Faustus

Salve Ingsoc, and thanks for bringing that possibility up. What year was that and which Agrippa are we talking about? The apparitions of Halley's should've been 56/57 bc, 19 ad, 94/95 ad but I only get those dates by going back in 75.625 year increments, which don't fit Asclepiades list very closely. It always seems to me that a lot is made of Comets (Coma/hair/hairy?) but could something else be described with the same word? A burst of meteor storms or something else associated with a comet? The passing of Comets are relatively unremarkable events, as they change slowly in the sky from day to day. The circumstances often seem exagerated to me, but then a very close passing comet could be completely different from what we are accustomed to seeing. Some debris breaking loose from the main body of the comet, for instance when inbound, could get into the way of earth when outbound. A comet which is not much more than a a dirty snowball could possibly create some unusual affects, but are those the kinds of effects that could cause fires (which were attributed to crows dropping burning meat) I don't personally think so, but it might be imprudent to rule anything out for the sake of argument. Some unusual combinations of meteoritical events are possible, but a public ignorant of the possible, often sees the impossible.

Of interest: SS433 ; One of the oddest stars in the galaxy, then discover the cosmos for Astronomy Picture of the Day Archive Enjoy! Faustus ------------------ And that inverted Bowl we call The Sky, Whereunder crawling coop't we live and die, Lift not thy hands to It for help--for it Rolls impotently on as Thou or I.

Northern Neil, etal Now that I've displayed my "bragging rights" I think I owe you a more direct answer: Size doesn't really matter. What does matter is Set-Up time, and even storage. If you can build an observatory with a shuttered roof then go for something rrreally large like a 12 or 14" scope, maybe then. When I got my 8", I gave away my Tasco "Jason" 3" refractor scope. Later I wished I hadn't. Your 3" will do almost everything my larger scope will do, after you get the mount cleaned. A rule I follow as a life long builder is this: when I go to the store to buy a tool, I ask one most important question: What am I not going to like about this? (What is it going to require of me that I am not going to want to do later?) Anyone thinking of buying a larger scope should attend a Star Party. They are held all over the U.S. practically any week-end where amateurs go to show off their scopes with overflowing enthusiasm to share their scopes. Those parties are probably going on near to you. Check HERE (check out community events). Surf a little there and you'll find whatever you want. The best objects for small scopes like ours are: Globular clusters, Open clusters, Double stars, Venus (phases), Jupiter and the dance of its larger moons, Saturn/rings and moons, our own moon and it's phases because it changes daily as to what it reveals. The outer planets are just too small, and more fun to just keep track of with the naked eye. Anything my list doesn't include would be appreciated; what are yours? Another object that is not paid enough attention to is our own sun. Daily there is a sunset during which the sun is naturally filtered by the thick atmosphere of our Earth (but not so good for sunrises as it is rising from the atmosphere's filter). Once i appraise the situation with my unprotected eye, I often take a look at it then with my binocs to look for sunspots. They rotate with the sun's surface rotation speed of 25.7 days at its equator and down to 33.4 days at 75 degrees N. & S, latitudes with variation in between, entering on the left and exiting on the right. I also keep a piece of dark filter glass over the eyepiece of an old pair of binocs with the other eyepiece taped over many times with duct tape. When the tape brightens up I know I'm close to alignment with the sun, making it easier to find. Now that I've said all that I'm obliged to issue a warning: observe eye safety! Valete --

NN Mine is an 8" Meade LX2080 f8 Catadioptic circa 1987 with a slightly rusty motor drive. But no, size doesn't matter as it's all about the eyes when it comes to meteor showers. In an 8' like mine, the moon can almost perfectly fill the field of view at apogee, and at perigee it is quite noticeably smaller, but the best lunar views are during crescent and gibbous phases, then fault lines and mountain shadows are clearly visible. Jupiter's moons can be identified even with a decent pair of binoculars, but a camera tripod can help a lot with binocs. Valete, clear skies and good viewing to all Faustus -------------------- Ah, Moon of my Delight who know'st no wane, The Moon of Heav'n is rising once again: How oft hereafter rising shall she look Through this same Garden after me---in vain!

Salve, BTW The Messenger was a great flick about Joan of Arc, a little past 576 years ago. Recommended! Rehabilitation Trial, huh. . . .?

In the first post on this topic there was/is a link to another theory designed to explain what possibly may have happened the night the monk & witnesses saw the apparent

Salve, Thanks to Nephele for bringing us back to earth from the minutia on this topic and to the obvious answer: human ingenuity is not derived from governmental bureaucracies. Being a believer in private enterprise, I should

Salve, F! On both counts, I think the odds largely favours (exponentially, in fact) the

Can we afford not to insure against obvious possibilities, as soon as the insurance becomes available? The United States Federal Budget (for one) is about $2.8 trillion (receipts about 2.4 trillions), and the budget of NASA for 2007 is 16.25 Billions. NASA Expenditures comprise about 6/10ths of 1 percent of the 2007 Federal budget, and have occupied a similarly small proportion of the budget since NASA was created. We have many more urgent uses for those expenditures; or have we? What are the risks of not exploring space? Redirecting an errant Near Earth Object is always under discussion, but what about the Human seed? Can it be preserved? Is the price too high? If we saved those NASA dollar expenditures, would we direct them towards more useful purposes? Would they then make a difference here on earth, or are dollars merely fungible? What are the risks? There are about 10,000 craters on the near side of the Moon, visible to telescopes on Earth. Most of them are in the ancient lunar highlands and date from the time of the final accretion of the Moon from interplanetary debris. There are about a thousand craters larger than a kilometer across in the maria (Latin for seas), the lowland regions that were flooded, perhaps by lava, shortly after the formation of the Moon, covering over the preexisting craters. Thus, very roughly, craters on the Moon should be formed today at the rate of about 109 years/104 craters, = 105 years/crater, a hundred thousand years between cratering events. Since there may have been more interplanetary debris a few billion years ago than there is today, we might have to wait even longer than a hundred thousand years to see a crater form on the Moon. Because the Earth has a larger area than the Moon, we might have to wait something like ten thousand years between collisions that would make craters as big as a kilometer across on our planet. And since Meteor Crater, Arizona, an impact crater about a kilometer across, has been found to be twenty or thirty thousand years old, the observations on the Earth are in agreement with such crude calculations. The actual impact of a small comet or asteroid with the Moon might make a momentary explosion sufficiently bright to be visible from the Earth. We can imagine our ancestors gazing idly up on some night a hundred thousand years ago and noting a strange cloud arising from the unilluminated part of the Moon suddenly struck by the Sun's rays. But we would not expect such an event to have happened in historical times. The odds against it must be something like a hundred to one. Nevertheless, there is an historical account which may in fact describe an impact on the Moon seen from Earth with the naked eye: On the evening of June 25, 1178, five British monks reported something extraordinary, which was later recorded in the chronicle of Gervase of Canterbury, generally considered a reliable reporter on the political and cultural events of his time, after he had interviewed the eyewitnesses who asserted, under oath, the truth of their story. The chronicle reads: There was a bright New Moon, and as usual in that phase its horns were tilted towards the east. Suddenly, the upper horn split in two. From the midpoint of the division, a flaming torch sprang up, spewing out fire, hot coals, and sparks. The astronomers Derral Mulholland and Odile Calame have calculated that a lunar impact would produce a dust cloud rising off the surface of the Moon with an appearance corresponding rather closely to the report of the Canterbury monks. If such an impact were made only 800 years ago, the crater should still be visible. Erosion on the Moon is so inefficient, because of the absence of air and water, that even small craters a few billion years old are still comparatively well preserved. From the description recorded by Gervase, it is possible to pinpoint the sector of the Moon to which the observations refer. Impacts produce rays, linear trails of fine powder spewed out during the explosion. Such rays are associated with the very youngest craters on the Moon-for example, those named after Aristarchus and Copernicus and Kepler. But while the craters may withstand erosion on the Moon, the rays, being exceptionally thin, do not. As time goes on, even the arrival of micrometeorites-fine dust from space-stirs up and covers over the rays, and they gradually disappear. Thus rays are a signature of a recent impact. The meteoriticist Jack Hartung has pointed out that a very recent, very fresh-looking small crater with a prominent ray system lies exactly in the region of the Moon referred to by the Canterbury monks. It is called Giordano Bruno after the sixteenth century Roman Catholic scholar who held that there are an infinity of worlds and that many are inhabited. For this and other crimes he was burned at the stake in the year 1600. Another line of evidence consistent with this interpretation has been provided by Calame and Mulholland. When an object impacts the Moon at high speed, it sets the Moon slightly wobbling. Eventually the vibrations die down but not in so short a period as eight hundred years. Such a quivering can be studied by laser reflection techniques. The Apollo astronauts scattered in several locales on the Moon special mirrors called laser retro reflectors. When a laser beam from Earth strikes the mirror and bounces back, the round-trip travel time can be measured with remarkable precision. This time multiplied by the speed of light gives us the distance to the Moon at that moment to equally remarkable precision. Such measurements, performed over a period of years, reveal the Moon to be quivering with a period (about three years) and amplitude (about three meters), consistent with the idea that the crater Giordano Bruno ( The object's size, and another theory HERE ) was gouged out less than a thousand years ago. All this evidence is inferential and indirect. The odds, as I have said, are against such an event happening in historical times. But the evidence is at least suggestive. As the Tunguska Event and Meteor Crater, Arizona, also remind us, not all impact catastrophes occurred in the early history of the solar system. But the fact that only a few of the lunar craters have extensive ray systems also reminds us that, even on the Moon, some erosion occurs. By noting which craters overlap which and other signs of lunar stratigraphy, we can reconstruct the sequence of impact and flooding events of which the production of crater Bruno is perhaps the most recent. example. The Earth is very near the Moon. If the Moon is so severely cratered by impacts, how has the Earth avoided them? Why is Meteor Crater so rare? Do the comets and asteroids think it inadvisable to impact an inhabited planet? This is an unlikely forbearance. The only possible explanation is that impact crater are formed at very similar rates on both the Earth and the Moon, but that on the airless, waterless Moon they are preserved for immense periods of time, while on the Earth slow erosion wipes them out or fills them in. Running water,-windblown sand and mountain-building are very slow processes. But over millions or billions of years, they are capable of utterly erasing even very large impact scars. On the surface of any moon or planet, there will be external processes, such as impacts from space, and internal processes, such as earthquakes; there will be fast, catastrophic events, such as volcanic explosions, and processes of excruciating slowness, such as the pitting of a surface by tiny airborne sand grains. There is no general answer to the question of which processes dominate, the outside ones or the inside ones; the rare but violent events, or the common and inconspicuous occurrences. On the Moon, the outside, catastrophic events hold sway; on Earth, the inside, slow processes dominate. Do we pay the insurance premium, or wait and see?

The Ice sheets weren't as limiting to life as it might seem. The thickness of the Ice, though much thicker

Salve Klingan, etal Pipes in Roman times as compared to piping today: The main difference between our piping today and that of Roman times is that pipes today are part of a

Salve, Klingan: look for my pm you on this. . . Faustus

Salve Klingan et omnes, A hundred and forty thousand years ago, the northern hemisphere was deep into an Ice Age. There were cool temperatures that limited the existence of vegetation at least very near to the Ice front, and cool climates south of the ice front probably extended hundreds of miles. This would make northern Africa a lot like some southern parts of Canada today. There is no way that an ice sheet like the Laurentide, would not occupy all of the northern hemisphere north of about 38 degrees latitude (where the Ohio River valley was encountered in the U.S.A.) and not cause drastic climate changes. This was true until about perhaps 20,000 years ago when the ice sheet withdrew over time. In southern Indiana there are "weathered limestone, hogbacks", that had to be bereft of vegetation for that erosion to have occurred, then vegetation was allowed to cover the area when warmer tempetature prevailed, and the weathered limestone was again covered by vegetation and it's detritus. This all makes global climate warming seem a little ironic. The interglacial periods are known to be very brief (less than 20,000 years) seen in that light, a warmer climate caused by human activities, might be seen as a blessing, posed against the alternative. . . Also the huge caves in this area of Kentucky and Indiana like Mammoth, and Wyandotte Caves were most likely greatly enlarged during this very wet period and previous similar wet periods, as far more drainage passed through their cavities than at present. At present there are no massive channels being cut by those kinds very wet climates, and we can explore them to their limits which are relatively dry now. Valete!

Salve Omnes, A couple of comments here on this, a very interesting topic; I like the way you presented it: 1. The Tiber was the lowest grade in the terrain; all water from it would have to be lifted in some way. Typically a small stream's gradient is about 1% or 1 foot per hundred feet. This would be a stream draining only about 200 acres. But a river draining many square miles would find baseline of a much flatter gradient. For instance in Indiana in the midwest USA) a river's gradient is only about 1.0 ft per mile, so you can readily see you must go pretty far upstream to get high enough to take advantage of a water supply without "lifting" it. 2. As much as we hear about the ignorance of the Ancients as to sanitation, you can be sure they would not drink polluted water; consider the repellent quality of a moat around a medieval "Castra". The only water of any quality at all would have been upstream from Rome, and again would have to have been lifted (bailed? pumped? bailed and hauled in barrells?) 3. Pipes were made of hollowed out sections of wood not stone, though I understand "stone" implied "aquaducting" as a method of "piping" water. I don't know how wood (trees? were hollowed out but I have read that that they were and I'm sure I can relocate the source. The wood swells sealing the hub joints. These would be used for the final tributaries to the system, or what we would call

Salve again to all, and especially Klingan, I followed all your comments, and of course came across the Sundial information. The concave sundial configuration lends itself to a limestone carving for my patio which already has a Roman fountain. Note to all: recirculating fountains require a certain amount of cleaning because silt even from the air as well as from impurities in the water tends to slow it's circulation. Mine was intended to dampen neighborhood noises from pets and the like (as well as to pander to my weakness for things Roman) so I can be selective about when and how much I operate it. But what appeals to me about the sundial in Klingan's link (The Leicester hemicyclium) is that it is hollowed out as a cavity so as to minimize the distortion of the gnomen's shadow from all angles of the sun, and even months and seasons can be accurately delineated. An ordinary sundial has no appeal to me but one like that in your post does, and I have just the block of pure white limestone to make it happen. Water clocks have a lot of "Classical" (or is it Romantic?) appeal but this special sundial has some chance of coming into actual fruition for me. It's a beautiful thing, yet simple. I did some work with sunporches facing south with glass ceilings in the 80's and already can anticipate some of the angular problems involved, as I've experimented with gnomens. Preparing the cavity and gnomen (which might need be attached and not intetral) would come first, then marking the gradients would come second, with the etching of lines last. A very interesting project to design and build. Valete!

Salve Klingan, (first contact is made) Thank you for your comments. As one painfully aware of economics lessons, I would never want to haul coal to Newcastle; worse still would be to haul

Salve Lady Flavia That is really a beautiful work of art that you had a hand in. My understanding is that there was one in the Tower Of The Winds at Athens, also called Horologion and Weather Station: ~~ http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/t...RevettTower.jpg Attributed to Andronicus Cyrrhestes 48 BC, it was some 26 feet in diameter and 47 feet high with a weather vane centered on top. It contained a Water Clock (clepsysdra) driven by water coming down from the Acropolis. There were also nine sundials. I wonder where they were, as they had to be on the roof to be effective. . . .? According to my source IMPERIAL FORM (History of Architecture) by Christopher Tadgell: The frieze at the top represented each of the winds from the points of the compass addressed by the sides. The weather-vane turned by the wind to point to the appropriate relief with his staff, was a bronze Triton pivoted on a Corinthian capital the the apex. The Octoganal sides each had one of the wind dieties ~~ Boreas (N), Kaikias (NE), Eurus (E), Apeliotes (SE), Notus (S), Lips (SW), Zephyrus (W), and Skiron (NW). So once again where were the 9-sundials as eight sides yields only 8 corners to accomodate sundials upon? Tadgell says that in 48 B.C. Andronicus Cyrrhestes was "probably initiating work on the new agora commissioned by Julius Caesar at that time" Very nice, even the windows seen in the background have the triangularly leaded(?) partitioned form that came down to us from the Romans and are seen in all courts and government buildings which in that way pay respects to Rome. Like the link above to the Tower of Winds, I only get an opportunity to see these great things in Pictures. For me that's enough. One picture, though, I haven't yet been able to find: The hinges of the doors to the Pantheon. I'm hoping. . . Salvete! ps: as a builder I can imagine your pride!

~~~ Hey, I want to get in on this too . . . . have a cool one G-man, and Live Long and Prosper ! ~~~ Faustus

Salve A.C. It's always great to run across other amateur Astronomers, and there seem to be a few here at UNRV. Most people are not aware of the serious work in Astronomy amateurs do as the professionals are busy doing the "serious" work. If you followed my link to the Astronomy.com Forums, you can see that it's an active field for people who wonder about the most universal science of them all, and the one we all share a visual part of practically every day. Some of us have slightly incorrect conceptions and nomenclature for things in our favorite science, but it's the enthusiasm that is important. We can all head back to our favorite book sources to brush up, and be reminded of things we'd forgotten. I feel a small tug at providing some corrective enlightenment here but I'm most pleased at the enthusiasm I see at UNRV for reason and logic as well as history; a great sense of proportion prevails here-abouts. The two three largest sections of my personal library are Ancient Roman History, Astronomy, and Science Fiction (but not necessarily in that order). I presently have all issues of Astronomy Magazine from 1978 through 2007. Astronomy is a very conservative science. As you recall, Astronomers would not seriously discuss Exo-planets until we'd actually found some. We are headed for mapping sunspots on other stars with interferometry(sp?), if we can do that, then planetary bodies will have to come next. It

(I was given a copy of ROMAN BRITAIN years ago by neighbor and fellow Romanophile. It contains many interesting details of life in Roman-Britain that surprise and amuse - here are the chapters in ROMAN BRITAIN: 1. Military History 57-pgs; 2. Town and Urban Centres 43-pgs; The Countryside 40-pgs; Economics 37-pgs; Religious Cults 29-pgs (bibliography/index) Romano-Britons put Coal to Some Unusual Uses: "Coal was also mined in Roman Britain, though it never became, as far as is known, an item of export; and British coal is only mentioned once in Roman literature, as a curiosity seen upon the altars of Sulis Minerva at Aquae Sulis (Bath). Its tendency to

Augustus Caesar, Cladrail, and all who get excited by meteor showers, since this topic has been enlivened I'd like to further comment. There are events that vastly exceed an ordinary meteor shower, and when witnessed can be life altering. What follows is a post I made at Astronomy.com.forum under the topic Extreme Astronomy: (As follows) 60,000 Meteors per Hour! Meteor Showers can be thrilling. Even seeing 1 or two nice so called "falling stars" can be a thrill. I know they are for me. I was deeply influenced to become an amateur astronomer because of an event visible to all who may have been alive on the night of October 9, (a Wednesday), 1946. Depending on weather conditions at an observers location, as is always the case for things astronomical, those who were alert to the sky on that night would have seen what I saw at the young age of 5 years. It was both awe inspiring and traumatic, for someone so young. Others that I know of who saw it, claim to have seen what I saw but weren't as moved by it as I was. That's probably because all those other witnesseswere somewhat older than I at the time. In my copy of Field Guide to the Stars and Planets (Menzel) 1964 there is a table (#21) titled Meteor Showers. Listed there are all the periodic meteor showers and also certain ephemeral events that are called Meteor Storms. The comet associated with the event of that night is Comet Giacobini-Zinner. The meteors which also become visible at the passing through Earth orbit of Comet G-Z are called Giacobinids. On the night of 9-OCT-46 the chart shows approximately 1,000 meteors (falling stars) per hour. In an earlier event in 1933 the table shows 20,000 objects per hour. (other subsequent apparitions have been non events). My own estimate (even though at 5 years of age) is closer to 60,000 per hour. I base my estimate on the memory of meteors being visible in all parts of the sky, and that anywhere one looked the sky was literally crawling with moving, falling-star like objects. The official estimate of one thousand objects/hour in the whole bowl of sky would only account for less than one object a second, (20,000 / 3600 sec/hr = .277 objects in any 1-second of viewing or one object every 3-1/2 seconds). That's an immensely long span of time for an observer seeing what I saw that night. A couple hundred moving objects in the entire sky per second would yield 72,000 objects per hour. I can accept 60,000 per hour, then, as being reasonably close to what I saw that night. Consider that that would only be 17 objects visible per second, and only one per 6/100's of a second. Observing an event such as the one I've just described would tend to make one a constant observer of the night sky. ... And would influence the observer to an unusual level of interest in astronomy. Because of that experience, all my life I've made it a point to go out on any clear night and take a look at the night sky and check it out. Like many of you, I consider the stars my constant companions, and yes my friends. Because of them I don't need many others. As an alert and skeptical observor, I can say that with all those many hours of observations, I have never seen a phenomena that could not be explained by more or less prosaic astronomical facts. I have never seen something that made me wonder if I'd seen a UFO or the like. I did once in the middle of the day see what I would have to call a very large meteor (bolide?) pass from south to north across Indiana Skies, visible for long seconds, across the entire sky and appear to be deflected back into space. My memory is that that happened about the year 1991. Besides the Meteor Storm, first mentioned, I observed what appeared to be a constant flux of many small meteors in the high desert night sky of California and particularly at the skies zenith, just at the edge of visibility. Is this a common occurance? See my comment under Extreme Astronomy after the post of jkade "observing from above the clouds" Americanbottoms 2007/8/19 8:31 PM being my comment: http://www.astronomy.com/ASY/CS/forums/351896/ShowPost.aspx Go there for details if further interested. Exciting Viewing, and Clear Skies to you all! FAUSTUS

It appears there are some Astronomy buffs amongst the Romans here at UNRV particularly those who like to enjoy the naked eye variety; no telescopes and gear to set up, just the self to attend to. Sometimes events occur that almost rival a minor meteor shower in excitement. Here's a preview of the early morning sky of Wednesday October 3rd thru Sunday the 7th of October and beyond. In early October, bright orange Mars rises before midnight. On October 3, the Red Planet rises with a Last Quarter Moon and stands within a degree - less than 2 Moon-diameters - of Gemini's fine open cluster, M35. Take a long look at this wonderful arrangement through binoculars. Between October 7 and 12, Mars passes north of Eta and Mu GEMINorum. The planet's eastward motion slows daily as Earth closes and prepares to overtake it. Mars is bright, reaching magnitude -0.6 by month's end. The Red Planet's brightness and color beautifully complement magnitude 0.4 Betelgeuse, nearly 20

Well said Caldrail but my comment was but intended to convey the possibility that the Stonehenge was not designed and built as an astronomical observatory (certainly unrelated to stars which were too minor as objects, but as regards to sun/moon/earth cycles instead), and that other possibilities ought to be considered. My comments were inclined to agree with Longshotgene in that regard. Consider: a distant tree line 100 feet high and 1.1 mile away would delay a sunrise by 4 minutes, a half mile by 8 minutes, and a quarter mile for 16 minutes. Were the forests cleared in all directions, round-about or at least easterly and westerly for a mile, a half mile, or a quarter mile? An observer with a desire to see a sunset might feel inclined to seek higher ground to be sure of seeing the actual sunrise rather than one delayed by obstacles like trees or even small rises in the terrain. A builder desiring to commemorate special sunrises and sunsets might consider a higher elevation if it would yield a

Jack Williamson of the SF genre. His THE HUMANOIDS (Previously "WITH FOLDED HANDS"), really laid the foundation for robotics in SF, along with Isaac Asimov of course. He explored some ideas the application of which would seem way ahead of his time for instance the "Heisenburg Uncertainty Principal", using it to do some unexpected things for a 1949 novel that I really found intriguing to say the least. I first read it in the late 1950's and again twice more a couple of years back. The Humanoids: http://www.umich.edu/~engb415/literature/c...mson/human.html Uncertainty Principle: http://www.aip.org/history/heisenberg/p08.htm Valete!

Salve Longshot, It seems to me you have put your finger on something here. So much of what we believe is founded on