NEW MOON REPORT
Devorah Gordon from Jerusalem, Israel compiled the
following New Moon Report for the month of August and the beginning of the
Sixth Biblical Month.
“On Saturday August 6, 2005 the New Moon was sighted
from Israel. The new moon was sighted by
Carmen and Terry Fehr, Dina and Avi Marcus, and Steve Berkowitz at 19:51 from
Jerusalem and by Devorah Gordon and Ferenc Illesy at 19:57 also from
Jerusalem.”
The next new moon is expected to be visible from
Jerusalem near sunset on September 5, 2005 and will begin the Seventh Biblical
Month, Ethanim (Tishri). That day is
what many call The Day of Trumpets. It
is also known as Yom Teruah - Day of Shouting and Yom Zichron - a Day of
Memorial for blowing of trumpets or shouting (Lev. 23:24). It is also called Rosh Hashannah, the first
day of the first month of the New Year, but it is not actually the first day of
the first month on the Biblical Calendar, for that day is Abib 1, which occurs
six months earlier. However, Ethanim 1 is the first day of the first month on
the Hebrew Civil Calendar.
The September 2005 issue of Biblical Astronomy
will be published after the new moon sighting in early September. There is a very slight possibility that the
first crescent of the new moon will be sighted with the naked eye on September
4, 2005, but that will be a near impossibility.
There are not any unusual or rare celestial events
to speak of this August, except for perhaps the annual Perseids meteor
shower. The peak of this annual meteor
shower is always on August 12. There was
no spectacular show this year, such as in 1999.
This year’s peak meteor rate was about average, but it had an unusually
high proportion of especially bright meteors.
Sparks were flying from the sword of Peretz (Perseus).
CONJUNCTION OF ZEDEK AND NOGAH
The planets Zedek (Jupiter) and Nogah
(Venus) will come into conjunction in the constellation Bethulah (Virgo)
on September 2, 2005.
Chart 399 shows the positions of the planets Zedek and Nogah
in Bethulah at the time of conjunction and as seen from Jerusalem in
the early evening of September 2. Zedek
can either represent YHVH or His son Y’shua Messiah. Nogah (the Bright and Morning Star)
can either represent Y’shua or “the Bride.”
It depends on the theme that the celestial event is portraying at the
time. At times it is clearly evident
which representation is being portrayed, and at other times it is not so
evident. So we have either the Father
and Son or Y’shua and his bride being portrayed here. It is even possible that all four
possibilities can be represented at the same time.
Chart 399 – Zedek and Nogah in
conjunction as seen from Jerusalem on September 2, 2005
Zedek is in Bethulah for a little over a year
every 12 years. During its one year stay
in this constellation, Zedek comes into conjunction with Nogah at
least once, and sometimes up to four times (if Nogah goes into
retrograde motion while near Zedek during one of its passes). Nogah passes through Bethulah
every year.
The main theme of Bethulah is the promised
Seed of the woman from Genesis 3:15.
She also represents the woman of Revelation 12 and the faithful of the
Twelve Tribes of Israel. This
constellation also has much significance in its position in the early evening
sky for the Spring and Fall Feasts (see the Sept/Oct 2004 issue of Biblical
Astronomy).
CONJUNCTION OF NOGAH AND TSEMECH
Nogah will come into conjunction with the star Tsemech
(Spica) in the constellation Bethulah on September 5, 2005 (Day of
Trumpets).
Tsemech means The Branch and is used exclusively as
representing Messiah all five times it is used in the Scriptures (Jer. 23:5,
23:15; Zech. 3:8, 6:12; Isa 4:2).
Chart 400 shows the positions of Nogah at the time of
its conjunction with Tsemech (Spica) and the first crescent new moon
near the shoulder of Bethulah in the early evening of September 5, 2005
as seen from Jerusalem.
Chart 400 – Nogah (Venus) and Tsemech
(Spica) in conjunction on September 5, 2005
This is a unique celestial event given the fact that
it occurs with the first crescent of the new moon starting Yom Teruah. Here we see the conjunction of the Bright
and Morning Star (though here in the evening) perhaps representing “the
Bride” in this portrayal, and THE BRANCH representing Messiah, with Zedek
(YHVH OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS) nearby.
SETTING THE STAGE
As I watched live coverage of the eviction of
Israeli settlers and the dismantling of their settlements in Gaza, I was
stirred by their outcry and feelings of abandonment and anguish. Heart-
wrenching as that was, it is all in the fulfilling of prophecy.
Revelation 13 speaks of the ten kingdoms of “the beast”
that receive power from the dragon to make war with “the saints” (Israel) for
42 months. Throughout time there has
been much speculation as to who these ten kingdoms are. The answer to this question can be found in
the Scriptures. As always, the
Scriptures interpret themselves. The answer is in Psalm 83, which is a
prophetic Psalm that has yet to be fulfilled.
It is written in Psalm 83:1-8 (KJV) -
Keep not thou silence, O God: hold not thy
peace, and be not still, O God. For, lo, thine enemies make a tumult: and they
that hate thee have taken crafty counsel against thy people, and consulted
against thy hidden ones. They have said, Come, and let us cut them off from
being a nation; that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance. For they
have consulted together with one consent: they are confederate against thee:
The tabernacles of Edom, and the Ishmaelites; of Moab, and
the Hagarenes; Gebal, and Ammon, and Amalek; the Philistines
with the Inhabitants of Tyre; Assur also is joined with them: ...
The ten kingdoms that I underlined in Psalm 83
are most likely the ten kingdoms over which the ten kings who receive power as
kings one hour with the beast (Rev. 17:12) rule. It appears that the stage is
being set now that all of Gaza is given into the hands to the Palestinians to
become once again a nation of Philistines.
This insight of the ten kingdoms of the beast in Psalm
83 comes from the booklet "Revelation of the Beast" by
Colin H. Deal, End Time Ministry. You
can find this booklet at:
End Time Ministry
P.O. Box 455,
Rutherford College, NC 28671
The
following list of which areas the above- mentioned kingdoms now represent is
taken from "The Revelation of the Beast".
THE TEN KINGDOMS
1 – Edom (southern Jordan)
2 – Ishmaelites (Persian Gulf Arabs)
3 – Moab (Central Jordan)
4 – Hagarenes (Egypt)
5 – Gebal (northern Lebanon)
6 – Ammon (northern Jordan)
7 – Amalak (northern Sinai)
8 – Philistines (Gaza)
9 – Tyre (southern Lebanon)
10
– Assur (Syria)
The beast along with the ten kingdoms will be destroyed
by Messiah in the great conflict of Revelation 19:11-21. Then Gaza will return to Eretz Yisrael. As many of the settlers stated, they or their
children or their grandchildren would return to settle Gaza again.
TENTH PLANET?
Speaking of ten, on July 29, 2005 there were two news
releases concerning recent discoveries of new planets in our solar system. They are actually more on the order of
planetoids than planets, depending on the criteria for the terminology you wish
to go by. And no, neither of these is
the Planet X, which was rumored to exist a few years ago. That fictitious celestial body was said to be
a neutron star of extraordinary mass and bigger or about the same size as
Jupiter. Its orbit supposedly brought it
close to the earth about every 4,000 years or so to wreak havoc and massive destruction. The recently discovered planetoids are a
whole different animal, and they really exist.
Another planetoid, Sedna, was discovered last year. The following is the July 29 article by
David Tytell of the news release by Sky & Telescope.
Astronomers discover “10th Planet” - After
75 years of speculation and false leads, it has finally happened. A team of
astronomers using the 48-inch Samuel
Oschin Telescope at Palomar Observatory and the 8-meter Gemini North
telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, has discovered the largest Kuiper Belt object
(KBO) ever.
It is bigger than Pluto, the
9th planet.
The object, designated 2003 UB313,
is currently 97 astronomical units (Earth-Sun distances) away — more than twice
Pluto's average distance from the Sun. This makes it the farthest object ever
seen in the solar system. It is a scattered-disk object, meaning that at some
point in its history, an encounter with some massive object moved it into its
highly inclined (44°) orbit. It's currently glowing at magnitude 18.9 in the
constellation Cetus. Its high inclination is the only reason it wasn't
discovered years ago; no one was looking for planets so far from the plane of
the solar system.
Discoverers Michael E. Brown
(Caltech), Chad Trujillo (Gemini Observatory), and David Rabinowitz (Yale
University) first imaged the object on October 21, 2003, but didn't see it move
in the sky until they reimaged the same area 15 months later, on January 8,
2005. Working backward from there, the astronomers have found old images of
2003 UB313 in much earlier surveys,
allowing them to determine its orbit accurately. The object turns out to be
currently near aphelion (its farthest from the Sun) in a very elliptical orbit.
It ranges as close as 38 a.u. to the Sun in a 557-year orbit.
"We
tried looking at it with the Spitzer Space Telescope and didn't detect it. So
we have an upper limit on the size. It can't be any more than 3,000 kilometers
across," says Brown. But the lower limit derived from its brightness —
even by assuming its surface is 100 percent reflective — still makes it larger
than Pluto, which is 2,250 km (1,400 miles) across.
"It's a big sucker!"
says Brown.
Preliminary near-infrared spectra,
obtained by team member Chad Trujillo at the 8-meter Gemini North telescope,
show methane ice on the object's surface — much like the spectrum of Pluto,
which is also dominated by methane ice in the near infrared. Trujillo says in a
Gemini press release, "It is clear that [2003 UB313] is very similar to Pluto in
both size and composition, at least upon first glance." Pluto is about 30
percent reflective. Methane ice is unusual and suggests a primitive surface
that has never been warmed much since the formation of the solar system.
"To date," notes Trujillo, "no one has seen methane on any other
Kuiper Belt object, only on Pluto and Neptune's moon Triton."
Ambitious
CCD imagers with setups capable of seeing to 19th magnitude can shoot for it at
right ascension 1h 38.2m, declination –5° 31' (2000.0 coordinates) during the
second half of August 2005. Its position in central Cetus is currently well up
in the southeastern sky (for observers at midnorthern latitudes) before the
first light of dawn.
And a Second Big KBO
If that weren't enough, a
second big Kuiper Belt discovery also made news the same day: 2003 EL61. A team of astronomers at the Sierra Nevada Observatory
in Spain reported their discovery (details here)
to the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It had been spotted by
Brown and his team more than a year ago, but, as Brown notes on his website
for this object, "There is no question that the Spanish group is
rightly credited with discovery. We could have announced the object earlier,
but we took a chance that no one else would find it while we were awaiting our
observations from the Spitzer Space Telescope. We were wrong!"
Located about 52 a.u. away and
now situated in eastern Coma Berenices, 2003 EL61 is about 70 percent of Pluto's diameter.
Moreover, by a great stroke of
luck, 2003 EL61 has a tiny satellite revolving
around it, at an apparent distance of about 1.5 arcseconds. According to
Brown's group, the satellite completes an orbit every 49 days in a nearly
circular orbit some 49,500 km (30,760 miles) from the main body. The
satellite's orbit has allowed the team to determine the parent object's mass:
about a quarter that of Pluto.
Based on a quick look at the
Spitzer observations of 2003 EL61,
Brown believes that the infrared spectrum is dominated by water ice. "It
looks much like [Pluto's moon] Charon," he notes.
Centaurus
The despised sin-offering
Decan constellation to the Sign
Bethulah.
Hebrew names for this constellation
Bezeh – the despised.
Asmeath – sin-offering
(An ancient Greek name for this
constellation is Cheiron, which means, the pierced or who
pierces).
Complimenting scriptures to this constellation
Isaiah 53:3 – He is despised (bazah)
and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as
it were our faces from Him; He was despised (bazah), and we
esteemed Him not. (KJV)
Isaiah 53:10 – Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He hath put Him
to grief: when thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see
His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand.
(KJV)
Stars in Centaurus and the
meaning of their names
Toliman (Alpha Centauri) – Toliman means the heretofore and
hereafter marking Him as the one “which was, and which is, and which is to
come (Rev. 1:8). Toliman, also
known as Alpha Centauri, is the closest star to our solar system. It burns brightly in the skies of the
Southern Hemisphere but is no longer visible throughout most of the Northern
Hemisphere. Toliman is the only
star that is named and identified here.
If you are familiar with the constellations you will
notice that we have made some drastic changes to this picture as it is much
different than the Centaur (the horse-man) with the spear after the Greek
mythology that most are familiar with.
This picture is more after the picture in the
ancient Denderan zodiac. In the Dendera
zodiac, this figure is shown as a body of a man with a tail, and his head is
the head of a lamb or calf of sacrifice.
Above the cow-man is a figure of a lamb.
A tail attached to figures in the Egyptian zodiacs means “this
cometh.”
We took the tail off of the figure as well as the cow or
lamb head. I believe this figure was
perverted as such to look more like the Egyptian cow and bull gods Hathor and
Aphis. Michele Abraham did a lot of work
on this one to get it right. It is a
picture of a man with a staff and a picture of a lamb’s head above him
identifying him as the Lamb of God, the Sin-offering. We put the head of a lamb here instead of a
picture of a whole lamb as in the Dendera.
Michele needed to poise him as such to make use of
the star alignments and have room to put the Crux (Southern Cross) beneath him and between his
legs. In this picture of him with his
staff, he looks like he is poised in a Kung Fu position ready to do battle with
the adversary. He dealt a lethal blow to
the enemy’s head when he obeyed his Father and became the sacrifice of
atonement for us all. His Kung Fu is the
ultimate.
