Astrology Quarterly - Astronomy - Heavens Above

A S Morton

Heavens Above - March 2008

Welcome to the month of equinoctial delights, the time of the year when despite the precariousness of a 23.5° sideways slant our world appears to be, albeit only momentarily, in perfect balance, if not quite that perfection of harmony that might inspire us to spontaneously burst into song, the joyous month of March that is. Well, actually, the ‘merry month’ is generally considered to be May, and March the month of winds, fair or otherwise, but then again a small extension of poetic license should always be permissible when it’s the first month of Spring we are talking about and the life-giving Sun-god Ra rises up from his winter sojourn and is reborn into our northern hemisphere heralding the prospect of balmier days to come.

Having had a duo of eclipses to perhaps delight us last month, in February; an Annular Solar Eclipse on the 7th when the disc of the Moon didn’t quite cover that of the Sun leaving a bright ring (Latin annulus) around the darkened disc of the Moon, perhaps the ‘Dragon’s Mouth’?, unfortunately that one being for the penguins of the not quite so frozen as it used to be Antarctica, and a Total Lunar Eclipse on the 21st when the Moon passed into the dark shadow of the Earth, the ‘umbra’, visible from all of the UK, Europe and the Americas North and South (if only we were granted the boon of a clear night sky to witness it!), this month sees the passage of the Sun across the intersection of the Great Circles of the Ecliptic, the apparent path of the Sun around the Earth even though these days we know it be the other way around, and so called because it is the path along which eclipses take place, and the Celestial Equator, the extension of our earthly equator out into space. The moment when the Sun is positioned exactly on that intersection point between the two being the ‘Vernal’ or Spring Equinox, clearly a northern hemisphere term since it heralds the advent of autumn in the southern hemisphere, and meaning ‘equal night’ i.e. equal day and night, that is equal day and night throughout our world at this moment in time, theoretically at least. The Sun rises due East on this day and sets due West, we are in balance with our radiant life-giver.

However, this year the annual event takes place at 05:48am on March 20th, a day earlier than is usual because this is a ‘leap year’ when every fourth year we add an extra day at the end of February to bring our civil calendars into line with the inconveniently odd time it takes for our planet to orbit around the Sun, a small matter that perplexed the major civilisations for millennia. That we have such phenomena as Equinoxes and Solstices (Sun ‘standing still’) is due to the fact that the Earth is not upright relative to the plane around which the Earth and all the major planets orbit the Sun but is tilted over at an angle of some 23.5° giving rise to what we experience as ‘seasons’. It is in the middle to high latitudes on Earth (N or S) that this effect is most pronounced such that we have four quite distinct seasons marked out, although closer to our terrestrial equator this is far less noticeable and the Ancient Egyptians, for example, followed only three seasons, being: the inundation (the annual flooding of the lands adjoining the Nile), the planting and growing season and the harvesting season, which to us is perhaps something akin to the Four Seasons without Frankie Valli, not quite something we would immediately recognise perchance.

Be that as it may, at this moment in time the Sun is deemed to be standing on the threshold of the tropical (i.e. related to the passage of the Sun between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, being the most northerly and southerly latitudes respectively where the annual path of the Sun in our skies takes it directly overhead) sign of Aries, that is at 05:48 on the 20th March the true centre of the Sun (the disc of the Sun being approximately 32’, roughly half a degree, in diameter) is at 0° Aries, at the very beginning point of the tropical zodiac which is the primary zodiac used by a majority of western astrologers. Not astronomers though, they use the constellation boundaries as adopted by the International Astronomical Union in 1928, with none of the familiar zodiacal constellations being of equal length along the ecliptic, and note the Vernal Equinox as currently taking place towards the beginning of the constellation of Pisces where ‘precession’, the wobble of the Earth’s rotational axis that causes the equinoctial and solstice points to drift slowly westwards, has gradually shifted it over the last two thousand-odd years.

By one of those happy happenstances this year the time of 05:48am on the 20th is pretty well sunrise time for those in the southern parts of the UK on that day, so here is a perfect opportunity to find a clear horizon, the sea is always the truest horizon if you are lucky enough to be anywhere near it, and watch the simultaneous rising of the Sun over both the horizon and, effectively, not simply the celestial equator but the passage of the Sun from Pisces into Aries, the celestial manifestation of the completion of the circle and the immediate and seamless re-commencement of that continuing cycle, from serpent’s tail to mouth, symbolic of the infinite, of man’s ideal of perfection, a rare and magical occurrence to be able to actually witness with one’s own eyes. Seeing is believing in this Saturnian world in which we live.

And just to add a further layer of interest to this year’s splendid first day of spring, the Sun is accompanied by a veritable entourage of planets as he makes his seasonal crossing. JUPITER, NEPTUNE, VENUS, MERCURY and URANUS all precede the Sun across the eastern horizon. NEPTUNE and URANUS are not to be seen with the naked eye, and even though MERCURY was at greatest elongation, furthest distance from the Sun as viewed from Earth, on the 3rd of the month at 27° W, he’s too low down to our horizon at this time to be readily spotted and is very much lost in the light of the rising Sun all month long. VENUS too has gradually been drifting lower to the SE horizon during the first part of the year and is now swallowed up by the morning twilight.

JUPITER on the other hand has been steadily pulling away from the glare of the SUN and provides an appropriate fanfare for the dawn SUN of the equinox, and although staying fairly low down to the SE horizon, being in the southerly constellation of Sagittarius, he rises before dawn around 4:30am at the beginning of the month and gradually earlier as the month progresses. It won’t be too many months longer before he starts to take up his rightful place in the night skies once more. But for the purposes of the exercise he makes an excellent herald of the approaching glow of the pre-dawn Sun if you’ve managed to take up a good viewing location in plenty of time for the morning of the equinox and the skies allow for reasonable visibility.

Not to be left out of all this excitement the MOON gets in on the act on the following evening of the 21st by arriving at opposition to the Sun and becoming full therefore. The Sun has moved on by just a degree or so from the morning of the day before such that just as it is dipping below the horizon in the west at dusk so the rising MOON in the east is in those very final moments of achieving fullness. If to watch the Sun rising over the horizon at the point of ‘crossing over’ from one hemisphere to another is full of potent significance then to see a Full Moon rising up over a clear horizon, and particularly over the sea, can be truly visually awe-inspiring. Depending on atmospheric conditions a Full Moon can rise looking something like a big orange balloon, like a Sun in fact, such that if the afterglow of the actual Sun is still simultaneously visible over in the western skies then it’s a somewhat spooky experience, you almost have to do a double-take to be sure you are actually seeing what you’re seeing, certainly well worth the watching

We’ll have to wait until we’re nearly two-thirds into the month to experience our equinoctial sunrise and the following evening’s rising full Moon but that is just a small part of what the ‘heavens above’ have to offer this month, enjoyable highlights though they may be. So let us briefly pause and then rewind to the beginning of March and explore with fresh eyes the many splendours awaiting us up there in our night-time skies.

So, here we are on our very own ‘magic roundabout’, planet Earth, or rather planet ‘Water’ if viewed from anywhere out there, spinning silently and serenely through space, that proverbial ‘final frontier’. Although one cannot help but occasionally wonder if perhaps one day it will be determined that rotating bodies such as our own give out a signal, a ‘sound’, a unique calling code as it were that identifies us as being us and no-one else despite that little wobble on our rotational axis, although it might well be that the little wobble and the jaunty tilt of our axis is what gives rise to the uniqueness of our ‘sound’. And if we should casually glance up into our darkened skies, assuming that the skies are clear when we do so, then what do the night-time ‘heavens above’ hold this month to avert our attentions from mundane matters for more than merely a passing moment?

As the month opens and darkness falls a small yellowish shining point of light is noticeable high up in the southern skies, almost overhead, in amongst and seemingly surrounded by the twinkling lights of those striking winter constellations of Taurus, Orion, Auriga and Gemini. Planet MARS has been reduced to but a pale shadow of his former self of only a very few months ago as the distance between us continues to lengthen and we leave him trailing in the wake of our faster inside track.

At least he’s moving direct again but the energy expended in battling his way through a long period of reverse motion, over two months of it, between the constellations of Gemini and Taurus has taken its toll and it is a suitably chastened Mars that now sits astride the border between those two constellations. Taking his courage in both hands he crosses into Gemini on the 4th/5th of the month in almost the same time-frame that tropically he moves from the sign of Gemini into that of Cancer. Whichever way you choose to play this one, either in his ‘fall’ or going direct after a sustained period of retrogradation, this is no longer a fully-loaded Mars, although one must immediately be reminded that to underestimate his ability to wreak havoc at any given moment should never be lightly countenanced since an apparently weakened Mars does still retain the capability to display his less civilised qualities, often when least expected i.e. when cornered.

By the end of March he’s right back in the thick of those heavenly twins, almost at the point where all the trouble kicked-off in November of last year, so as this month closes and we slip into the next then anticipate the odd jolting reminder of past poor decision-making or a course of action that was previously attempted more through posturing bravado than with the due consideration necessary in order to achieve the required forward progress. This time around, with the benefit of hindsight and from a weakened position to boot, a small sigh of resignation at the very minimum, or better yet a thin slice of humble pie, might well serve to enable passage beyond that particular sticking point.

Our two constant winter night-sky companions have been those formerly much maligned so-called ‘malefics’, MARS and SATURN, and they’ve both been going retrograde nearly all winter long. Both ‘malefics’ going retrograde at the same time, both up in our night skies all winter long? But of course we don’t believe in those kinds of astrological appendage any more, do we? Or do we? How’s your winter been? Exciting, stimulating? Difficult, frustrating? And where exactly does the over-used and ultimately inadequate ‘challenging’ fall except between those two stools of fiction and fact? You pays your money and you takes your choice on this one. Astrology is a belief system where communication is purportedly by way of a symbolic language and in the world in which the most of us live no-one has anything other than a self-appointed and delusional ‘divine right’ to impose their value systems and beliefs upon us, never mind the oft-times inappropriately and euphemistically ‘modern’, ‘politically-correct’ astrological language that far too often fails to address the real-time, practical issues or even really touches the spot that pains.

MARS and SATURN are real-world, physical planets. Without shape and form and an ability to act our physical bodies are less than useful tools for the job-in-hand on planet Earth. Not always wholly satisfying or fully fit-for-purpose but nonetheless entirely necessary for survival, as is the soundness of the structure of the astrological system we employ. Having the unenviable duty of taking ‘point’ on all of this is that furthest distant of our naked-eye wanderers, SATURN, whose dullish yellow glow in our ‘heavens above’ belies the majestic splendour of what a closer inspection reveals. Our seven-ringed circusmaster has been quietly holding the fort all winter long, as is often the case, while sabre-rattling, ruddy-faced Mars has been headline-grabbing for all the wrong reasons. As Mars recedes from his fifteen minutes of tabloid fame so Saturn moves less conspicuously to the fore, the brightness of his winter coat is now beginning to outshine not only fading Mars but most of what else is twinkling in the night skies above.

Having arrived at opposition, to the Sun that is, only as recently as February 24th when he was at his closest to Earth, and at that time appearing from our vantage point to be at his very brightest since a planet directly opposite the Sun will reflect the maximum amount of sunlight back to us, Saturn is still very close to that level of brightness at the beginning of March and as the month unfolds there is a quite gradual and almost imperceptible dulling of the quality of his light.

Currently located beneath the belly of the Lion, presumably for some extra winter warmth and security, Saturn is all the while creeping ever so slowly inch-by-inch backwards towards Leo’s pre-eminent star, the regal Regulus, the full-point of that highly recognisable inverted question mark that hangs in the sky, the so-called ‘sickle’ asterism that marks our spring night skies. Does he actually get all the way back to Regulus? We’ll have to wait a while yet to see as he’s still got another month of painfully slow retrograde motion to go through before he turns himself around. But in any event does he really want to get that close to what turns out to be a somewhat crazy, mixed-up star?

Regulus, the first magnitude (a measure of brightness) star closest to the ecliptic, the ‘little king’, often referred to as Cor Leonis ‘the heart of the lion’, that most royal of prominent stars, admired and revered by ancient civilisations, the star of kings and rulers, is actually a bit of a nutter, an oddball, a maverick – and that’s putting it politely. At about three and a half times the size of our own Sun it is spinning on its axis at well over a hundred times faster than our Sun does, so fast that it’s equatorial bulge is massively distended and it’s poles flattened to give it an almost jam doughnut shape and bringing it close to almost tearing itself apart, whilst the polar regions are bizarrely even hotter than the region around its equator. And despite our believing that it must be very ancient and mature it is in fact a relatively young, and headstrong, hot, blue-white star almost in its infancy. And if that is perchance anything like representative of the beating heart contained within a Leo’s thrusting chest then perhaps the rest of us mere mortals might wish to contemplate giving them an even wider berth than we could already be doing (just kidding Leo’s, we really do think you’re ever so special, really we do).

Rising in the east with the evening dusk as the month begins, crossing the meridian around midnight and setting in the west with the onset of dawn, as daylight lengthens with the unfolding month so Saturn appears higher up in the skies out of the falling darkness and sets just before the Sun rises in the east. And as our familiar winter companion constellations of Orion, Canis Major and Minor, Taurus, Auriga and Gemini begin to fade and fall over the western night-time horizon so in the east arise a replacement grouping of springtime constellations, fresh and eager to take their place centre stage of our celestial playing fields: Leo, Virgo and Boötes, the constellation of Cancer being so faint and shy that you would hardly notice anything but a void between the constellations of Gemini and Leo.

We have that well known ‘summer triangle’ of stars yet to come: Deneb in Cygnus (the ‘swan’), Vega in Lyra (the ‘lyre’ or ‘harp’), Altair in Aquila (the ‘eagle’) but equally deserving of our attention is the not so well publicised but just as significant ‘spring triangle’ comprising Denebola, the ‘tail of the lion’ and the second brightest star in Leo, Spica, the ‘ear of corn’ and a hot blue-white star but this time in Virgo, and at the apex of the triangle the brilliant orange-red Arcturus, the ‘bear-driver’, that is ‘driving’ the circumpolar constellation of Ursa Major, the greater bear of the northern celestial polar region. Arcturus, of the constellation Boötes, the ‘herdsman’, when rising in the eastern evening skies has long been considered to be a herald of the approaching spring.

Spring can certainly be seen to be arriving in our ‘heavens above’ and the very last Sunday of the month, the 30th, brings the onset of British Summer Time in the UK when the clocks go forward one hour. Yes, it’s that old watoosee! – ‘spring forward…etc..’

© A.S.Morton – March 2008