August 2001
Editor – Robert Scott Wadsworth <> P.O. Box
2272, Oregon City, OR 97045
Phone (503) 655-7430 <> e-mail – starguy1@comcast.net
<> Website – www.atlbible.org/astronomy.htm
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Phone (503) 655-7430 <> e-mail – starguy1@comcast.net
<> Website – www.atlbible.org/astronomy.htm
Nehemia Gordon from
Jerusalem, Israel compiled the following New Moon Report for the 5th
Hebrew month of the year (month of Av).
“On
Saturday July 21, 2001 the New Moon was sighted by 3 observers from Beitar,
south of Jerusalem. Among the observers
was Hillel Skolnik who sighted the moon at approximately 20:08. The other observers saw the moon
intermittently between 20:00 and 20:10.”
The
next New Moon, which will begin the 6th Hebrew month (Elul), will
most likely be observed near sunset on August 20, 2001.
COMET C/2001 A2 (LINEAR) IN OUTBURST AGAIN
Comet LINEAR C/2001 A2 went
into a major outburst on July 12 and significantly increased in
brightness. The comet was in the
constellation Pegasus when the outburst occurred. See charts 213 and 214 in the July 2001 issue of Biblical
Astronomy for the comet’s path with dates, and also the article on the comet,
page 2, concerning the constellation Pegasus.
The following is from a short article by Charles S. Morris, Comet Observation Homepage, on July 13, 2001.
“My
own observations show that this comet increased in brightness from magnitude
5.1 to 4.4 in about a 24 hour period.
This suggests yet another chunk has broken off the nucleus. The comet should be monitored for further
brightness changes.
Michael
Mattiazzo (Wallaroo, South Austrlia) was apparently the first person to notice
the outburst on July 12.56 UT. He
reports below that there was a stellar condensation at that time, which he
correctly predicted was the beginning of an outburst. Good catch, Michael!
Michael
Mattiazzo writes…’Just a reminder that Earth crosses the orbital plane of comet
LINEAR C/2001 A2 around July 15-16th. From this, we may expect enhancement of a dust tail in the solar
and anti solar directions. However, as
this comet is low in dust production, we may not see anything at all!’”
As
of July 30th the comet had dimmed to a magnitude of 6.5
VENUS OCCULTATION
On July 17, the moon passed
in front of Venus covering the planet for 1 hour and 8 minutes. I somehow missed this event in the July
newsletter and didn’t know about it until after it happened.
Venus
disappeared behind the moon at 10:24 am PDT and reappeared at 11:32 am
PDT. This was not observable from
Jerusalem, and only those with binoculars or telescopes could observe this
event in the daytime sky. The following
is a short article from a Sky & Telescope news bulletin dated July
18.
Venus
Occultation Is a Hit – It wasn’t just solar observers who took an interest
in the daytime sky yesterday. During a
midday event visible in binoculars and small telescopes, the waning crescent
Moon passed in from of brilliant Venus.
Observers in southern Canada, northern Mexico, and all of the United
States except Alaska witnessed both the disappearance and reappearance of the
planet in this unusually favorable occultation.
Chart
221 shows the location of the moon and Venus in the constellation Taurus at
the time of the occultation. The planet
Saturn was also fairly close to the moon and Venus at that time. Again, the main theme of the constellation
Taurus is Messiah, the coming Judge of all the earth. It was just 2 days earlier, on August 15,
when Venus and Saturn came into conjunction.
See July 2001 issue of Biblical Astronomy, page 2. Also see the April 2001 and May/June 2001
issues of Biblical Astronomy for other recent celestial events that have
occurred in Taurus.
The
following is from Joseph A. Seiss’ book The Gospel in the Stars (1882),
pp. 100-101 concerning the constellation Taurus.
My
horn shalt Thou exalt like the horn of an unicorn, - Psalm 92:10
“Many
of the Jewish writers and Jewish Targum ascribe the authorship of this psalm to
Adam, the first man. The Jewish ritual
appointed it as the special psalm for the Sabbath day. It celebrates, first of all, the glories and
blessings of creation. It then
anticipates a period of great apostasy, wickedness, and prosperity to the
enemies of Jehovah. But beyond that it
contemplates the speedy and invincible overthrow and destruction of the workers
of iniquity, followed by a glorious Sabbath of everlasting righteousness and
peace. And in connection with the
violent scattering and perishing of the enemies of the Lord it particularly
emphasizes a special and peculiar exaltation of power and dominion of the
Messiah, who speaks in the Psalmist, and says that His “horn”—His power,
His active dominion – shall be “like the horn of an unicorn.”
The Unicorn, or Reem – It has long been a question
what animal is meant by the Reem, which is so often referred to in the
ancient Scriptures, and which translators have generally called the unicorn. But modern research and discovery have
served to clear up the subject in a manner entirely satisfactory. The reem is not a one-horned
creature, like the rhinoceros, as has generally been supposed, but a pure
animal of the ox kind, though wild, untamable, fierce, and terrible. Two passages prove that it was a great
two-horned and mighty creature, now, so far as known, entirely extinct, but
once common in North-western Asia, Assyria, and Middle Europe. Remains of it have of late years been
discovered in the north of Palestine, and Caesar, in the account of his wars,
describes it as being hunted in the Hercynian forest of his day. It was known as the primeval ox, or wild
bull, different altogether from the bison or the great antelope, sometimes
taken for it. It was a formidable
animal, “scarcely less than the elephant in size, but in nature, and color, and
form a true ox.” Its strength and speed
were very great, and it was so fierce that it did not spare man or beast when
it caught sight of them. It was wholly
intractable, and could not be habituated to man, not matter how young it was
taken. This fact is set out in the book
of Job (39:9-12), where it is said: ‘Will the reem be willing to serve
thee, or abide by thy crib? Canst thou
bind the reem and his band in the furrow? or will he harrow the valleys after thee? Wilt thou thrust him because his strength is
great: or wilt thou leave thy labor to him?
Wilt thou believe him that he will bring home thy seed, and gather it
into thy barn?
This
animal was particularly distinguished for its great, outspread, sharp, and
irresistible horns, to which the horns of ordinary oxen were not to be
compared. Hence, Caesar says, when a
hunter succeeded in killing one, pitfalls being the chief means of capture, he
made a public exhibition of the horns as the trophies of his success, and was
the wonder and praise of all who beheld.
Joseph (Deut. 33:17), in his superiority of power, is likened to the reem,
of which his two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, were the two great horns which
were to push the people to the ends of the earth. And to this mighty, untamable, and invincible primeval ox the
Messiah compares himself in connection with the great judgment upon the wicked
world; for then His horn shall be exalted like the horn of a reem. Toward His Church He is the Lamb, but toward
the unsanctified world He finally becomes the terrible reem.
But, what is very marvelous,
the picture which the Messiah appropriates to himself so exultingly in the text
is precisely the picture which is presented in the sign in the Zodiac which now
comes before us—the sign Taurus, the first of the final quaternary in
the celestial circle.
FIREBALL SEEN OVER NORTHEAST UNITED STATES
Sky & Telescope news
bulletin, July 24 – At around 6:19 p.m. EDT yesterday evening, a brilliant
meteor shot through the skies above the northeastern United States. Reports of a daytime fireball stretch from Ahoskie,
North Carolina, all the way to Buffalo, New York, and Bobcaygeon, Ontario (near
Peterborough).
John
Castagna of Woodbridge, Virginia, described the object as “much brighter than
any daytime full moon, and not unlike the brightness you might associate with a
sparkler lit in daytime.”
Near
Williamsport, Pennsylvania, windows were raffled by a loud crashing noise,
described by many as a deafening thunderclap.
Some thought the bolide was a falling airplane and county emergency
services received over 300 calls to 911 switchboards from concerned citizens.
Les
Gruver, Emergency Management Coordinator for Lycoming County, described to Sky
& Telescope a burnt patch of a cornfield in salladasburg, Pennsylvania,
just north of Williamsport. Several
cornstalks were blown over and leaves appeared curled from heat. However, no meteorite was found.
Chart
222 is a map from S&T which shows where the meteor entered the
atmosphere and direction of travel, as well as where it evaporated or blew
apart. Each dot shows the location of
an eyewitness to the event.
Northwest Fireball Pinpointed: S&T July 27 – It now appears that Monday’s
dazzling daylight fireball punched through the atmosphere over central
Pennsylvania and may have scattered meteorites over the rugged woodlands of
Sproul State Forest. Defense satellites
tracked the meteoroid’s flare for several seconds beginning at 6:19:11 Eastern
Daylight Time. The path began over
Scranton and ended 140 kilometers to the west over the town of Williamsport,
during which it dropped in altitude from 82 to 32 km. Despite occurring in daylight, the meteor was bright enough to be
spotted by eyewitnesses from Canada to Virginia.
In
its final moments the fireball created a deafening sonic boom that shook the
ground. Meteor expert Peter Brown (Los
Alamos National Laboratory), who is analyzing the satellite records, told Sky
& Telescope, “I can almost guarantee that this object broke up.” He says that reconstructing the object’s
orbit and flight path are proving difficult because the entry velocity is
uncertain, though it is probably in the “asteroidal” range of 17 to 20 km per
second. Brown believes that whatever
remains of the incoming object probably fell in an elongated pattern up to 30
km long.
The
meteoroid’s size is also still a guess.
The satellite’s visible and infrared sensors recorded 1.3 billion joules
of luminous energy, which corresponds to a kinetic-energy wallop equivalent to
3,000 tons of TNT (one-fifth that of the Hiroshima bomb). Meteoroids in this energy range strike the
Earth roughly 10 times each year. If it
was stony, as most meteorites are, such an object would have weighed 30 to 90
tons and been the size of a car. However,
Brown says acoustic and seismic data argue for much less kinetic energy and, in
turn, a much smaller object. “I’d hoped
to have had some meteorites recovered by now,” Brown concludes, but the many
uncertainties diminish that possibility.
“That’s why I’m here in New Mexico instead of heading for Pennsylvania.”
Jupiter
(Tzedeq – the Lord Our Righteousness) and Venus (the bright and
morning star) will come into close conjunction in the constellation Gemini (Messiah’s
reign as Prince of Peace) on August 5/6, 2001.
Charts
223 and 224 show the positions of the two planets at the time of
conjunction as seen in the early morning sky from Jerusalem, Israel. Jupiter and Venus will be about 1 degree
apart at their closest approach to one another as seen from earth.
Nestled
dead center between the two planets is the star Tejat Posterior. This star is labeled in Chart 223. There is nothing on this star in
Rolleston’s, Bullinger’s, or Seiss’ manuscripts. I spent hours going through all the literature that I have trying
to find the Arabic interpretation of Tejat.
All I could find was a reference to it out of Richard Hinkley Allen’s
book, Star Names, Their Lore and Meaning (1899), which states “…but in
Flamsteeds edition of Tycho’s catalogue we distinctly read of it, dicta
Calx, the Heel.
I
then decided to do a search for the word Tejat on the Excite search engine on
the internet, and this is what came up from a secular website. Fixed star:
Tejat Posterior. English
Translation: Back foot. The Heel. Seed
or Branch. Symbolically called the
Abused or Beaten One.
The
Messiah is referred to many times in scripture as the Seed and also as the
Branch. He was also abused and beaten
at the time of the crucifixion. This
was the fulfillment of one part of the prophecy first given in Genesis 3:15 – And
I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her
seed; It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heal. It was the Messiah’s heel that was bruised
(figuratively speaking and literally) when he came to be a sacrifice for and to
suffer for all mankind.
The
constellation Gemini shows two figures.
The one on the left represents the suffering messiah, and the one on the
right represents the exalted and glorious Messiah, when he triumphs over the
serpents seed, fulfilling the other part of the prophecy of Genesis 3:15, which
will soon be fulfilled. In all figures
in the heavens that portray the wounding of the head of the serpent and the
serpent’s seed, the woman’s seed is seen crushing the serpent’s or enemy’s head
with his left foot or heal. As seen
with Ophiuchus and the Scorpion, or Hercules and the Dragon, and also with
Orion and Lepus (which was portrayed in ancient planespheres as a coiled
serpent).
It
is in this figure in Gemini, that represents the once abused and beaten,
but now glorified Messiah in His triumph over His ancient foe, that we find
this star Tejat Posterior in the left heal, the heal and foot that is to
crush the enemy. (Note: most pictures
of this constellation show Tejat in the left ankle of this figure in
Gemini, but the star is in the heel, as its name implies).
And
here on August 5/6, the two brightest planets in the heavens, greatly
outshining the brightest of stars, both representing the Messiah in various
forms, come into close conjunction with this star in their midst.
I
have not yet checked throughout hundreds and thousands of years to see how rare
this event is, or if it has ever happened before, but it is probably very rare
for these three heavenly bodies to come into such close proximity to each other
at one time.
It is that time of the year
again for one of the best meteor showers of the year, the Perseids. The following is a Sky & Telescope
article by Roger W. Sinnott concerning this year’s event.
Perseid Prospects in 2001 – “The Perseids are the Old
Faithful of meteor showers. That’s
worth remembering, even if the last-quarter Moon will interfere somewhat on
August 12th, when the height of this year’s display is due. The shower actually lasts two weeks or so,
but in the days leading up to the peak the shower will be largely wiped out by
an even brighter Moon.
Our best bet in 2001 is to
catch the Persieds on the morning of the 12th, as the peak of the
shower is expected to arrive between 8h and 10h Universal Time. Good views may also be had on several
mornings thereafter, when the waning crescent Moon will produce less
glare. Activity increases sharply in
the hours after midnight, so plan your observing sessions accordingly. We are then looking more nearly face-on into
the direction of the Earth’s motion as it orbits the Sun. The radiant, or point from which the
Perseids appear to come, is also rising higher in the sky as dawn approaches
for observers in mid-northern latitudes.
In
a dark, moonless sky, when the radiant is 30 degrees or more above the horizon,
observers often see 60 or more Perseids per hour at the shower’s peak. Careful counts, can be corrected by standard
methods to yield a zenithal hourly rate (ZHR) telling how many meteors would
have been seen if the radiant were directly overhead. The ZHR is the bread and butter of meteor astronomy, a crucial
parameter for studying long-term changes in the shower’s strength and for
ranking it among other showers.”
The
radiant of the Perseids Meteor Shower is between the sword of Perseus (“the
Breaker” delivering the redeemed) and Cassiopeia (The captive delivered,
and preparing for her Husband, the Redeemer).
Bob Wadsworth will be
speaking on Recent Signs in the Heavens at the Beaverton-Tigard, Oregon Chapter
of Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship luncheon starting at 12 noon on
Wednesday August 15, at Sayler’s Country Kitchen located at the intersection of
Beaverton-Hillsdale Hiway at Griffith Drive (across from Beaverton Town Center,
near Beaverton City Hall). For general
questions call:
John Gould, Chapter President, at 503 644-8702 or
Peter Reding, National Director, at 503 292-2161
The
grace, mercy and love of Yahshuah HaMashiach (Jesus Christ) be with you all.
