A bitterly cold morning: -16C with deep snow still all around after Sunday's record fall. Mars and the third quarter moon were bright in the west, so decided to have a quick look before dawn. Seeing was appalling. Mars was a shimmering blob even in the 26mm lens, with darker features barely and momentarily visible if at all. Even the moon could take little maginfication. This sketch of Albategnius used a 26mm Super Plossly with 2x Barlow. Normally I would sketch with a 15mm. I last sketched Albategnius three years ago -- then in the first quarter phase. Crater Klein inside the main crater is on the bottom right. The small crater Vogel is to the bottom left (the lower of the first two small overlapping craters). Below those two little craters is Argelander. Halley and Hind are the two craters up and to left of this mirror image drawing. Rukl's atlas is a great help identifying these features -- much clearer than the digital Virtual Moon Atlas which I normally use.
After two or three beautifully clear, cold nights when I failed to get out with the telescope, I finally did so this morning to view sunspot 1035. It is massive and widely spread out on the sun's northern hemisphere, perhaps the largest I have seen this year. The sketch above was drawn using a 15mm lens with ETX-90 at around 9:20 am local time (0120 GMT) on Dec 18. Spaceweather.com describes it thus (worth visiting the site to see the animation):
Three days ago, the surface of the sun was calm and almost featureless. Then sunspot 1035 burst onto the scene .... The recently invisible spot is now nine times wider than Earth and crackling with C-class solar flares. A series of eruptions on Dec. 16th sent two and perhaps three coronal mass ejections (CMEs) in the general direction of our planet.
A beautiful view just before dawn of the ISS rising up between a waning third quarter moon and Saturn before disappearing over rooftops to the SE.
An interesting tale from China Daily about an attempt to demonstrate the ancient origins of Chinese astronomy:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2009-12/07/content_9127013.htm
Date with destiny
By Yu Fei (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-12-07 07:45 Comments(0) PrintMail
Just before dawn in a quiet village in North China, a short-waisted man hurries with a bundle of poles toward a clump of weeds to wait for sunrise. He busily makes measurements and takes photos. He wants to prove that ancient astronomers once stood at the same place 4,100 years ago to determine the changing of seasons, by observing the sunrise and discerning the best times for sowing and harvesting.
A researcher with the Institute of Archaeology under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), He Nu, 46, is head of the excavation team at the Taosi relic site in Xiangfen county, Shanxi province.
Unlike his archaeological forebears, who carried their bedclothes, shovels and brushes to excavation sites, He is equipped with a four-wheel-drive vehicle, laptop, digital camera and mobile phone.
Influenced by Western archaeological ideas, He thinks farther and wider, to find a relevance to today in the remains of the past. Raising his eyes from the ruins below the weeds to the sun, He discovered what is believed to be the world's oldest observatory.
Chinese archaeologists launched a project in 2001 to seek the origins of their 5,000-year-old civilization. Taosi is one of the most important sites in this project. Much evidence has been found to indicate the Taosi site might have been the capital of the legendary Yao and Shun period, dating back more than 4,100 years.
In Chinese mythology, Yao and Shun were two sage emperors living on the middle reaches of the Yellow River. Many Confucian histories praised the two rulers as models of morality and benevolence, but skeptics in the early 20th Century challenged their existence.
"If you want to know where China is going, you have to know where it came from. The excavation work at Taosi will tell us where China came from, and whether Yao and Shun really existed," says He.
In his search for evidence of the undocumented era at Taosi, He found the ruins of a mysterious semi-circular building in 2003. After excavations, He found indications that 13 stone pillars were originally erected at the site, forming 12 gaps between them.
"It reminded me of Stonehenge in Britain. Ancient Chinese believed the sky was round, and the earth was square. All buildings related to the sky were built in the shape of circles. So we suspected the site might be related to astronomical observation," He says.
If it proves to be an observatory, it would be of great importance. The Confucian history, Shangshu, says the first official act of Emperor Yao was to observe the sky and improve the calendar.
In ancient times, life revolved around agriculture. A leader with an accurate astronomical calendar could reliably direct agricultural production, and the people would thrive, giving the leader supreme power.
Could the Emperor Yao have once stood in that place to observe the heavens?
He and his colleagues have attempted to recreate ancient observation techniques at the site since 2003. He plants the poles where the stone columns once stood and watches the gaps. If he can see the sun rise above the hills through the gaps according to the seasonal divisions of the traditional Chinese calendar, he will prove his theory that this place was an observatory.
His observations from December 2003 to April 2004 seemed to be going well, but when he took them to astronomers, they pointed out that he had wrongly used three observation points. They said there should only be one.
"The distance between the three points is less than 30 cm. Based on the lunar calendar, our observations on the winter solstice (around Dec 22), "major cold" (around Jan 20, indicating the coldest time of the year) and "grain rain" (around April 20, a time of increased rainfall which is good for crops) were very accurate. And the observation on the spring equinox (around March 20) was only one day later. How could that be wrong?" He argued with the astronomers.
"But I gave up, because I thought the astronomers were reasonable. I should respect science. That invalidated half a year's work. I was so distressed."
Many archaeologists have also questioned He's theory.
But He persisted and eventually found a new observation point. Further digging revealed traces of what is believed to be the original observation point of 4,100 years ago: a rammed earth base 25 cm in diameter, with its center just 4 cm from the new point used by He.
The discovery of the original point and more than 70 rounds of observations provided evidence for He's theory, which won recognition in archaeological and astronomical circles.
Scientists from the National Astronomical Observatories and the Institute for the History of Natural Science under the Chinese Academy of Sciences showed great interest in He's study, and jointly started further research this year to find out whether the ancient observatory had other astronomical functions.
He's discovery has also roused interest in archaeo-astronomy, a little understood field in China. He believes Chinese ancients were very advanced in astronomy, and other relics related to astronomy have probably been neglected.
"My theory about the astronomical function of the site was like a fantasy at the beginning. But you cannot bring forth new ideas unless you think wide," He says.
"I'm often tortured when I get nothing. I feel like I'm trekking through sand with no end. When I'm exhausted, I suddenly find some shells of rare beauty. All the toil, tiredness and monotony are rewarded."
China's archaeology programs became isolated from Western influences from 1949. Like other sciences, archaeological studies in the Soviet Union became the model for China. Unfamiliar with the Western theories, previous generations of Chinese archaeologists walked a road of their own, and focused on verifying recorded history.
Archaeology ground to a halt during the "cultural revolution" (1966-76). However, it has blossomed since because the government regards its discoveries as an important window on China' cultural development.
He was born in Beijing, where the ancient temples and pagodas fascinated him in his childhood. It was a time of great discoveries, such as the terracotta warriors and horses, which were found in 1974.
He studied archaeology at Peking University and gained a master's degree in the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties, China's Bronze Age. He then gave up the opportunity to work in Beijing and went to work at the Jingzhou Museum in central China's Hubei province, because he wanted to go to the frontier of archaeological excavation.
Life at an archaeological site is rough: Good food is scarce and a bath happens once a week in town. There are no weekends or holidays during the excavation seasons, and rest is taken when it rains. He recalls one rainless period of more than 40 days.
Most of the time, He's work is monotonous: digging, clearing, and drawing diagrams. The work in the storeroom is even more exacting. He sometimes has to piece together thousands of broken pottery pieces. The success rate is low.
Since the 1980s, Chinese archaeologists have often had to rush to construction sites to search for the remains of ancient civilizations before the bulldozers destroyed them.
They also have to race against tomb robbers. Hubei province is home to many tombs of the Chu kingdom of the Warring States period (403-221 BC), but looters have plundered an estimated 90 percent of them.
"I don't like this kind of excavation. It distresses me to see those precious antiques being unearthed, but we don't have any good method to preserve them. Many lacquerware items and silks are destroyed," says He.
"Later generations will appreciate the bounty of cultural relics found in our time, but they will also criticize us for being unable to protect them well."
The new generation of archaeologists like He tries to keep up with trends in the international archaeological community.
He attended the Department of Anthropology of San Francisco State University as a visiting scholar from 1995 to 1996, studying carved symbols with American scholars and participating in an excavation at a small Indian relic site.
"I benefited a lot from the year in America. Archaeology is no longer restricted to archaeologists in the United States. People from other fields, such as doctors or computer experts, also participate in the research. They are more open-minded, and are always willing to try something new, and bring vitality to the development of archaeology. But China still lacks this kind of innovation," He says.
In his eyes, the 60 years since the founding of the New China have brought greater changes than 2,000 years of feudal history.
He believes archaeological research should serve the social reality. "We should find objective laws formed over thousands of years, and these objective laws will direct our social development in the future."
(China Daily 12/07/2009 page10)
A sketch of Capuanus, a 60km-wide crater on the southern shore of Mare Nubium. This took about 35 mins in bitter cold. Hazy sky.
