Astrology Quarterly - Astronomy - Heavens Above

A S Morton

Heavens Above - December 2007

Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are.
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are.

Yes, it’s that time of year again and all of a sudden peoples everywhere are turning their attentions to the ‘Heavens Above’ for a whole variety of reasons. Coloured lights will be adorning many a High Street, churches will be having that illuminated scene in the corner somewhere and in houses all over the land great lumps of trees will be dragged in off the streets and positively overloaded with electrically operated equipment in the ‘front parlour’. Mind you, these days, it’s becoming increasingly popular to buy up the stock of the local DIY store’s lighting department and cover the entire front of your house with flashing lights, putting Times Square, never mind Piccadilly Circus, to shame over the conservative nature of their displays. You wouldn’t think that the electricity to power all of that would be at such record-breakingly exorbitant prices or that there might be some small ‘green issue’ to answer here, now would you?

Be that as it may, the darkened heavens of a winter’s night sky contain many billions of sparkling and twinkling diamonds, all available without charge and for everyone the world over. Find the very darkest spot that can be found, as far away from the bane of urban lighting as can be achieved, and it is amazing just how much can be seen with the naked eye, the skies are positively teeming with treasures awaiting rediscovery. And they come in a variety of colours too: there are white ones, blue ones, yellow ones, orange and red ones, and in all different shades as well. So much to admire and go ‘aaah’ or ‘wow!’ over.

Of course at this time of year one particular ‘star’ is mentioned more than most others and that is the so-called ‘Star of Bethlehem’, the star that the ‘Three Wise Men’ of christian folklore apparently followed to discover the birthplace of the baby Jesus some two millennia ago. Whether this is a folk-tale or is based on real celestial events has occupied the minds of many over the years and a whole variety of explanations, theories and dismissals of same have been recorded.

If for the purpose of this seasonal offering we assume for the moment that there was indeed some ‘bright star’ that the Magi (Zoroastrian astronomer-astrologer-priests, not those euphemistically termed ‘wise men’, although they were indeed wise men) followed to Jesus’ birthplace in Bethlehem, then of the many possible celestial happenings that might have caught those eyes one of the most likely of propositions may well have been the triple conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in the constellation of Pisces in 7 BC. And the fact that there is a clay tablet recording this event housed in the British Museum in London doesn’t necessarily indicate anything other than that such an astronomical event did occur and was recorded. However, it is somewhat intriguing that this clay tablet has survived reasonably intact and is still available to be admired and pondered over all this time later.

During the second conjoining of this series of three, in the autumn of that year, Jupiter and Saturn were ‘acronychal rising’, meaning that as the Sun set in the west they were rising in the east, traversed the night sky together and as the Sun rose again the following morning in the east they themselves were setting in the west. And during the period of this transit Jupiter and Saturn came quite close together, possibly creating for a short time the illusion of a double star, being brighter than all else in the night sky usually would be and therefore highly noticeable by anyone looking up to the heavens, which in those days people seemed to do far more frequently.

Additionally, the sign of Pisces in which this conjunction took place (the constellations and the tropical signs pretty much corresponded at that time and therefore this conjunction took place in both the constellation and the sign of the fishes, a motif that the early christians adopted as their own and carved into the walls of various temples and underground refuges that they hid themselves in to evade persecution) has particular significance and was considered to be representative of Israel, Saturn was deemed to be lord over Israel and with Jupiter as the significator for the messiah, the coming king, perhaps the over thrower of the old king, Saturn.

Some have put forward the date of the 15th September 7 BC as being the most probable for the birth of Jesus but if I might just toss another hat into the ring here, without making any particular claim to years of research of ancient manuscripts in dank and dusty corners of some old cow shed or other (and not necessarily making some dreadful pun here either based on the dwelling in which the baby Jesus was born) but based simply on the practicality of what was actually happening in the skies, then I would tend to favour a date some week or so later, on the 23/24th September. For no other particular reason than if you want to observe and/or follow a bright object in the heavens then said object would appear a lot brighter and therefore be a lot easier to follow if there is no Moon to either get in the way or to cast light in the night sky thereby diminishing the brightness of everything up there. So the night of the New Moon in Virgo might seem a reasonable proposition, perhaps better so than the earlier date which would have had a last quarter Moon rising that night. And there is no noticeable further separation between Jupiter and Saturn in the heavens those few days later.

All of this is of course pure conjecture since it’s not entirely convincing that the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn would have been so close that the two bodies might have appeared as a double-bodied bright star. They did come as close as to less than 1° separation but that would still be well over a moonwidth apart and neither Jupiter nor Saturn are so big and bright individually as to make that distance insignificant.

Not withstanding all of the above, great minds have been exercised over this question, far greater let it be said than this one, and will undoubtedly continue to be into the future, the greatest of all being Johannes Kepler who seems to have started this particular ball rolling back in 1603 having observed a conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter from his observatory in Prague. This got him thinking about whether a similar event had been around at the time of the birth of Jesus and he subsequently calculated that a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn had indeed taken place in Pisces in 7 BC. However, he put the conception of Mary down to this conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter and the birth to early the following year, 6 BC, when Mars joined in with the aforementioned pairing.

The year following, in October of 1604, quite astonishingly, he witnessed the most amazing sight of an incredibly bright light in the sky appearing as if from nowhere which remained visible in the sky for almost a full year. This was the most recent of supernovas (exploding stars) that have occurred in our galaxy and coincidentally also happened whilst Mars had similarly come to join with Jupiter and Saturn, as in 6 BC. Believing that this ‘massing’ of the three planets had given rise to this new ‘star’, he postulated that a similar event may have taken place around the time of the birth of Jesus, perhaps caused by these planetary conjunctions, and that a star had therefore been specifically created to guide the Magi from Jerusalem to the right location, Bethlehem, apparently writing: “I do not but doubt that God would have condescended to cater to the credulity of the Chaldeans.”

Like all good stories the ‘Star of Bethlehem’ is undoubtedly one that will run and run, but there is one additional small detail that rather catches the eye, as it were, and that is that as Jupiter and Saturn were beginning to set in the west in the early hours of 24th September, 7 BC, and not only that the unseen, and at that time unknown, Uranus was setting beneath them but also just a little further round towards the north west the constellation of Cygnus was standing like an upright cross above the horizon, a significant portent indeed perhaps. The constellation of Cygnus, the ‘swan’, rather feebly derives its name from the swan that the Greek God Zeus turned himself into during one of his multiple and various acts of stalking and/or seduction of some unsuspecting young female, although it is often referred to as the ‘Northern Cross’ and many associations have subsequently been made with that, particularly by the early christians and Christian Church.

There is a great deal more that can be written concerning all of the above but for the moment it is time to turn our attentions to the here and now and what might be unfolding in our own ‘heavens above’ in the closing celestial scenes of the year in this twelfth and last month of December.

Planetwatch

This month is very much the month of MARS, at least as far as the night skies are concerned which he valiantly attempts to dominate, but as with all things of a planetary nature there is more than just the one orbiting body in this solar system and they all want a piece of the action, perhaps at times disproportionately so, and it is that very ebb and flow of action and interaction that keeps the whole spinning top humming round nicely.

Unfortunately we only get to see slightly over half the total picture, virtually a black and white one at that, as most of what is visible to us is in the dark of a night sky and other than the Sun and sometimes the Moon very little in the day sky is available to our eyes. So our visual picture is somewhat distorted and quite often it is what is happening in the day sky, that is in the light of the Sun or rather obscured by the light of the Sun, and particularly close in to the Sun, that at times can be most significant.

This month the Sun dies, and thankfully is immediately reborn so no need to panic just yet, and in doing so this year manages to take a number of our planetary brethren down with him, but since he is rebirthed every year and we somehow seem to survive each cathartic episode let’s just assume that we’ll all come through one more time, no jumping star-ship necessary right at the moment.

It’s the time of the Winter Solstice, when the Sun in its annual journey through our ‘heavens above’ reaches the lowest, i.e. the most southerly, point in its cycle over the Tropic of Capricorn on the 22nd December at 06:08 am GMT. This year there’s a little huddle comprising: MERCURY, JUPITER and PLUTO in the vicinity of this solar standstill which could be considered quite appropriate to the event itself and might well portend a rather different kind of birthing process on this occasion. As the next twelve months unfold the particular quality of this solar re-incarnation will undoubtedly be progressively revealed and with it the nature of the Sun’s forthcoming annual journey. For the time being, however, it is interesting to note that tropically (as in ‘Tropic of Capricorn’, as in ‘related to the passage of the Sun and in particular relative to the intersection point between the ecliptic and the celestial equator at the Spring Equinox’) this is deemed to be taking place at 0° Capricorn although in the sky this is actually happening against the background stars at the very beginning of the constellation of Sagittarius, due to the effects of precession, and regal JUPITER himself, no less, is in attendance on this auspicious occasion.

There’s a couple of things to make mention of here; firstly, we assume that the Sun’s journey never changes year-on-year, that the annual journey itself is the same, has the same quality, is repetitive, has the same purpose to it perhaps, varying merely by season and sign and whatever else you might wish to bring into the equation, but that its essence is unchanged. Yet that may not be quite so as each re-birth of our Sun is a new beginning, not necessarily the same new beginning but a unique new beginning which has its own particular qualities relative to the circumstances of that particular birthing which are then played out over the succeeding cycle.

At our very centre, individually as in our solar system, is the Sun, our Sun, our life-giver, our essence, our essential selves. To assist in the process of attempting to appreciate and pursue what our unique, individual solar purpose might be, our inner hero’s journey as is, it may be beneficial, if not entirely necessary, to understand not merely at what point in the Sun’s cycle we were incarnated but also what the flavour of that particular solar cycle was. And to do that we would need to refer to the re-birthing of the Sun at the beginning of that cycle and where, therefore, we might be situated along that particular solar path as opposed to simply where we are located along an annually repeating solar path.

It is that nuance, perchance, that contributes much to the uniqueness of each individual incarnation on this magic roundabout of ours. Not just time of year but time of year of which year. The ancient Egyptians might well have believed that the Sun is reborn every morning ‘younger than the day before’, and reborn every year at the winter solstice as part of a larger cycle, but it is quite clear in the universal scheme of things that our Sun is in fact getter older, if not so obviously by the Earthly day then certainly as the years pass by, and that its physical nature, composition and condition is simultaneously changing, maturing and evolving. And it is, therefore, the Sun at a particular point in its own evolutionary journey which ignites our core at the very moment of our birthing.

The other thing, just briefly, is that whilst we are enduring (or celebrating, depending on your perspective) the angst of another solar death and re-birth amid the longest dark hours of winter in the northern hemisphere, down below in the southern hemisphere the Sun is high up in their heavens, with JUPITER along for and enjoying the ride no doubt. They’re undoubtedly in the middle of a blazing hot summer, lying on the beach or outside having a barbie with a few cold cannies. Gud on ya mates! Enjoy! It sometimes pays to try and keep this whole annual dying thing in some sort of global perspective. It is very much a globe, if not always a game, of two halves and one’s perspective therefore altogether depends upon which half you happen to be in at any given moment in time.

MERCURY, not one to shun some seasonal company, is also in the grouping around the Sun at the solstice, having arrived at superior conjunction (far side of the Sun as viewed from Earth) on the 17th and therefore not visible to us all month.

JUPITER is in solar conjunction the day after the solstice on the 23rd and likewise he too is not observable all month.

Not so very far away in the skies and visible before the solstice Sun ascends over the eastern horizon is the perennially seductive VENUS, currently in her brilliant Morning Star guise. As the month opens she is rising around 03:30am GMT located close by and to the left of Virgo’s brightest star Spica, moving into the constellation of Libra by mid-month and standing proudly high in the pre-dawn skies having risen some three hours or more before sunrise. She really is quite some dazzling spectacle. “Mirror, mirror on the wall….” etc. etc. Perhaps she thinks she’s doing ‘Snow White’ this year or something. Anyway, by the end of the month she has arrived at the borders of the constellation of Scorpius and is rising as late as 05:00am after all those festive revelries and is slowly drifting closer to the south east horizon as she gently recedes from Earth.

SATURN is very much a night time planet now, and seemingly reasonably happy with that as he is increasing a little in brightness, at the beginning of the month rising by 10:00pm to take up his duties in the constellation of Leo still, the waning Moon passing very close by indeed in the early hours of the very first morning of the month. Come the 19th of the month he stations to the left of Leo’s royal star Regulus and appears in no particular hurry to move off. He seems to have found his spot to rest up for the winter and is all set to stay put for the next few months, warming himself during those cold winter nights beneath the belly of the lion.

But the big night sky player of this month is undoubtedly old red-eye himself, MARS, taking night time centre stage and commanding the battlefield around him, although having said that the only available combatant in the vicinity is the old ‘dog of war’ himself and he appears to be more embattled than battle-ready, fighting on the retreat not being a speciality of his. Apart from which he can’t see clearly where he’s going in reverse and is wandering away from the yellow-brick road of the ecliptic, there being much of the ‘Wizard of Oz’ about MARS insofar as he’s nowhere near as big as he makes himself appear to be, only being about half the size of Earth and not that much bigger than pint-sized MERCURY.

Retrograding out through the constellation of Gemini, MARS makes his closest approach to Earth mid-month on the 18th at 88.2 million kms, his closest approach ever having been the one in 2003 at 56 million kms. However this one is still pretty close and a brilliant reddish MARS will outshine all the stars in the sky at this time. Opposition to the Sun, when the Sun, Earth and MARS are all in a line, occurs some days later on December 24th, on the evening of Christmas Eve, when MARS will be at his biggest and brightest. Before then, however, MARS will have been through a very close and tense encounter with the Full Moon during the preceding night. And with MARS going backwards this may not entirely be such a pretty sight to behold, experientially speaking, although visually it should be somewhat breathtaking.

On the night of the 23rd MARS can be seen rising in the northeast at sunset following in the wake of a waxing Moon almost at her fullest. As the night progresses the pair will traverse the skies together culminating at the meridian around midnight with the gap between them closing by the hour. Because this is taking place around the beginning of the constellation of Gemini, close to the current Summer Solstice point, this mis-matched duo will achieve maximum northern declination at this time and be way up high in our skies, no need to be peering through trees or around buildings for this one. A Moon/Mars conjunction at any time can produce some heightened emotional tensions but with both bodies ‘full’ and in the tropical sign of Cancer as well, the crackling emotional atmosphere in the days leading up to Christmas might become positively supercharged and highly volatile, unfortunately particularly on our seasonally busy roads, not great at any time but around the traditional family Christmas, which has its own built-in stresses and strains, this could become almost unbearable. But then in the early hours of the morning of the 24th a rare occurrence takes place, the Full Moon will occult, pass in front of that is, a ‘full’ planet at opposition to the Sun.

This is a genuine collector’s item, something akin to a total eclipse of the Sun, which will be visible in its entirety from very northern parts of Scotland and further up. Coming south of that it will appear as a very close encounter with the Moon just grazing the top of MARS. However, this coming together might just help to loosen the tautness of any situation such that by the time MARS comes to his exact opposition to the Sun on the following evening, and the still full Moon has passed further on, things should be starting to settle back down just a little and we can then, perhaps, fingers crossed, be looking forward to a very merry Christmas indeed.

As the calendar year comes to an end MARS, still retrograding, begins the move back across the border and into the constellation of Taurus just above the club-wielding arm of the giant hunter Orion, which comes very close to the ecliptic at that point. Well, with any luck, Orion might do us all a favour and give our rampant MARS a swift clout around the ears to knock him back into shape and curtail some of this wilful mayhem he’s been causing over recent weeks. Peace on Earth and goodwill to all men, I say, and particularly as an old year closes and a new one opens.

Elsewhere as the year is ending VENUS and SATURN can still be seen in the early hours towards the south east and west respectively with a last quarter Moon mitigating between the two in Virgo and approaching that constellation’s bright star Spica, which is where we started the month with VENUS some while back.

As the Sun sets for the final time this year over in the southwest he’s still got his re-birthing entourage in tow of MERCURY, JUPITER and PLUTO, although restless MERCURY is already beginning to separate from the group in readiness for his forthcoming evening star showing in the early new year. Further round to the south our two invisible to the naked-eye planets, NEPTUNE in Capricornus and URANUS in Aquarius, are making ready to follow the Sun over the setting horizon, both bodies now direct in motion and heading towards the challenges and opportunities of the coming year. As are we all.

© A.S.Morton – November 2007