NOTES  ON SEPTEMBER 2017  NIGHT  SKY
by Eamon Henry; 9^th September 2017

This page, to be updated monthly, will let you know some things you can look out for in the night sky. The website http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/astronomy/nightsky  gives an available monthly outlook of present title “The Night Sky September 2017” compiled by Ian Morison and covering events throughout September. A complementary TV programme is the BBC programme “The Sky at Night” likely continuing on BBC Four sometime during the month.

The above website gives information about planets, eclipses, comets, galaxies, etc., some of which are of central interest for the month ahead. It also gives written comment on what to look for. I just offer a few extracts from this, in what follows. However, some of the comments are my own, e.g. planets’ or moons’ (satellites’) approximate distances. Please note that the planet shapes shown in this outlook do not necessarily coincide with what you get in a “here and now” view through a small telescope. This makes such “here and now” live viewing quite interesting.

Highlights of September 2017:

1. Jupiter: to be seen low in the southwestern sky after nightfall, at some 10 degrees above the horizon. Clear conditions should at any time make Jupiter’s four Galilean moons and the equatorial bands visible.   

2. Saturn: due southwest at its highest some 17 degrees above the horizon as darkness falls at the start of the month, with its ring-system open at some 26 degrees to our line of sight.

3. Mars: a morning object, not easily seen in the pre-dawn sky.

4. Mercury:  has become a morning object in direction east. Binoculars will be needed to observe it in the bright twilight.

5. Venus: rises in the east some 2 hours before sunrise, at the start of the month. During the month its visible lighted surface increases from some 84 to 91 percent of the half-sphere. On 16^th September in direction east, Venus , Mars and Mercury can be seen in an almost vertical line below to the left of the crescent Moon.

Phases of the Moon:  Full Moon 6^th September ;  Last Qr. 13^th;  New Moon 20^th;  1^st Qr. 28^th

Dublin Sunrise: 6.36am on 2^nd September; 6.48am on 9^th;7.00am on 16^th;7.13am on 23^rd;7.25am on 30^th     

Dublin Sunset: 8.12 pm on 2^nd September;7.55pm on 9^th;7.38pm on 16^th;7.21pm on 23^rd;7.04pm on 30^th

NOTE: the times given above are all in summertime, which began on 26^th March. 

NEWGRANGE AND THE SUN-GOD

A bedtime story by Edmund Henry.

 

The BBC Horizon program of last Thursday night discussed a bronze disk found recently in north-east Germany, and dated to about 1600 BC, and identified with local copper-mines as its raw material. The disk has religious symbols of the Sun (life-giver), crescent Moon (indicating time-change) and the Pleiades(“seven sisters”) star-group used as a calendar for spring-to-autumn agricultural work. This disk also has the “Sun’s Boat”, later found in Egyptian religious carvings, which supposedly carries the Sun around and back under the earth to be in place tomorrow morning.

 

Under such stimulation I yesterday revisited our National Museum (Kildare Street) to look again at a roof-stone from the Newgrange sun-temple (built maybe during 3500-2500 BC), which interests me a lot because it has line etchings scored by a chisel. Helped by some Gaelic words explained in Dinneen’s Irish-English Dictionary, I can better explain Newgrange as Dagda the Sun-god dying at the mid-winter solstice, but (if sky is clear) shining at sunrise of some four mid-winter mornings into the centre of the Newgrange “temple”. He thus fertilizes the womb of mother earth, which gives (new) birth to his son Aongus (the ancient Irish god of sexual love). Dagda has another name “Eochaidh Oll-Athair”, the second word meaning “Father of all things” i.e. Creator-God. Aongus is frequently called “Aongus an Bhrogha” meaning Aongus of the fairy mansion i.e. of the Newgrange sun-temple mound.

 

We expect all etchings at Newgrange to be directly connected with the Sun-god. I now can make some sense of some of them, as follows.

 

FIRST: The roof-stone has its etchings filled and blackened by pitch or some such material. I see clearly a horse’s head, ears and shoulders facing right, above/behind which appears the sun-disk giving out rays like curly hair. Then further behind (and to the left) are undulations suggesting sea-waves. So this could represent Dagda on his horse rising out of the sea at morning and/or possibly passing above/through the western sea so as to get back again for tomorrow morning. The horse-head may have a studded cap on top, but with clear bridle strings and rein coming in the right place towards a rider’s hand. There is also a leg with bent knee in the right place for a rider, down the horse’s flank.

SECONDLY: There are several spirals etched on the Newgrange pillar-stones, not yet the “Maze of Crete” design, which I will treat below. Starting at mid-winter sunrise, the Sun does a low loop in the sky and then supposedly returns under the earth to repeat a slightly larger higher loop starting slightly to the left of yesterday’s. And so on to mid-summer, at which it makes the largest highest loop through the sky. Your imagination must guess (for circa 3000 BC) how it loops down below on the way back. Such etched spirals represent this 3-dimensional process, on a flat surface.

THIRDLY: From mid-June to mid-December the Sun apparently repeats the process in the opposite sunrise direction (left to right). But suppose (to avoid confusion) we treated this as a “mirror-image” of the loops of mid-December to mid-June, then we would have a double set of loops (supposedly close together). This could well be the origin of the “Maze of Crete” design, not seen at Newgrange, where five complete spirals (some having connecting ends) appear, as well as several partial ones, on the large stone in front of the actual passage entrance. The mid-winter Sun shines through the “roof-box” and shaft directly above this stone, into the central chamber, if the sky is clear.

 

POSTSCRIPT (4th to 6^th February 2004)

 

As background to all this, we may draw on the “Chronology of World Events” (in particular, page 1688 of Oxford Encyclopedic English Dictionary, 1991 edition). The period 4000-3200 BC mentions “Farming spreads to western and northern Europe…construction of monumental tombs in megalithic technique in .. British Isles…Use of horse …on steppes north of Black Sea… Plough and cart widely adopted in Europe”. The period 2500-2300 BC mentions “Beaker cultures bring innovations (copper-working, horses,…woollen textiles) to Atlantic seaboard”.

 

So we may conclude that by roughly 2400 BC the Boyne valley area around Newgrange had farming (both tillage and livestock, including horses), with ploughs etc. But we should also allow the possibility that etchings on any stones of the Newgrange sun-temple could have been made long after the original structure was built.

 

The Sun-god was (and still is) crucial for crop-growing during the spring and summer. I now consider an etching on the lower left-hand corner of the roof-stone, namely two heavily-etched squares joined at one corner. These could represent two tillage-fields fenced in, to keep grazing animals out. Or, they might represent one tillage-field and one field for grazing animals e.g. cows.

 

Inside the lower square near one edge is a T-shaped small carving (heavily-scored). This could represent the vertical (coulter) and horizontal (ploughshare) blades of a plough. It could also represent some other farming implement such as a pick-axe. Nearby in this square is a heavily-scored dot, which could represent a grain-seed being sowed.

We see many groups of these square or diamond-shaped etchings on the pillar-stones of  the Newgrange passage into the inner chamber, and elsewhere. They might represent tillage-fields and grazing animals being put under the aegis of the Sun-god.

Below to the right of these squares, etchings appear which suggest a pear and apple together, and separately a further pair of cherries or fruits or nuts joined together.

 

But, most interesting, top left on the roof-stone are several circular etchings together forming a (lower) biggish half of a sun-like object, with spiky rays coming out below. This makes sense as the crescent Moon. Below this and facing left, is a quite credible donkey’s head and neck. So we could interpret this as the Moon riding a donkey (hurray!!) across the sky in the opposite direction to that of the Sun - which it surely does as it apparently moves from west (new moon) to east (full moon) over two weeks. And to the farthest left at the top we find wavy lines facing the Moon’s donkey – I need only mention the word “Tides”!!

U.K. 7 MAY 2015 GENERAL ELECTION RESULTS 
A note by Eamon Henry. Date 15^th May 2015

Numerical results below are taken from Wikipedia, with two sets of calculations by the author, namely Table 1 column 3 party percentage shares of total number of votes, and column 5 derived number of seats pro rata party percentage shares of total number of votes. The total turnout of 66.1 percent of the total electorate may be considered rather low, for such an important expected outcome of no party majority, although in fact a Conservative overall majority resulted.

Table 1 Main Results by Party, with derived percentages and proportional seat numbers

Party          (1)	Votes, number        (2)	Votes, party percentage of total   (3)	Seats, number, actual      (4)	Seats, number pro rata col. 3 percent share of votes (5)
Conservative	11,334,920	36.932	331	240
Labour	9,344,328	30.446	232	198
U.K. Ind. Party	3,881,129	12.646	1	82
Lib. Dem.	2,415,888	7.871	8	51
Scottish Nat. P.	1,454, 436	4.739	56	31
Green	1,157, 613	3.772	1	25
Dem. Union. P.	184,260	0.600	8	4
Plaid Cymru	181,694	0.592	3	4
Sinn Fein	176,232	0.574	4	4
Ulster Union. P..	114,935	0.374	2	2
Soc Dem.& L. P.	99,809	0.325	3	2
Others	346,436	1.129	1	7
TOTAL	30,691,680	100.000	650	650

We see that the Conservative actual 331 seats far exceeded their warranted 240 seats based on party vote share. Likewise, Labour’s 232 seats exceeded their warranted 198 seats. U.K.I.P. ‘s getting nearly 4 million votes, for only 1 actual seat versus warranted 82 seats, might argue a need for some different election system , as an improvement on that in place. The same argument could be made for the Lib. Dem. (8 actual versus 51 warranted) and Green (1 actual versus 25 warranted). In the other direction, the Scottish Nat. Party actual 56 seats far exceeded their warranted 31 seats based on vote number shares.

This writer proposes a more equitable outcome, as follows. Combine the present 650 constituencies by adjoining pairs into 325 constituencies, and elect 325 M.P.s as at present. Then subtract out the votes (total or some high share) obtained by these 325 winners, and combine all the remaining votes into a national total, subdivided by party. Then allocate the remaining 325 seats pro rata party shares. In this situation U.K. I.P. would certainly obtain many more seats than just the 1 now obtained, and Lib. Dem. would also obtain more. In an arguably  better sense, no votes would be wasted. The writer thinks that a voting system along these lines already exists, possibly in Germany, or in some other European countries.  
 

LITTLE GREEN MEN: THE IRISH EMIGRANTS IN AMERICA
by Grainne Archer;

As green-eyed little monsters
in hordes we set to sea,
abandoning our Emerald Isle
for your Land of the Free.

And so as naïve navies
allegiance we all swore
to patinated Libertas
who lit our way ashore.

But bile soon drove us onwards as we
heaved those heavy railtracks, as we
sweated, picked and shovelled, as we
earned our dirty greenbacks.
For freckled-faced simplicity
brought ridicule and laughter,
a century or more of sneers
for every Irish grafter.

But now no longer aliens
our patience fruit has borne
there runs a green blood in your veins -
you’re all part leprechaun!