Socialist Republic after the 1917 revolution in far away Petrograd?
We certainly would have never had to deal with Palin.
The politicization of SCIENTIFIC AMERICA is muchly to be decried. After decades of subscription, I cancelled my own and gift subscriptions, advising the Editors (actually, the Erinyes) that when I wanted a political rag, I would subscribe to one. I can imagine the wails of anguish and whipping derecho of angst if SciAM had endorsed Trump. So long, SciAM, enjoy being political. (By the by, I am an INDEPENDENT and would have done the same IF Scientific American had endorsed Trump, or Howie Hawkins, or Ralph Nader. The Editors can virtue signal elsewhere as they have compromised themselves irredeemably.
You cancelled GIFT subscriptions? Wow that’s extra
POTUS is Commander – in – Chief not Scientist in Chief. His/Her responsoibility covers more than just a pandemic or any single issue—and he/she cannot be knowledgeable in EVERY field of human endeavor. Neither should POTUS be chosen from ONLY among the Legal Profession or Military Proffession, but occasionalluy from others as well. Presdents from Truman onwards have committed the occasional scientific howler (Trumnan famously mistook Atomic FISSION for FUSION in his anouncement of the bombing of Hiroshiima by means of an Atomic Bomb in 1945 for instance). Trump has had his ups and downs—and contradictory advice from often the same people (Mask or no mask Dr Fauci?), but really no more than others. Too many issues in play here to tale S. I. ‘s advice. I have my reasons, over several different issues for a Trump vote—but lets remain nonpolitical. S.I. has done Science –with a captal “S” no favors here because this only adds to the appearance of the politicization of scoence itself, which the odeological conformity of academia has already contributed to. the public’s perception of a supposedly left-leaning scientific establishment likely to tailor its findings to pre-conceived political notions can only be reinforced by this. Where I agree with Trump he can do some good, the pandemic would have happened anyway in this age of airline travel, and a hypothetical Biden would have hesitate don travel bans, so even that just might conme out in the wash. Where I disagree with him the next President can work to correct that—from January 20th 2021 OR 2025. S.I.’s endrsement is a non sequitor,
What do you think Covid policy should be based on if not on science? Witchcraft? Ignorance?
It seems some scientists may have convenient amnesia about the previous cast of characters…. Let’s truly look at the last admin. They were (are) pretty bad on all accounts. The data is clear if people are willing to look and properly evaluate (and Biden is just the return of the bad bunch). Biden and Harris, and the creeps hiding under the carpet are the last thing America needs right now.
It seems that after its 175 year history, Scientific American has finally jumped the shark.
The facts show that during the years leading up to the virus in the state of New York, the Democrat-led leadership depleted their stockpile of respirators. Under the President’s leadership, this has been fixed through laws requiring manufacturers to retool and produce massive amounts of respirators that are being shared worldwide. But why was the state of New York so unprepared? Because they got rid of their respirator stock pile, including even at auction.
(https://www.propublica.org/article/how-new-york-city-emergency-ventilator-stockpile-ended-up-on-the-auction-block)
The President sent a hospital ship to New York City and the Army Corp of Engineers constructed overflow hospital rooms at a community auditorium to take on COVID-19 patients where they could be treated safely and effectively Instead, the local government (not the Feds) placed COVID-19 positive patients into nursing homes where the virus spread like wildfire, killing hundreds. The actual number is unkonwn and the speculated numbers are likely undercounts.
(https://apnews.com/212ccd87924b6906053703a00514647f “New York’s true nursing home death toll cloaked in secrecy”)
Early in 2020, when the President endeavored to stop the virus by issuing travel bans from China and Europe, leading Democrat leaders poo-pooed it. House Speaker Pelosi encouraged people to go ahead and visit San Francisco’s Chinatown. New York’s mayor similarly encouraged people to go out and have a good time. Biden called the travel bans “Xenophobic,” then months later flip-flopped and agreed that it saved lives.
(https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/03/politics/joe-biden-trump-china-coronavirus/index.html “Biden campaign says he backs Trump’s China travel ban”)
There is this and plenty of additional evidence that Scientific American’s rationale is fatally flawed. Their endorsement shows that they would be better served to leave politics to the voters as it is outside the magazine’s area of expertise.
Scientific American hasn’t been the same since Martin Gardner left it. As much of a scientist as I am and use science everyday in my chosen field I will never vote for a candidate who is demonstrating on a daily basis his lack of mental clarity. Call it what you will, dementia, alzheimer’s or whatever. I’m not voting to place him in the White House where his Vice Presidential pick may be the one running things sooner rather than later, or at least tremendously behind the scenes. There is a lot more going on in the US than just to vote for a candidate because of his stance on science.
Right on Andrew Hans
Martin Gardner was indeed a great asset for Scientific American. He contributed the column “Mathematical Games”. He did not control editorial policy.