Greek In The Round by Ev Rilett

I am so excited. This Whole Earth Care Blog posting is the start of Greek in The Round by Ev Rilett.

Ev has generously offered to be our astronomer “in residence”. She will encourage us to get out into the night and look up, introduce us to the wonders of the night sky, teach us the stories of the gods and goddesses that reside above us and help us train our eyes to recognize the phases of the moon, the rotating planets of our little galaxy and the seasonal constellations.

Welcome Ev. What a delight!

Looking Up to the Sky

Taurus is well suited for viewing this month. You’ll find it in the south eastern sky around 10.00 pm. You can identify it by the V shape of 6 fairly bright stars. This represents the head of the bull.

The bull's brightest star, Aldebaran, is orange in colour and closest to Orion's belt which is just below and to the east of Taurus. Close to and above Aldebaran is a grouping of small stars called the Hyades. And, above the Hyades is a cluster of stars that at first glance may appear to be a tiny cloud. On closer inspection, you should be able to distinguish the six tiny stars of the Pleiades.

TAURUS - Perhaps the most famous of Zeus' relations with earthly maidens was his affair with Europa. Europa went out one morning with other maidens to gather flowers in their favourite meadow by the sea. She caught sight of a mighty but beautiful form - a bull like none other she had ever seen.

Some say his colour was snow-white, others chestnut; but all agree that his coat glistened with beauty in the sun. His horns were the shape of the crescent Moon, and though he looked powerful, his demeanour seemed so gentle that Europa and the other maidens drew nearer to admire the creature.

Europa thought to herself that the bull seemed more like a man than an animal. When he lay down at her feet, it seemed like an invitation to mount him and she accepted that invitation. The mighty bull leaped to his feet and raced to the open sea. Her terror blended with amazement when she opened her eyes and saw that his heavy galloping hooves were airborne upon the tops of the waves. All around her, sea-gods on dolphins (even Poseidon himself) sprang up and accompanied the pair.

She was, of course, carried off by the king of the gods, Zeus, in the guise of a bull. After a 600-mile journey across the wave tops, Zeus ravished Europa in Crete, his birth-land. Unlike some of Zeus' less fortunate conquests, however, Europa did not suffer the revenge of Hera, Zeus' wife. She eventually bore Zeus three sons.

The constellation Taurus has usually been identified with the disguise Zeus assumed to carry Europa away. Europa's name has been given to a major moon of Jupiter (Roman version of Zeus) and also to the continent we now call Europe.

The Hyades is a star cluster located in Taurus, and in Greek mythology, the Hyades were the daughters of Atlas and Aethra and half-sisters of the Pleiades.
Zeus had a son Dionysus, by Demeter, who was kidnapped and nearly killed. Thus, Zeus changed him into the shape of a kid to hide him from Hera (his extremely jealous wife) and entrusted him to the care of the Hyades sisters. He rewarded their faithfulness by placing them in the stars.

The Hyades make the shape of a V in the sky that is composed of 6 stars, the bright red Aldebaran (meaning the "Next One", from the fact that it rises after the Pleiades) being the main one.

In the lore of the ancients, the Hyades were associated with wet and stormy weather; the name itself is said by some to be derived from an archaic Greek word meaning "to rain". Pliny speaks of them as "...a star violent and troublesome; bringing forth storms and tempests raging both on land and sea..."

The Pleiades, M45, are the small group of stars most often referred to as the "Seven Sisters", the most famous cluster in the night skies.

One of the most significant roles the Pleiades played was to the Agricultural seasons. In ancient times of no calendars, the Pleiades marked the beginning of the new year, which was divided into two parts. The rising indicated the winter and the setting indicated the spring.

When the Pleiades rose in the fall, it was time to reap and in the spring when they set, it was time to sow. Thirty centuries ago, sailors waited for the spring rising of the Pleiades before setting out to sea and the ships were taken out of the water at the fall rising.

Although they are known as the "Seven Sisters", to the naked eye, the average individual can see only 6 of them. There are many stories as to why this is so.

The Big Dipper is often referred to as the Seven Brothers and it is said that the lost Pleiad was taken by Mizar to be his wife, and to this day, she resides with him as Alcor. Another legend is that 6 of the Pleiads married immortal gods while Merope married a mortal and, out of shame, the light of her star is so weak that it cannot be seen.

If you want to test your vision, try to see how many Pleiades you can count with your naked eye. At first it will look like a small fuzzy patch, but take a moment and concentrate.

How good is your vision? If you cannot see 6, maybe you need to think about having your vision checked.

Now, look through a simple pair of binoculars to see the Pleiades true glory. They are exquisite.

Ev Rilett

(If you wish to enlarge the photos, simply double click on them.)

Ev will be a regular writer for our Whole Earth Care Blog, so if you have questions for Ev's Greek in The Round, send them to moczero@sympatico.ca

The Silence of the Stars

When Laurens van der Post one night
In the Kalahari Desert told the Bushmen
He couldn't hear the stars
Singing, they didn't believe him. They looked at him,
Half-smiling. They examined his face
To see whether he was joking
Or deceiving them. Then two of those small men
Who plant nothing, who have almost
Nothing to hunt, who live
On almost nothing, and with no one
But themselves, led him away
From the crackling thorn-scrub fire
And stood with him under the night sky
And listened. One of them whispered,
Do you not hear them now?
And van der Post listened, not wanting
To disbelieve, but had to answer,
No. They walked him slowly
Like a sick man to the small dim
Circle of firelight and told him
They were terribly sorry,
And he felt even sorrier
For himself and blamed his ancestors
For their strange loss of hearing,
Which was his loss now. On some clear nights
When nearby houses have turned off their visions,
When the traffic dwindles, when through streets
Are between sirens and the jets overhead
Are between crossings, when the wind
Is hanging fire in the fir trees,
And the long-eared owl in the neighboring grove
Between calls is regarding his own darkness,
I look at the stars again as I first did
To school myself in the names of constellations
And remember my first sense of their terrible distance,
I can still hear what I thought
At the edge of silence where the inside jokes
Of my heartbeat, my arterial traffic,
The C above high C of my inner ear, myself
Tunelessly humming, but now I know what they are:
My fair share of the music of the spheres
And clusters of ripening stars,
Of the songs from the throats of the old gods
Still tending even tone-deaf creatures
Through their exiles in the desert.
David Wagoner
(Traveling Light)
Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/Silence_of_the_Stars.html

If you have photos of this time of the year in your part of our world, please consider sending them to Whole Earth Care to share with the rest of our Virtual Community. Send them for The Rogues' Gallery to: moczero@sympatico.ca

Comments about what you read on our Whole Earth Care Blog are greatly appreciated. You can scroll down to the bottom of this or any past posting, click on Comments, follow the direction and have your say. Or simply send them by writing to ... yup!...you have it :-)moczero@sympatico.ca

And now for just the fun of it.

Videos:

This comes from Tom. He writes, “I showed this to my dog who wagged me that "I told you so".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2FX9rviEhw

… just in case you feel sorry for the sheep…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tCbMFp7eUo&feature=fvw

Earth Family First

maureen

Photos by Google Images