We just came in from looking at the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, the closest they will appear from Earth for another 800 years when–needless to say–two 75+ year olds aren’t going to be here to look.\u00a0\u00a0 We stood by the south barn lot fence in the back yard, resting binoculars on the fence because our hand aren’t as steady as they used to be, feeling each other’s warmth on this chilly evening and sharing the joy we’ve always felt while seeing interesting things in nature.\u00a0 Which is a cold dull way of saying it, but I’m still “star-struck.”<\/p>\n
No matter what messes we humans make of this planet, Jupiter and Saturn will move on in their orbits, and the solar system will move on as a whole, and in 800 years, if anyone is still living near here,\u00a0 and the sky is clear, they may noticed another such conjunction.\u00a0\u00a0 800\u00a0 years ago, in 1220 C.E.,\u00a0 the Magna Carta was five years old.\u00a0 King Henry III ruled England (a king who had two coronations, because the Pope didn’t approve of the first one.)\u00a0 Samarkand fell to the Mongols who under Genghis Khan would eventually rule from China west to the Caspian Sea, even displacing Islam for a time.\u00a0 In what became the US, the Mississippian culture dominated the southeast–the Mound-Builders were expanding and thriving.\u00a0 In the Southwest, the Pueblan and Hohokam cultures were doing well.\u00a0\u00a0 In Central America, the great Mayan cities were empty–devastating drought had destroyed the food supply–but in South America the Inca culture was growing and spreading…Cuzco had been founded a hundred years before.\u00a0\u00a0 So, 800 years hence on this planet?\u00a0 Who knows…none of us, for sure.\u00a0\u00a0 But astronomical cycles suggest a longer view than most of us achieve day by day.<\/p>\n
If you have clear skies in the next few days, I strongly recommend going somewhere you can see them (local conditions vary–if a mountain blocks your view to the SW, you’ll need to go somewhere else.\u00a0 Same with large buildings.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We just came in from looking at the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, the closest they will appear from Earth for another 800 years when–needless to say–two 75+ year olds aren’t going to be here to look.\u00a0\u00a0 We stood by the south barn lot fence in the back yard, resting binoculars on the fence because Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[17],"class_list":["post-680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-beyond-writing","tag-life-beyond-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=680"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":681,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680\/revisions\/681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}