Google Pompeii

If you’ve never been to the Roman ruins of Pompeii south of Naples in Italy, now’s your chance. Google has put the ancient town on their Street View in Google Maps. It’s not quite like being there however its the next best thing.

The Martian Saga of Troy

O Goddess, sing thou of the wrath of Mars,

that baleful wrath that hath brought countless dust-storms

and carbon-dioxide frost to its red hills, and hath sent forth

many valiant explorers to Hades, and made themselves to be wreckage

on its heartless and cold soils; —- sing now of  a new Troy

which hath contested Earth’s Spirit  but hath not quelled her Motivation.

AAW: Medieval Sunspots

I’m back!  I’ve been visiting Maryland and Virginia over the Thanksgiving holiday so I haven’t had time to keep up with my blog posts. I seem to have some time now after catching up with some grading and admin. I’ll try to keep the blog-train rolling again now!

Since its Wednesday its time for another Ancient Astronomy.

We appear to be going through a period of almost no solar activity. According to Spaceweather.com:

The sun is in the pits of a very deep solar minimum. Many researchers thought the sunspot cycle had hit bottom in 2008 when the sun was blank 73% of the time. Not so. 2009 is on the verge of going even lower. So far this year, the sun has been blank 75% of the time, and only a serious outbreak of sunspots over the next few weeks will prevent 2009 from becoming the quietest year in a century. Solar minimum continues.

A few weeks ago an astronomer friend of mine pointed out a short article on the now defunct UniSci website about a reference to sunspots in the medieval chronicle of John of Worcester, the Chronicon ex chronicis. Since I study this period and this Chronicle I just had to check it out. Although the chronicle purports to be a world history from the beginning of mankind to 1140 (the year John of Worcester was thought to have died) it focuses principally on English history. As the title implies (a history from histories) John consulted several sources including the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica, Asser’s Vita Aelfredi and Eadmer’s Historia novorum.

As far as the documentation of astronomical events, John of Worcester’s Chronicle is exceptional. Many of the events listed, most often eclipses of the sun or moon, were taken from another source, most often the ASC, however there are a few which have their only reference in his Chronicle. The  sunspots are one such reference.

• Anno regni iii Leodegarii Romanorum imperatoris, regis vero Anglorum Heinrici xxviii, olimpiadis cccclxx, anno ii, indictione vii, luna xxv existente, vi Idus Decembris, Sabbato, a mane usque ad vesperam apparuerunt quasi duae nigrae pilae infra solis orbitam, una in superiori parte et erat maior, altera in inferiori et fuit minor; eratque utraque directa contra alteram ad huiusmodi figuram.

In the third royal year of the Roman emperor Leodegarius, the 28th year of the reign of Henry (the 1st), the 472nd Olympiad, 7th indiction, 25th day of the moon on the 6th of the Ides of December (Dec. 10th, AD 1128), on Sunday from the morning until the evening there seemed to appear two black spots inside the circle of the sun, one in the upper part which was greater, another in the lower part which was smaller; and they each were opposite the other as seen in this figure.

My astrophysicist friend tells me that the date, December of 1128, falls just after the maximum of the 11 year solar cycle  which she kindly calculated backwards for me. Assuming that the solar cycle has remained the same prior to its modern record, this seems to make sense, she says.

The figure referenced in the Chronicle appears in Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS. 157 , p. 380. We have been puzzling over the nature of the dots on the outside of the sun however the gold leaf at the four cardinal points and centre appears to represent the sun’s rays.

Digital Renaissance

I was pleased to see the recent announcement at the Folger Shakespeare Library in D.C. of the availability of their Hamlet quartos collection in their digital image library. The FSL has really led the way in the Digital Humanities by providing high quality digital resources that are available to the public. If you are unfamiliar with their digital collections they use a graphical browser called Luna Insight which connects directly to their collection servers. You can use a browser like IE or Firefox for some of their collection, however if you want to see the Hamlet quartos you have to install Insight (There are Mac OS X and Win versions). I recommend the Luna browser if you don’t mind installing yet another internet app on your machine.You won’t be disappointed.

What can I say about the FSL’s holdings? They have the third largest collection of early printed English books in the STC and Wing catalogues in the world after the British Library and the Bodleian at Oxford. They have the largest collection of Shakespeare’s plays amassed anywhere, including 229 quarto editions and 79 copies of the 1623 First Folio, the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays. They have 60,000 manuscripts including the medieval Macro Plays manuscript which contains the famous illustration of the stage of the Castle of Perseverance:

In addition to images from their literary collections, the digital library also includes images of  historical costumes, photographs from Shakespeare productions and other plays, posters and playbills historical and contemporary.

Ancient Astronomy Wednesday: The 1366 Leonids

Sadly, it looks like the observation of the Leonid meteor shower caused by the passing of Comet 55 P/Tempel-Tuttle was obscured in Asia because of poor weather. Since the meteor shower radiates from the constellation Leo, they are known as the Leonids (“Sons of the Lion”).

There have been very few recorded observations of the Leonids in the historical record however the historian Fernao Lopes (d.ca. 1459) came across an eyewitness account of a shower that occurred  on October 23rd of 1366 and included it in his  Crónica dos Cinco reis de Portugal (“Chronicles of the Five Kings of Portugal”):

“there was in the heavens a movement of stars, such as men never before saw or heard of. From midnight onward, all the stars moved from the east to the west; and after being together, they began to move, some in one direction, and others in another. And afterward they fell from the sky in such numbers, and so thickly together, that as they descended low in the air, they seemed large and fiery, and the sky and the air seemed to be in flames, and even the earth appeared as if ready to take fire. Those who saw it were filled with such great fear and dismay, that they were astounded, imagining they were all dead men, and that the end of the world had come.”

Since the event appears to have occurred in October it was not assumed to be associated with Tempel-Tuttle. In the 1930’s, however, S. Kanda suggested that the record related to the comet and his findings were confirmed by Schubart in 1965 who proved that the comet passed perihelion on October 18th of that year. Two other historical observations, one in 1699 and another in 1866 allowed Schubart to predict the orbit of Tempel-Tuttle with greater precision. Observations since then have precisely defined Tempel-Tuttle’s orbit.

The 1366 Leonid shower was remarkable since the comet appears to have passed 0.0229 AU from Earth (about 2.1 million miles), the third closest approach of any comet to Earth in recorded history. The shower’s total brightness may have reached 3rd magnitude.

Gary Kronk provides a summary of observations on cometography.com.