Moon, stars and planets: from the archives

Crescent Moon & Venus, setting over Central Park south - 1/20/07
Photo by Lincoln Karim ---[click on photo to enlarge and see details]

When I saw Lincoln's photo today on palemale.com it reminded me of a time two years ago when I saw a beautiful crescent moon and Venus setting over the same buildings. That time they were joined by another planet as well, Jupiter. Below , my report of that planetary conjunction with a note about seeing Venus in broad daylight:

Utterly impossible and incredible

During the last week of August a few years ago, I received an e-mail from one of Central Park's amateur astronomers -- the star guys, as I think of them. It alerted me to an imminent astronomical event: the planets Venus and Jupiter would both be setting a little after sunset on September 1st . In this conjunction of planets, as it is called, the two planets would seem so close that they’d span the width of your index finger if you extended it at arm’s length. This was exactly the sort of picturesque phenomenon the star guys love to point out to the passing world. Then on September 6th, the e-mail noted, the planets would be joined by a lovely crescent moon. I planned to be there both nights.

The meeting place was the north side of the Great Lawn. We arrived at 6:30. By then Charlie Ridgway and Tom Clabough, two of the astronomy Regulars, had already set up a large telescope and a pair of 16 power binoculars mounted on a tripod. Their chosen viewing spot at the edge of one of the largest open spaces in Central Park provided a perfect stage for the sky spectacle about to begin. The planet Venus began the magical show even before twilight set in. Using distinctive tree outlines and skyline buildings as reference points Tom Clabough pointed out a pinpoint of light in the southwestern sky. It was Venus, visible in broad daylight without the help of a telescope or binoculars. I found it easily with Tom’s guidance but I doubt I would have found it on my own. Of course the planet was much more brilliant when I proceeded to view it through the telescope— now it resembled a little sun. But looking up and seeing Venus in the daytime sky is strangely thrilling.

Actually it’s not a once-in-a-lifetime thing to see Venus by day. I’d seen it in a daytime appearance earlier that year, at 3:50 p.m on June 23rd to be exact. Ben Cacace pointed it out to me that time. Ben happens to be a star guy, hawkwatcher and birdwatcher all in one person.

As night fell on September 1, the day of the conjunction, the second planet became visible to the northwest of the first at 7:10 pm. By then you could see both Venus and Jupiter in a single binocular view and they seemed to be getting closer and closer. Just before sunset, the horizon already taking on a burning reddish-orange glow, I held out my arm and peered at my extended index finger. Sure enough the two planets were obscured by the width of my finger. They were only 1.2 degrees apart, Charlie told me.
Of course this did not mean that they were actually close to earth in distance, he noted. In reality Venus was 105 million miles from earth that night, and Jupiter 576 million miles.

With the Pinetum and the Reservoir behind us we were facing the park’s southern border and the enchanted night skyline of Central Park South. The line-up from east to west went like this: at Fifth Avenue the Plaza Hotel, [now selling astronomically expensive condominiums instead of renting exorbitantly expensive hotel rooms]; the Park Lane; the Ritz Carlton; Essex House with its huge red rooftop sign; the gilded ziggurat of Trump-Parc where Junior, [quite possibly Pale Male’s offspring] and his mate Charlotte, [named in memory of Charles Kennedy] once raised two healthy redtail chicks; the copper mansard roof of the Hampshire House; finally, at the western end, the twin towers of the Time-Warner Building. The man-made lights glittered. The planets outshone them that night.

Five days later, on September 6th, the planets were joined by the slenderest of crescent moons. “Imagine the astrological significance that the ancients might have ascribed to a celestial summit meeting such as this,” the Hayden Planetarium’s Joe Rao wrote about the threesome of planets and moon. His comment appeared on Space.com, a widely read astronomy website.

In honor of the special occasion five amateur astronomers set up telescopes at the usual place on the Great Lawn: Charlie and Tom, joined by Peter Tagatac, Kin Lee and Tom McIntyre.. Three regular Central Park night observers, Nick Wagerik, Naomi Machado, and I joined the astronomers at their telescopes as darkness fell. Venus was already in view in the southwest. By 7:00 pm the crescent moon was visible, a slender D-shaped curve—waxing. Jupiter appeared just before sunset, and through a telescope we could see its equatorial bands and four of its moons. In the course of five days the two planets had separated by a few more degrees. Even an outstretched hand in a baseball glove wouldn’t have managed to blot both of them out that night. Jupiter and Venus flanked the moon, two glowing eyes to the moon’s curving nose below.

The sun set at 7:20, the moon at 8:35, Jupiter ten minutes later, and Venus a few minutes after that. . They all set in the west, of course. I used to be a little fuzzy about that fact. Like the sun, everything rises in the east and sets in the west—the moon, the planets, the comets, the stars—the whole shebang. On the other hand nothing actually rises and sets at all---it’s an illusion. We see it that way because we’re revolving around the sun while rotating on an elliptical axis.

The planets were setting but still visible when the first stars appeared in the rapidly darkening sky. As each became visible the star guys told me their names. Spica was first, then Vega high overhead. Altair next. Then Deneb, identified by Peter or Kin or one of the others – it was getting too dark to see. That completed the Great Triangle of the summer sky. After that the stars came out too fast to note. As in the poem* they marched around the ancient track, rank on rank, while we mortals below watched with awe and wonder.

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Postscript: A few days later, my friend Roger gave me a book called Myth and Meaning, by the French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss “There’s something about seeing Venus in the daytime that might interest you,” he said. My curiosity piqued, I went through the book page by page [it was a slim volume] until I found the reference. I did find it interesting—Roger was right. Here’s the passage:

“Today we use less …of our mental capacity than we did in the past; …, When I was writing my first version of Mythologiques [Introduction to a science of Mythology] I was confronted with a problem that to me was extremely mysterious. It seems that there was a particular tribe which was able to see the planet Venus in full daylight, something that to me would be utterly impossible and incredible.”

I’m planning to send the father of structural anthropology a letter one of these days describing our activity at the Great Lawn just before sunset on the evening of September 1st, 2005 and on other occasions before and after. Levi-Strauss is quite old now – ninety-eight, I’ve heard. I think it’s time he knew that in the 21st century there’s a particular tribe in Central Park performing the same utterly impossible and incredible feats of sensory perception on a regular basis.

*Lucifer in Starlight by George Meredith