Tea at Trianon: Seven Planets and the Leonid Meteor Shower

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, November 20, 2020

Seven Planets and the Leonid Meteor Shower

From The Good News Network:

For those who like to gaze at the night sky, this week there will be a lively show as the Leonid meteor stream, as well as all seven planets, will be visible throughout the night—the lack of a strong moon helping immensely to see everything.
Jupiter and Saturn will be visible in the early night, between the 18th and the 21st, all throughout the Northern Hemisphere, as well as Mars, Neptune, and Uranus.
The Leonid meteor shower will be extra-visible tonight, with peak showers predicted for Tuesday the 17th before dawn, all across the world.
In this period, Venus and Mercury will be bright enough to see in the early mornings.

These events mark a celestial anniversary, as Jupiter and Saturn, visible side-by-side in what astronomers call the Great Conjunction, a phenomenon that happens once every 20 years around the winter solstice of December 21st, are joined by all the other planets of our solar system.

Earth Sky publishes daily stargazing guides, and this one will help you locate Jupiter and Saturn, as well as its rings, as they near their conjunction. This one will help you see Mercury and Venus.

As the planets revolve around the sun in their long orbits, occasionally they will all bunch up for some weeks before spreading out again. It’s not rare, only infrequent.

Sighting the Leonid meteor shower is a yearly occurrence. Centered around the comet Tempel-Tuttle that takes about 33 years to fully orbit Earth, it’s named for the constellation Leo—as the point in the sky where most of the meteors streak from is around the mane of the lion constellation.

Time and Date has an hourly-updating tracker showing where the meteors will be coming from and where they can be seen. This year, the lack of moon and cloudless weather predicted for most of North America will definitely aid the stargazer in seeing as many as 15 meteors per hour.

In 1966, the Leonid shower turned into a storm, when Americans could see a mind-boggling 100,000 meteors an hour streak through the sky, including fireballs that looked almost like ICBM missiles, or “earthgrazers,” low-flying meteors with long colorful ion tails.

The last time Leonid stormed was in 2001, but it produced only 1% of the debris saw in 1966. The next storm period, when the comet passes close by, will be in 2031. (Read more.)