Cosmology

You are currently browsing the archive for the Cosmology category.

Twitter Moonwatch

Thanks to Twitterer azericsheats, I came across the Twitter Moonwatch and Meteorwatch Trailer hosted by the International year of Astronomy 2009 UK and Newbury Astronomical Society.

YouTube Preview Image

According to their web site:

To take part in this just follow us on Twitter @astronomy2009uk and @NewburyAS. If you’re not yet on Twitter, you can create an account for free here. www.twitter.com

During Twitter Moonwatch we will be live-tweeting images of the Moon, planets and other astronomical objects, taken by Newbury Astronomical Society. At the same time we’ll be online to answer any questions you might have about the images we’re tweeting, and about astronomy in general.

This Twitter Moonwatch will be a special one, as we will be joined by the Faulkes Telescope Network of professional telescopes, who will be tweeting images [taken] with their 2m telescope situated in New South Wales, Australia.

To find out more, visit Newbury Astronomical Society’s Home page www.newburyas.org.uk or visit www.astronomy2009.co.uk.

It sounds like a lot of fun. Check it out.

A few years ago I came across a number of references to the phrase “four corners of the earth” in Hamlet’s Mill. This is a scriptural term and this exact phrase can be found in Isaiah 11:12 (cf. 2 Nephi 21:12), Revelation 7:1, D&C 124:128, and JST Mark 13:31. Additionally, there are many other scriptures that refer to the “four quarters” of the earth. I thought the following references were insightful, especially regarding the temple liturgy of ancient Israel with the High Priest performing the rites of atonement.

The “Frame” of the Ecliptic

Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend wrote that the corners are marked by the four points of the year – the ecliptic:

Ecliptic Meanwhile, it is necessary to explain again what this “earth” is that modern interpreters like to take for a pancake. The mythical earth is, in fact, a plane, but this plane is not our “earth” at all, neither our globe, nor a presupposed homocentrical earth. “Earth” is the implied plane through the four points of the year, marked by the equinoxes and solstices, in other words the ecliptic. And this is why this earth is very frequently said to be quadrangular. The four “corners,” that is, the zodiacal constellations rising heliacally at both the equinoxes and solstices, parts of the “frame” skambha, are the points which determine an “earth.” Every world-age has its own “earth.” It is for this very reason that “ends of the world” are said to take place. A new “earth” arises, when another set of zodiacal constellations brought in by the Precession determines the year points.1

Skambha is a Sanskrit word and means “pillar”; the Finnish correlative is Sampo—in other words, the tree that holds up the sky. The word solstice comes from the Latin sol which means sun, and sistit which means “stands”:

For several days before and after each solstice, the sun appears to stand still in the sky—that is, its noontime elevation does not seem to change. At the solstices the sun’s apparent position on the celestial sphere reaches its greatest distance above or below the celestial equator, about 23 1/2° of arc. At the time of summer solstice, about June 22, the sun is directly overhead at noon at the Tropic of Cancer. In the Northern Hemisphere the longest day and shortest night of the year occur on this date, marking the beginning of summer. At winter solstice, about December 22, the sun is overhead at noon at the Tropic of Capricorn; this marks the beginning of winter in the Northern Hemisphere. For several days before and after each solstice the sun appears to stand still in the sky, i.e., its noontime elevation does not seem to change from day to day.2

Equinox , either of two points on the celestial sphere where the ecliptic and the celestial equator intersect. The vernal equinox, also known as “the first point of Aries,” is the point at which the sun appears to cross the celestial equator from south to north. This occurs about Mar. 21, marking the beginning of spring in the Northern Hemisphere. At the autumnal equinox, about Sept. 23, the sun again appears to cross the celestial equator, this time from north to south; this marks the beginning of autumn in the Northern Hemisphere. On the date of either equinox, night and day are of equal length (12 hr each) in all parts of the world; the word equinox is often used to refer to either of these dates. The equinoxes are not fixed points on the celestial sphere but move westward along the ecliptic, passing through all the constellations of the zodiac in 26,000 years. This motion is called the precession of the equinoxes. The vernal equinox is a reference point in the equatorial coordinate system.3

Continue reading Read the rest of this entry »

  1. de Santillana, Giorgio and Hertha von Dechend. Hamlet’s Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge and its Transmission Through Myth. Jaffrey, New Hampshire: Godine, 1977. 235; hereafter Hamlet’s Mill.
  2. Solstice”. Infoplease. 1 March 2009.
  3. Equinox”. Infoplease. 1 March 2009.

Last year, Carrie pointed me to a series of references to Kolob and the Sagittarius Star Cloud in a book she was reading at the time. I thought these references were intriguing since Kolob is a star that is “near unto” the throne of God (Abraham 3:1-10).1 In a chapter entitled “Kolob, the Governor”, J. Reuben Clark, Jr. wrote the following:

Sagittarius_Star_Cloud_2 They also now affirm our galaxy is a gigantic disc, a whirling wheel, lenticular in shape, one hundred thousand light-years in diameter from rim to rim (Hoyle, pp. 54, 106, says sixty thousand light-years), ten thousand light-years thick at the hub or center (another estimate is twenty thousand light-years [Stanush, p. 97] ), believed to lie to the southward of us in America in the direction of the Great Star Cloud of Sagittarius. We are, say they, some twenty-five thousand to thirty thousand light-years from the hub or center of the galactic disc, out towards the rim. (Bart J. Bok, “‘The Southern Sky,” Scientific American (July 1952), p. 47; cited as Bok II.) We lie, they affirm, in or near the central plane of this great whirling disc of one hundred billion stars (Bok I, p. 32); and they also affirm that the galaxy thins out toward the rims; that very few stars are found out beyond ten thousand light-years from our own sun; that one-half of the Milky Way is “comparatively thin and dull, the other dense and vivid”; and that “there are ten times as many stars per unit area of sky in the Sagittarius cloud as in the richest part of the winter Milky Way.” (Ibid.)

Continue reading Kolob and the Sagittarius Star Cloud »»

  1. In fact, Brigham Young once commented that the earth was near the throne of Father in heaven prior to the fall.

Boanerges

A few years ago, I came across an intriguing reference to Boanerges. Mark’s gospel records that the Savior called twelve disciples:

And James the son of Zebedee, and John the brother of James; and he surnamed them Boanerges, which is, The sons of thunder (Mark 3:17).

Here is the reference that captured my attention:

In the Gospel of Mark III.17, the “twins” James and John, the sons of Zebedee, are given by Jesus the name of Boanerges, which the Evangelist explains as meaning “Sons of Thunder.” This was long overlooked but eventually became the title of a work by a distinguished scholar, too soon forgotten, Rendel Harris. Here the Thunder Twins were shown to exist in cultures as different as Greece, Scandinavia and Peru. They call to mind the roles of Magni and Modi, not actually called twins, but successors of Thor, in Ragnarök. But to quote from Harris:

James and John surnamed BoanergesWe have shown that it does not necessarily follow that when the parenthood of the Thunder is recognised, it necessarily extends to both of the twins. The Dioscuri may be called unitedly, Sons of Zeus; but a closer investigation shows conclusively that there was a tendency in the early Greek cults to regard one twin as of divine parentage, and the other of human. Thus Castor is credited to Tyndareus, Pollux to Zeus . . . The extra child made the trouble, and was credited to an outside source. Only later will the difficulty of discrimination lead to the recognition of both as Sky-boys or Thunder-boys. An instance from a remote civilization will show that this is the right view to take.

For example, Arriaga, in his Extirpation of Idolatry in Peru tells us that “when two children are produced at one birth, which they call Chuchos or Curi, and in el Cuzco Taqui Hua-hua, they hold it for an impious and abominable occurrence, and they say, that one of them is the child of the Lightning, and require a severe penance, as if they had committed a great sin.”

Continue reading Boanerges »»

Canopus

According to the authors of Hamlet’s Mill, the star Canopus may have figured prominently in ancient mythology. In addition, Canopus (Alpha Carinae) possibly has ties to the Book of Abraham, a first-person account by the patriarch Abraham translated by the Prophet Joseph Smith between 1835 and 1842.

Canopus as the Center of Gravity

CanopusIn 1969, Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend wrote:

In the inscriptions of Dendera, published by Dumichen, the goddess Hathor is called “lady of every joy.” For once, Dumichen adds: “Literally. . . ‘the lady of every heart circuit.’” This is not to say that the Egyptians had discovered the circulation of the blood. But the determinative sign for “heart” often figures as the plumb bob at the end of a plumb line coming from a well-known astronomical or surveying device, the merkhet. Evidently, “heart” is something very specific, as it were the “center of gravity.”1

Canopus as the Weight at the End of the Plumb Line

Continuing, they suggested that Canopus may have served as the weight, or as already mentioned, the plumb bob at the end of a plumb line.

And this may lead in quite another direction. The Arabs preserved a name for Canopus – besides calling the star Kalb at-tai­man (“heart of the south”): Suhail el-wezn, “Canopus Ponderosus,” the heavy-weighing Canopus, a name promptly declared meaningless by the experts, but which could well have belonged to an archaic system in which Canopus was the weight at the end of the plumb line, as befitted its important position as a heavy star at the South Pole of the “waters below.” Here is a chain of inferences which might or might not be valid, but it is allowable to test it, and no inference at all would come from the “lady of every joy.” The line seems to state that Hathor (= Hat Hor, “House of Horus”) “rules” the revolution of a specific celestial body­ – whether or not Canopus is alluded to – or, if we can trust the translation “every,” the revolution of all celestial bodies. As concerns the identity of the ruling lady, the greater possibility speaks for Sirius, but Venus cannot be excluded; in Mexico, too, Venus is called “heart of the earth.”2

Continue reading Canopus »»

  1. de Santillana, Giorgio and Hertha von Dechend. Hamlet’s Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge and its Transmission Through Myth. Jaffrey, New Hampshire: Godine, 1977. 73. Google Book Search. Retrieved September 19, 2008.
  2. Ibid. 73-74.

« Older entries