#24H - Astronomical Poetry for Littles - Planetary Gastronomy - Eta Aquarids - Sky Calendar and Events
TGT 5/1/24: Food with Planet Names; Astronomical Poetry Books for Little Kids' Reading; Eta Aquarid Meteor Show is Greater than Usual; Mars, Saturn, Moon and Mercury--the Dawn Show.
Cover Photo - Mary Had a Curious Mind
In This Issue:
Cover Photo — Mary Had a Curious Mind
Welcome to Issue 24H!
Sky Planning Calendar —
* Moon-Gazing - Morning Moons Are The Best, Joining Planets
* Observing—Plan-et - Use the Moon for Mercury
* Border Crossings - A Couple Days to Be BullishTowards Cosmic Awareness - Re-imagining Nursery Rhymes
Astronomy in Everyday Life - Planetary Gastronomy
Welcome to The Galactic Times Newsletter-Inbox Magazine #24H!
Having a little fun with this issue.
First, following the usual sky event info I have put in an article on Planetary Gastronomy, foods with planetary names.
Second, a long-saved piece on a pair of books using poetry to teach science in nursery rhymes.
And finally, in the sky, we have an unusual meteor shower coming up. The Eta Aquarids are not known for any particular great show every year, but this year it is the only major meteor shower that occurs near a New Moon—dark skies!!—and it is getting a bump up in streak count by the addition of some Halley Comet material from more than two millennia ago.
Planets—Saturn is our only night time world, but just barely, yet it soon gets a companion, Mars. Don’t look for Venus or Jupiter; they are vacationing near the Sun. Mercury is great if you live south of the Equator but it has a nice photo opportunity when the morning crescent comes by. Don’t waste your time planet hunting in the evening. There’s effectively—none.
A SUBSCRIBER NOTE: Yours truly will be attending three conferences with astronomy education focused highly in June and July. Much of this will get not into Today’s Cosmic Awareness column but into special PAID SUBSCRIBER ONLY editions. If you are an astro educator, this is your time to upgrade!
Enjoy!
Publisher — Dr. Larry Krumenaker Email: newsletter@thegalactictimes.com
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Click here https://www.thegalactictimes.com for our Home Page, with all past issue Tables of Contents and stories indexed by topic. You can also find links to other Hermograph products and periodicals.
Sky Planning Calendar
Moon-Gazing
Moon passages by a star, planet or deep sky object are a good way to find a planet or other object if you’ve never located it before.
May 1 Last Quarter Moon.
May 3 Saturn is just under 1-degree from the Moon, and if you are a subscriber from Antarctica or points nearby, you can watch the Moon cover up the ball-and-rings.
May 4 The Moon is between Saturn and Mars. In a telescope, Neptune is a half degree away.
May 5 The Moon is at Perigee compared to us, and between Mars and Mercury as seen by us, the best chance you might have to find the latter world. Except for tomorrow….and it won’t interfere much at all with the Eta Aquarids meteor shower (see below).
May 6 Mercury is 4-degrees South (to the right in the low dawn sky) of the Moon.
May 7 New Moon.
May 8 A thin crescent is in the evening twilight, use binoculars to find it and the star cluster, the Pleaides, in the glow, about or less than one Moon diameter away.
May 10-12 The Moon slashes a diagonal through Gemini.
May 15 First Quarter Moon.
Observing---Plan-et
==Mercury is the shy one but worth finding. The Evening sky cupboard is bare.==
Mercury is giving Southern Hemisphereans a nice Autumnal morning show. It reaches maximum elongation from the Sun on the 9th. For Northerners it is a weak dawn show, with Mercury hanging low just north of East around that date. Best (and prettiest for S.H.) chances to catch it are when the Moon is between it and Mars (dawn the 5th) and then Moon and Mercury are 4 degrees apart (Mercury to the right of the Moon) on the 6th. All month Mercury will rise into the sky, albeit low, at least 45 minutes before Sunrise, so if you have low horizons in that direction, go for it.
Venus. What Venus? Other than during the recent eclipse, it is out-of-view on vacation until the end of June, or maybe July if she’s not willing…..
Mars is close to the Moon on the morning of the 4th, as close as 0.2-degrees. After the 14th, it becomes a night-planet! It rises before dawn begins from that day onward.
Jupiter is essentially gone, even for binocular users, starting the 6th, reaches conjunction with the Sun on the 18th.
Saturn is our only true dark-sky naked eye planet, rising an hour before morning twilight begins.
Eta Aquarids in the Dark
The only meteor shower this entire year that peaks during New Moon time; no election...,um….light interference!
A remnant stream of Halley Comet material, it is expected to get a numbers bump up from some debris ejected from the time of the Early Roman Empire. Normally not a major big show, it may have up to 5 days of showing us 60 meteors per hour, summer Perseids or winter Geminids rate. It will begin each night at roughly 3 AM when the radiant clears the horizon, and like most showers, it is best when the radiant is highest, around and just before morning twilight begins.
Border Crossings
A bit of an “improvement”. The Sun begins May in Aries the Ram but enters Taurus the Bull on the 13th, (which is why you can see a crescent Moon on the 8th in Taurus in the evening sky, but not much afterwards). Astrologists say it is in Taurus the whole time, so we’ll agree on two days, to be nice.
Towards Cosmic Awareness
Science Poetry for Littles
I know I for one don’t want to hear “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” one more time in this lifetime. Often anytime I can get a chance to hear someone create nursery rhymes on astronomical themes I cringe.
Recently I got a look at a pair of (similar) books that don’t just use science topics in rhyme but actually reuses standard nursery rhymes as the rhythm and are accompanied by modern artwork. Both books are authored and self-published by British writer Marcus Anthony Trinder and are called “Nucleus Notions: Nursery Rhymes Re-imagined.” One is subtitled a Classic version, the other is Advanced.
In fact, the difference between the two is simply in the artwork; the poems provided are the same and both books are suggested for ages 3 to 12 on Amazon (preschool to US 7th grade). The Advanced uses illustrations of older children, the classic has illustrations with younger ones—preschool, elementary—in the artwork. This Issue’s Cover Photo illustrates a poem in the Advanced book while the picture below is the same for the Classic version. Trinder used AI to create these drawings and it is now tempting me to try AI art programs myself.
There are 25 poems in each book, all fitting on one page except for one rhyme going onto two. The poems cover a wide range of science topics and areas—scientific method, chemistry, physics, computer science, mental health, metaphysics, and more. Three categories have more than one or two poems—astronomy with 5, scientific method or thinking with 5 also, and biology with 4. Each poem is based not on the author’s own cadence but on classic “Twinkle Twinkle” levels of nursery rhymes.
What is truly great about both books is the artworks that go with the poems. They would make fantastic blown-up posters to hang on the walls of ANY elementary school classroom, especially one of teachers who love to teach their charges about science. It is worth buying these books for this reason alone.
As to the poems, it is certainly an extraordinary attempt to use ‘ancient’ nursery rhymes with updated terminology. Maybe there aren’t enough nursery rhymes; Trinder used Humpty Dumpty three times and Jack and Jill, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and Mary Had a Little Lamb twice. But all others you might remember from your childhood were used once. In some poems the author succeeds in finding suitable wordplay that goes along with the original topic—Hey Diddle Diddle, the cow jumped over the Moon, starts out the same and turns to gravitational science and is actually pretty decent. In others not so much or not at all, but the new poetry may actually be pretty cool I liked Mary Had a Little Lamb converted into Mary Had a Curious Mind!
But the books are imperfect. It needs a round of editing. In some cases, the metrical foot (the rhythm of the lines) sometimes fails on a line or two—one too many or too few on a line), and for too many times for my taste a rhyming word I expected from the way the old rhyme goes doesn’t appear—it might not even rhyme. There are typos. This is not a book, in my opinion, for true bedtime reading for little ones. A lot of the words will be over their vocabulary levels. It might even bore the kids into not liking science in the future. For some older kids, those who would get the vocabulary, it might be much too much to ask to want them to sit down and read an updated ‘nursery rhymes’ book. But if you have a child who has recently learned to read beyond primer level, likes to read anything they can get their hands on, and is really into science, this might just be a suitable gift to give.
As I noted, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star showed up twice but only one was astronomy-based one (other poems that were astronomy were based on Hey Diddle Diddle and Little Bo Peep). It went…
One set of lines I’ll leave you with that are true for those kids who spend TOO much time on their computer (science) instead of reality —-
For amidst the memes, the games, and the chat,
There’s a world outside, don’t forget that.
Play in the sun, read a book, take a walk,
Sometimes it’s good to just sit and talk.
-LK
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Both paperback books cost $12.95; search under the author’s last name to find them.
Astronomy in Everyday Life
Planetary Gastronomy
A coincidence happened. The above image popped up in my email, the so-called Ravioli Moon, actually Saturn’s moon Pan (which is not named for a piece of cookware for your pasta dinner). At the same time, I was in a Subway sandwich shop where on the walls were prints of common items…until you saw they were ‘designed’ by food items. Among them was a Saturn, made out of a meatball.
In addition to increasing my hunger, it also got me wondering….are there any foods that have planetary names in them? So I sat down with Mr. Google and did some searches.
It turns out that planetary size or characteristics don’t correlate well with planetary food labels.
Some planets don’t get no respect…. Mercury is a chemical that is harmful to humans and other life forms in large (or even small) quantities, so I could not find ANY foods with Mercury in their name.
I found one giant world… with two items. There is a mai-tai-like cocktail called the Saturn, a variant of the Tiki drinks—you know, the kind with fruit, straws and umbrellas in them. The two versions I saw are made with either bourbon or gin, with passion fruit syrup, orgeat syrup and lemon juice.
The other Saturnian vittle was Saturn Midnight Moon Cake. It didn’t look like any moon or ringed world I know of, so I’ll give it just an honorable mention in my gastronomical recipe box.
Jupiter, on the other hand, is a name I found used with many different stores—of all kinds—but not a single recipe.
Venus could claim more than two items, sort of. However, Venus was more used in honor of the goddess than the planet. It was found in the name of a pastry, called “Venus’ Nipples” and, apparently, the pasta (there we go again!) tortellini is sometimes known in Italy as “Venus’ Belly Button.” There is also Venus de Milo soup and Venus de Milo Clam Chowder. I supposed the opaques of the soup or chowder resemble Venus’ opaque clouds so I guess this works. Those last two count.
Uranus, on the other hand, because so many mispronounce it, might not seem as a good candidate for a Astronomical Gastronome. But there is apparently a local Missourian chocolatier, who makes all sorts of Uranian (and lots of tongue in…. um, cheek….um…) chocolate items. But they get their name legitimately—from the town, Uranus, Missouri, so they can do this!
The two planets that dominate the universe of planetary refrigerator fodder are Mars and Neptune. As you might guess, Neptune is high in the seafood department. It is often a brand name, as opposed to a delicacy title. Mars, on the other hand, is both a company/brand name (Mars Inc.) and a whole bunch of Mars products. The candy/snack Mars Bars comes to mind, but they make lots of others, just not with Mars *in the title*, just the overall brand name (they make Three Musketeers bars, too).
All in all, not a whole lot of actual Gastronomy going on in our System, unlike, say, alcoholic beverages….
Here’s the meatball, by the way; the rings are—naturally—onion.
You know…this picture was the most representative food as a planet of all the above…
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If axial precession occurs ~26,000 yrs, what effect did it have on evolution, existing life? Any change in E-M radiation hitting the earth'surface? Does 7 mile long Hadron Collider have any net effect on Earth's magnetic field?
My grand daughter is having night terrors over the South Atlantic Anomaly. She is terrified by the Aurora, because of what they mean.
Much like enjoying, "bombs bursting in air" from the song.