On the ‘up’ side, I’m getting over what I’m calling a summer cold. And I’ve even decided what I’ll be writing about this week.
On the other hand: well, actually, it’s shaping up to be a pretty good day. And a pretty good week.
Sunday night’s tornado watch was lifted at a decent hour, so I got a good night’s sleep. And, although I overslept, I didn’t miss the Artemis 1 launch Monday morning.
Mainly because it was called off, due to technical issues. That’s part of what I’ll be writing about this week.
Deciding what I’ll write about is one thing.
Deciding how I’ll write about it is another: and that’s what I’ll start working on after I finish this post. After I finish this post, that is, and get a cup of coffee.
And sit of the front stoop for a few minutes. It’s a sunny day, neither too warm or too cool; and with winter coming, that’s not something to ignore.
Before I sign off, a few words about my son-in-law. I’d been hoping they’d fit into a ‘regular’ weekly post. But since that likely won’t happen, here they are.
My son-in-law, Aaron McWilliams, is adding fill-in guest talk show host to his catalog of roles and functions.
I gather that this is his first week. Don’t know which time slots.
I’d be listening: but Grand Forks is a little over three hours up the road from here, on the way to Winnipeg, Canada. That’s well outside the KNOX broadcasting area, and I haven’t found an online ‘radio station’ for KNOX.
Oh. Wait. I found one.
KNOX Radio Grand Forks, 1310 kHz AM, via Online Radio Box
Definitely want that cup of coffee. And a few minutes of fresh air.
Looking Back, Thinking Ahead
But first, links from 2020 that relate to this week’s post:
(From Coconut Creek Police Department(?), via Wikipedia, used w/o permission.) (Suspect arrested, after the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. (2018))
A fervent defense of capital punishment popped up in my social media feeds recently.
By the time I went back, looking for the post, it had disappeared into the digital mists.
I don’t remember what had inspired the declaration of allegiance to execution.
But I do remember that he was a self-identified “traditional Catholic.” And that he had disdain for folks who said they were Catholic, but didn’t agree with him.
None of that’s particularly noteworthy. Fervent defenses, denunciations and declarations happen. Sometimes they’re aimed at old-school ideas, sometimes new notions are targets of praise or blame.
Maybe headlines like this triggered last weekend’s acclamation of executions:
Then again, maybe not. Either way, that person’s support for killing prisoners reminded me that I haven’t written about capital punishment for quite a while.
As usual, when humans are involved, the issues are complicated. And, in another way, they’re simple.
(From National Portrait Gallery, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.) (English justice, 1606: public vivisection after the Gunpowder Treason Plot.)
Capital punishment, state-sanctioned killing of individuals, goes back at least to the days of Ur-Nammu, when conviction for robbery meant death.
I don’t know of an American state which executes robbers, but several do retain the right to kill folks who have been convicted of serious crimes.
And my country’s federal government has retained its right to kill citizens: again, those who have been convicted of serious crimes.1
I’ll be looking at cases involving the execution option: the Stoneman Douglas High School (Parkland, Florida) mass murder in 2018, and the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013.
Stoneman Douglas High School Massacre
(From BBC News, used w/o permission.) (Peter Wang; November 9, 2002 — February 14, 2018; killed while helping fellow-students evacuate Stoneman Douglas High School.)
There were heroes at the school, back in 2018.
Teacher Scott Beigel unlocked a classroom for fleeing students. Assistant football coach and security guard Aaron Feis shielded two students from the killer. Athletic director Chris Hixon heard gunfire and began running toward the trouble.
Student Peter Wang kept a door open so that others could flee. Student Meadow Pollack was shot four times. Then she tried shielding Cara Loughran, another student.
All were killed by the person who had picked that day for bringing death to Stoneman High School .
I’m guessing that the incident is a hot-button issue in some circles. Largely because I’ve seen crazy claims about the mass murder. For example, I’ve read that:
The dead students weren’t students
The mass murder was an American conspiracy
Surviving students and staff are enemies of the people.
But oddly enough, I’ve yet to be told that Florida doesn’t really exist.
Or that Stoneman Douglas High School is really a KGB/Illuminati front, bent on replacing humans with shape-shifting space-alien lizard-men.
I suppose some crazy notions are too crazy for even the most fervent conspiracy buffs. And that’s another topic.
Surveillance camera video and survivors identified a young man as the killer.
He’s been accused and tried. He pleaded guilty last year. Or should that be “pled guilty?” Anyway, the sentencing phase of his trial is in progress. A jury and judge are making a go/no-go decision ordering his execution.2
Heroes and the Perpetrator
Even allowing for a tendency to remember the best of folks who have died, I think we lost good people on February 14, 2018.
The perpetrator, on the other hand, hasn’t been looking too good. Understandably.
If news media had been painting a glowing picture of Nikolas Cruz: we’d have another sort of problem on our hands. And I think not making him into a celebrity of sorts, renowned for his bad behavior and sad past, was a good idea.
I am, however, left with a sketchy and inconsistent description of the young man.
According to these news items, one written shortly after the mass murder, the other this week, the perpetrator was a social media racist with a strong “B” average in school.
And a mentally stricken chap who had been “struggling in school socially and academically throughout his young life.” Granted, that’s what his defense attorney said.
“…In particular, McNeill highlighted his birth mother’s abuse of drugs and alcohol during his pregnancy, saying Cruz showed signs from a young age of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder and antisocial personality disorder….
“…In opening statements Monday, McNeill laid out Cruz’s difficult family life, including his birth mother’s history of addiction and the death of his adoptive parents Lynda and Roger Cruz….
“…Cruz first received special education services at age 6, struggling in school socially and academically throughout his young life, she said….”
“…Cruz appears to have been involved in the high school’s Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program, as his name is listed under several awards in 2016, including academic achievement for maintaining an A grade in JROTC and Bs in other subjects….”
Still, those two pieces, written four and a half years apart, don’t give a consistent picture of the individual who decided that killing people was a good idea.
Again, understandably. Reporters and news editors have had years to collect opinions and facts: and decide which slices of reality they think will interest their readers.
Plus, I’ve been seeing the usual 20-20 hindsight and Monday morning quarterbacking in assorted news and views.3
Drawings, Declarations and a Satanic Misspelling
(From Broward County Sheriff, via New York Post, used w/o permission.) (Nikolas Cruz: “Hail Lusifer” [sic] and more, drawn while in custody.)
(From Broward County Sheriff, via New York Post, used w/o permission.) (A school shooting, as drawn while in custody.)
Some of what I’ve read, including his — fervent? — written declarations, very strongly suggest to me that Nicholas Cruz is not a happy person.
“…Several pages feature declarations of love for Satan and pictures of various types of guns and ammunition.
“Another entry calls for more mass shootings.
“Cruz wrote asking for ‘my brothers and sisters of blood and death to kill your children.’
Or maybe he thinks he’s been setting up an insanity defense.
I don’t know, and am very thankful that I’m not sitting on that jury. “Distasteful” is the mildest adjective I can think of, describing the sort of intellectual and emotional sewage they’re wading through.
As for his apparent attitude toward guns and Satan, I’m not surprised at the distinct lack of ‘gun rights exposed as Satanic plot’ headlines. I’ll get back to that, briefly.
Which brings me to why I’m neither surprised at “declarations of love for Satan,” nor willing to go ballistic over the defendant’s drawings.
Demons: Seriously, but Not Obsessively
I think Satan exists. That’s not even close to believing that demons look like my culture’s depictions of fallen angels.
Or that demons ‘look like’ anything. They’re profoundly not like us, and that may take a little explaining.
Humans have intelligence and will. We’re made of spirit and the stuff of this universe. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 355-373, 1730)
Angels have intelligence and will, too. In that way, they’re people, persons, like us. But angels are spirits with no physical bodies. (Catechism, 328-330)
Demons are angels who made a really bad decision. The devil, or Satan, is our name for the angel who decided that saying “no” to God made sense. (Catechism, 391-395)
Now, I’ll grant that what we know about Satan makes for some colorful imagery.
“Jesus said, ‘I have observed Satan fall like lightning from the sky.” (Luke 10:18)
But I also think C. S. Lewis has a point. Acknowledging a fellow-creature’s existence makes sense. Giving that creature my mind’s center stage doesn’t.
“…There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight….” (“The Screwtape Letters,” Preface, C. S. Lewis (1942))
As for ‘gun rights exposed as Satanic plot’ headlines? I don’t think we’ll see that.
My experience strongly suggests that there are folks who see Satanic plots under every rock; while other folks fear firearms with a passion reminiscent of commie-hunters. And that’s yet another topic.4
But, although they exhibit similar levels of unswerving zeal, the ‘Satanic plots’ demographic and ‘beware guns’ contingent don’t strike me as overlapping.
Not to any great extent. I’d be surprised if more than a few individuals have been denouncing Satanic firearms. And for that I will be grateful.
Boston Marathon Bombing
(From Aaron Tang, via Wikimedia, used w/o permission.) (Spectators down. Boston Marathon: April 15, 2013.)
What happened during the 2013 Boston Marathon could have been much worse.
Only three spectators were killed, although hundreds were injured, when two pressure cooker bombs detonated near the finish line.
Several more deaths followed:
An MIT police officer, killed by one of the two perpetrators
Another police officer who died a year later from injuries inflicted by the pair
One of the bombers
A man who was driven to suicide by enthusiastic vigilantes
And, maybe, Ibragim Todashev’s death. A law enforcement official killed him while he was writing a statement about the Boston Marathon bombing. Seems that Todashev attacked the official with a samurai sword. Or a pipe. Or a knife: or something like that, anyway.5
This is among the reasons that, on those rare occasions when I have been interviewed by law enforcement officials, I make it a point to move slowly.
Also speak mildly, and do my level best to put the other folks at ease.
They’ve got stressful jobs, and it’s in my interest to avoid making them any more difficult.
Pressure Cookers, Purported Plots and Punishment Permutation
Again, the Boston Marathon bombing could have been much worse.
Despite a clear connection between culinary technology and the terrorist attack, pressure cookers are still legal in America.
Although I suppose that someone, somewhere, is calling for stronger pressure cooker control laws.
And I don’t recall anyone claiming that foot races lead to terrorism.
But we did get a modest selection of crazy claims. That the bombing, for example, was an American plot, a Saudi plot, a Russian-American plot; or, on a more traditional note, a diabolical scheme conceived by Zionist Jews.
In any case, by April 20, 2013, two brothers had been identified as the ones who had bombed the Boston Marathon. One was dead and the other caught.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found guilty of 30 federal offenses, and sentenced to death.
The legal story hadn’t been simple from the get-go, but it’s gotten even more complicated.
In 2020 a few minor charges were reversed along with his death sentence.
He was still looking at life in prison. Then, in March of this year, the death sentence went back into effect
I gather that the Tsarnaev brothers weren’t connected with any terrorist groups, but had decided that killing and injuring spectators at the Boston Marathon would protect Islam from the United States.
That makes as about much sense to me as the Stoneman killer’s “Hail Lusifer” [sic].
But I’m not a Kyrgyz-American whose family had been yanked out of Chechnya by the Soviet Union, was born in Kyrgyzstan, and ended up in Massachusetts after a stopover of sorts in Dagestan.6
Capital Punishment?
(From Branford Clarke, Alma White; via Wikimedia Commons; used w/o permission.)
I don’t know how or why the Tsarnaev brothers started taking their cues from an online Al-Qaeda magazine. I’m far less uncertain as to why some American Christians feel a need to protect their country from people like me.7 And that’s yet again another topic.
But I do know why I can’t jump on ‘support capital punishment’ bandwagons.
Briefly, I’m not allowed to.
Or, rather, I can’t: not if I take my faith seriously, which I do.
Death, Life and Principles
(From CoPhilippe de Champaigne, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.) (“Vanitas,” Philippe de Chapaigne. (ca. 1871))
Basically, I think human life matters. That’s not just my opinion.
If I’m going to take my faith seriously, I must think that human life is sacred, a gift from God. Every human life. Eachhuman life: no matter how young or old, healthy or sick we are. (Catechism, 2258, 2261, 2268-2283)
Here’s where it gets interesting.
I can’t decide that I’m human: but that another human who’s not like me isn’t.
We’re all human: no matter what we do, what we believe, or where we live. And we’re all obliged to “to do what is good and avoid what is evil.” (Catechism, 360, 1700-1706, 1932-1935)
The lives of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Nikolas Cruz matter because they’re human.
What they did, and what they believe, doesn’t change that. Like it or not, we’re all made “in the image and likeness of God.” Respecting “the transcendent dignity of man” may be inconvenient, but it’s part of my faith. (Catechism, 360, 1700-1706, 1928-1942)
So is remembering that responsibility and justice matter.
Like everybody else, I can try helping or hurting others. And I’m responsible for my actions. (Catechism, 1701-1709, 1730-1738, 2258)
(From Pieter Claesz, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.) (“Vanitas Still Life,” Pieter Claesz. (1630))
Thinking that human life matters, and that people who commit appalling crimes are human, puts a crimp in old-school attitudes toward ‘bad guys.’
This was true, back when someone attacked folks in Stoneman High School.
“Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against an unjust aggressor.
“If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people’s safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity with the dignity of the human person.
“Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm – without definitively taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself — the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity ‘are very rare, if not practically non-existent.’†” (Catechism, 2267, prior to August, 2018) (†Pope St. John Paul II, Encyclical Evangelium vitae 56)
I figured that “the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity” involved places that were so isolated and dirt-poor that the folks couldn’t afford to build a jail, let alone hire a jailer.
But I also figured that it’s a big world: and that maybe such places existed. A desert island, say, where folks would starve if everyone didn’t go out and catch fish every day.
I didn’t know of any place like that, but realized that it might, hypothetically, exist.
Then, six months after the Stoneman High School killings, that rule changed.8
“Recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate authority, following a fair trial, was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good.
“Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes. In addition, a new understanding has emerged of the significance of penal sanctions imposed by the state. Lastly, more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption.
“Consequently, the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that ‘the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person’,‡ and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.” (Catechism, 2267, after August, 2018) (‡ Francis, Address to Participants in the Meeting organized by the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization, 11 October 2017: L’Osservatore Romano, 13 October 2017, 5.)
I don’t mind the revised Catechism, 2267.
Partly because I realize that conditions have changed over the last 30 years. And partly because I don’t mind having one less opportunity for authorities to weasel out of ethical obligations, while mimicking respect for Catholic teaching. And that’s still another topic.
Finally, I realize that that our rules, like which liturgical colors go with which season, or how we accommodate native customs — killing prisoners, for example — change.
The reasons we have for making, and occasionally changing, our rules? Those don’t change. And that’s — you guessed it — even more topics.
It’s been a year since I wrote about the Mars 2020 mission.
This seemed like a good time to catch up on what the Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter have been up to in Jezero Crater.
The Ingenuity helicopter has been scouting ahead, giving folks back on Earth up-close aerial views of places the Perseverance rover will be visiting. It was a test vehicle for powered flight on Mars, so it wasn’t loaded with a great many sensors.
The science focus for Mars 2020 is mainly geology. With a focus on learning how habitable Mars used to be. Perseverance has been collecting samples that a later mission will pick up and return to Earth.
But the rover’s MEDA, Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer, has also been sending back daily weather reports.1
And in June, 2021, the Perseverance rover observed a dust storm and dust devils in Jezero Crater, sending us pictures from its navigation camera.
We’ve known a little about dust storms on Mars for generations. The 2021 dust storms, near the Perseverance rover, gave scientists their first detailed look at how they form.
Studying Mars, from Ancient Egypt to the Mariner Probes
(From Giovanni Schiaparelli, via Meyers Konversationslexikon/Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.) (Giovanni Schiaparelli’s map of Mars. (1877))
We don’t know who first noticed that Mars wasn’t always in the same part of our sky. By the time Senenmut was managing building projects for Hatshepsut, astronomers knew about the planet’s retrograde motion. Egyptian astronomers, that is.
Make that apparent retrograde motion. Earth and Mars orbit the sun at different rates, so it sometimes looks like Mars backs up in our sky.
Fast-forward about 33 centuries. Amateur astronomer Honoré Flaugergues was observing Mars, trying to determine the length of the Martian day. This was in 1809.
He was noting how long it took dark blotches to reappear as Mars turned. His numbers weren’t consistent from one Martian day to another. So he figured that at least some of what he was seeing, or not seeing, were atmospheric phenomena.
These days, some folks say Flaugergues had been observing yellow dust clouds on Mars. Others say he couldn’t have. That’s because his 13.4 meter focal length telescope, with a magnification of 90 times, wasn’t big enough. According to those folks.
Maybe so.
At any rate, Giovanni Schiaparelli noticed that sometimes Mars looked yellower than usual. I gather this was in the 1870s. Eugène Michel Antoniadi said maybe dust clouds caused the Martian color changes.
On the other hand, Schiaparelli had daltonism: a sort of red-green color blindness, and described how his vision and optical properties of his telescope affected his observations.
His daltonism didn’t keep Schiaparelli from noticing and mapping light and dark patches on Mars: which he, along with many other scientists of his era, thought were probably continents and seas.
Sometimes Schiaparelli perceived “canali,” channels, on Mars.2
Seeing may be believing, but it’s not necessarily proof that something’s real.
Schiaparelli and Lowell, Channels and Canals, Craters and Rivers
Almost a century after Honoré Flaugergues observed, or didn’t observe, dust clouds while timing the Martian day, Percival Lowell saw canals on Mars.
So did a few other astronomers, although many didn’t. If Schiaparelli’s canali and Lowell’s canals had been real Martian surface features, they were just barely obvious enough to be seen through 20th century Earthbound telescopes.
Then, in 1965, Mariner 4 flew past Mars and sent back pictures. Pictures of craters, more craters, and no trace of either channels or canals. On the ‘up’ side, the images gave us a clear look at the Martian surface.
That’s why, when Mariner 9 arrived and began orbiting Mars in 1971, scientists were looking forward to crisp, clear images of Martian terrain.
What they got were crisp, clear images of a planet-wide dust storm. And the very top of Olympus Mons: the second-highest known mountain in the Solar System. Our planetary system’s tallest known mountain currently is Rheasilvia’s central peak, on Vesta.
A few months later, after the dust settled, Mariner 9 sent back more than 7,000 images: including features that we’ve since confirmed are, or were, river beds.
Well, almost confirmed. A few scientists have pointed out that just because something looks like a channel, with dendritic branching and a fan-shaped delta at its low end, that doesn’t prove that it used to be a river.3
Fair enough. But there’s considerable evidence that water did flow on Mars. Long ago.
Video Shows Wind-Swept Dust Cloud – – –
(From NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI, used w/o permission.) (Dust storm on Mars, observed by Perseverance Rover. (June 18, 2021))
“This series of images from a navigation camera aboard NASA’s Perseverance rover shows a gust of wind sweeping dust across the Martian plain beyond the rover’s tracks on June 18, 2021 (the 117th sol, or Martian day, of the mission). The dust cloud in this GIF was estimated to be about 1.5 square miles (4 square kilometers) in size; it was the first such Martian wind-lifted dust cloud of this scale ever captured in images….”
A key phrase here is “of this scale.” Earth-bound Astronomers have been observing Martian dust clouds since the 19th century. Our robot explorers have been sending us pictures for decades.
What’s special about the June 18, 2021, video was that this time we had a robot on site, outfitted with sensors that let scientists study a dust storm as it was happening. Or, rather, study as-it-was-happening data after the Mars rover’s information reached Earth.4
– – – And Dust Devils
(From NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI, used w/o permission.) (Dust devils in Jezero Crater, spotted by Perseverance rover. (July 20, 2021))
“…A paper recently published in Science Advances chronicles the trove of weather phenomena observed in the first 216 Martian days, or sols. The new findings enable scientists to better understand dust processes on Mars and contribute to a body of knowledge that could one day help them predict the dust storms that Mars is famous for – and that pose a threat to future robotic and human explorers.
“‘Every time we land in a new place on Mars, it’s an opportunity to better understand the planet’s weather,’ said the paper’s lead author, Claire Newman of Aeolis Research, a research company focused on planetary atmospheres. She added there may be more exciting weather on the way: ‘We had a regional dust storm right on top of us in January, but we’re still in the middle of dust season, so we’re very likely to see more dust storms.’…”
These scientists figure that aeolian processes — wind moving sand and lifting dust in to the Martian atmosphere — account for many or most changes we’ve been noticing on the planet’s surface and in its atmosphere.
It’s a reasonable assumption, and one that’s been accepted as a possible model for Martian dust storms.
But until last year, scientists didn’t know how dust gets lifted off the surface and into the atmosphere. They’ve done wind tunnel tests here on Earth, which have been useful, but aren’t as valuable as actual on-site observations.
That’s why the June, 2021, dust storm and dust devils are so important in telling us how Martian weather works.
It’s the first time that a probe with the right sensors, in a dusty place, has been looking in the right direction during a windy season.
The Curiosity rover, for example, observed quite a bit of sand motion and many vortices/dust devils: but wasn’t equipped with adequate wind sensors.
The Mars Pathfinder’s rover, Sojourner, carried an MAE: Materials Adherence Experiment. Scientists knew that Mars was a dusty place, but didn’t know how fast dust would accumulate on a rover’s solar cells.
So between July 4, 1997 and August 12, 1997, the MAE let dust gather on a glass plate covering solar cells, rotated the plate to remove the dust, and repeated the cycle.
That told scientists how fast dust accumulated on that part of Mars during that season, but not how or why it does so.
The Insight lander has detected vortices, but so far hasn’t spotted major surface changes.
And the Spirit rover’s solar panels were swept clean of dust a few times. But not when the rover was ‘watching’ the process.5
Gathering Data, Finding New Questions
(From SA/Roscosmos/CaSSIS, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO, via Smithsonian, used w/o permission.) (Martian dust storm, observed near the north polar ice cap. (April 2018))
We’ve coming a long way since the Mariner 4 Martian flyby mission. NASA’s Mars Odyssey and ESA’s Mars Express orbiters have been sending back data since 2001 and 2003.
And the United Arab Emirates Mars Mission, mašrū’ al-Imārāt l-āstikšāf al-Murīkh, مشروع الإمارات لاستكشاف المريخ, has been studying daily and seasonal weather cycles since last year.
The UAE’s Hope orbiter as given scientists enough data for at least five research papers that I know of.
Meanwhile, data from NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Science Laboratory’s Curiosity rover, and InSight missions show that heat from the sun makes for strong daily and seasonal changes of Mars.
And this helps explain the planet’s seasonal dust storms. Probably.6
I get the impression that, although we’re gathering a great deal of information about Martian weather and the Martian climate — we’re finding new questions almost as fast as we’re getting answers.
Martian Ice Ages
(From NASA/JPL/Brown University, used w/o permission.) (Mars may have been in an ice age, between 2.4 million and 400,000 years back.)
For example, we’ve been learning that the Martian climate has changed — a lot — since the planet formed.
That’s why the Mars 2020 mission is looking for evidence of past life on Mars. There’s almost no chance that anything lives there now, but Earth’s neighbor wasn’t always the desiccated wasteland it is today.
There’s even evidence of a Martian ice age, from maybe 2,400,000 to 400,000 years back. Maybe.7
There’s a great deal more to say about Martian weather, climate, seasons and cycles.
But that will have to wait. Thanks partly to a summer cold I’ve been having, and partly to a particularly annoying Internet service outage, I’ve had ample opportunity to practice patience this week. And that’s another topic.
“Mars: An Introduction to its Interior, Surface and Atmosphere,” 1 – Introduction to Mars“ Nadine Barlow, Cambridge University Press (2008) excerpt, marketing
“Senenmut: An Ancient Egyptian Astronomer“ Bojan Novakovic, Publication of Astronomical Observatory of Belgrade (Submitted January 8, 2008) via arXiv, Cornell University
“The dynamic atmospheric and aeolian environment of Jezero crater, Mars“ Claire E. Newman, Ricardo Hueso, Mark T. Lemmon, Asier Munguira, Álvaro Vicente-Retortillo, Víctor Apestigue, Germán M. Martínez, Daniel Toledo, Rob Sullivan, Scott D. Guzewich, and dozens more; Planetary Science, Science Advances (May 25, 2022)
“The dynamic atmospheric and aeolian environment of Jezero crater, Mars“ Claire E. Newman, Ricardo Hueso, Mark T. Lemmon, Asier Munguira, Álvaro Vicente-Retortillo, Víctor Apestigue, Germán M. Martínez, Daniel Toledo, Rob Sullivan, Scott D. Guzewich, and dozens more; Planetary Science, Science Advances (May 25, 2022)
(Interior of St. Jude the Apostle Cathedral, St. Petersburg, Florida.)
One thing’s certain. Well, actually, quite a few things are certain.
Something that’s certain about Saint Jude the Apostle is that he’s not Judas Iscariot.
Which may take some explaining. Then again, maybe not. In any case, “Jude” and “Judas” look like two different names in English translations of the Bible.
But they’re two ways of transliterating the same name, יְהוּדָה, Y’hudah, into my language’s version of the Latin alphabet.
Seems that Y’hudah was a fairly common name when our Lord was living in Roman Judea and Galilee. Sorting out which Y’hudah is which isn’t always easy.
As an illustration, let’s take a hypothetical case involving 41st century scholars. If you’ve been reading my stuff, you’ve learned that I like hypothetical cases.
Anyway, some academic debates over ‘who’s this Jude and/or Judas’ started me thinking about a hypothetical 41st century scholarly squabble.
The imaginary task at hand was determining whether Jim, James, Jim Johnson, James Johnson and J. Johnson — all living in northern Minnesota around the year 2000 A.D. — were one person or several different individuals.
Adding to the fun — we’re back to the non-hypothetical world now — folks in the Judea-Galilee area two millennia back started using Greek names after Alexander the Great conquered the region.
By the first century, Judea was a Roman province: so having a Latin name, or at least a Latin nickname, helped make life easier.
I gather that transliterating יְהוּדָה as “Judas” in one case and “Jude” in another is generally done in English and French New Testament translations, but not in other languages.1
In any case, I’ll be talking mostly about St. Jude the Apostle. And the Letter of Jude, plus whatever else comes to mind.
A Digression: Elizabethan Playwrights and Chorizo
But first, a disclaimer of sorts. I’m neither a professor of Bible studies nor a PhD in pedagogic obfuscation.
So I haven’t claimed that Bacon wrote Shakespeare; or that Homer wasn’t really Homer, or that ancient Greek poets invented Homer.
On the other hand, I have said that Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare might be the same person: and that they were both really Queen Elizabeth. Who let off steam by writing plays and dressing up like a man. Two men, actually.
But the Marlow-Shakespeare-Elizabeth secret identity was a joke. As I explained back in January of 2021. Just the same, I’ll repeat what I said then:
Happily, academic fashions seem to have changed since my youth.
There’s a consensus of sorts, at any rate, that Judas Iscariot is a real person. Although I gather that we’re still getting imaginative speculations as to what “Iscariot” really means, and why it’s Christianity’s fault.2
I’ll count that as a partial ‘win,’ and move on.
‘Proxima Chorizo:’ It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time?
Academic speculation and/or goofiness isn’t limited to claims that Bacon, Marlowe, Derby or someone else wrote Shakespeare.
Take, for example, what I called the ‘Proxima Chorizo’ hoax. A “top scientist” posted a photo of a chorizo slice — claiming that it was a James Webb Space Telescope image of Proxima Centauri.
Then his fans found out, and he apologized: explaining that his motives were pure, and anyway he did it during cocktail hour.
As I see it, ‘Proxima Chorizo’ doesn’t prove that science is a hoax — not any more scholarly insistence that almost any Elizabethan playwright other than Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare besmirches either history or English literature as valid academic disciplines. And I forgot where I was going with this.
Let me think. Jude, Judas, transliteration and names. Bacon, Marlow, Shakespeare and ‘Proxima Chorizo.’ Valid academic disciplines and the occasional screwball notions. Right.
I enjoy alternate histories. When they’re presented as speculative fiction. I enjoy gag photos, some of them at any rate, when they play with our perceptions. And I like Magritte’s “The Treachery of Images.”
But I’m none too pleased when academics and fanboys start acting like conspiracy theory buffs: and are apparently taken seriously.3
Now, finally, an Apostle and The Letter of Jude.
Jude and Judas, Sons and Brothers
Backing up a bit, the Apostle I call Jude is “Judas, son of James:” and definitely not Judas Iscariot. (Luke 6:16; John 14:22; Acts 1:13)
That particular James is James, a brother of Jesus the Nazarene, son of Mary; along with Joseph, Simon, and Judas; or maybe it’s Joses and Judas and Simon. (Matthew 13, 55; Mark 6:3)
Then again, maybe not. The Mark 6:3 list of “brothers” may be the “Jude” who wrote The Letter of Jude. I’ll get back to that.
About Jesus having “brothers”, that doesn’t bother me nearly as much as it might.
Partly because I’m an only child and I have “brothers”: men who are also in the Knights of Columbus. And, getting further out in metaphorical waters, “brothers in Christ”: or should that be farther out? Never mind.
Besides, the Apostles aren’t Americans. They’re not even post-Renaissance Europeans. I think a great deal of sound and fury could be avoided if folks would remember this.
The “brothers” of Jesus could have been step-brothers, cousins, or more distant kinfolk.4 Assuming that they were blood relatives, not the metaphorical “brethren” even my poetically-challenged culture occasionally recognizes.
Simon and Jude: Saints
Jude the Apostle was with Simon the Zealot when authorities in Roman Syria ordered their execution.
Simon the Zealot, by the way, isn’t the Apostle we call Simon Peter or St. Peter.
All three are Saints, and were executed for insisting that Jesus didn’t stay dead.
Simon the Zealot and Jude’s execution happened in 65 A.D. or thereabouts. They were probably an evangelizing team, working from Egypt to Armenia. Our day for remembering them is October 28.
Another version of St. Simon the Zealot’s life has him dying peacefully in Edessa.
St. Jude’s and St. Simon the Zealot’s bodies were eventually interred in St. Peter’s, in Rome. Or somewhere else. Fact is, we don’t know much about either.5
A Letter From “Jude, … Brother of James”
(A fragment from a copy of The Letter of Jude. (ca. 3rd or 4th century))
The Letter of Jude starts conventionally enough, identifying the writer:
“Jude, a slave of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept safe for Jesus Christ:” (Jude 1:1)
But, as I said before, “Jude” is what Y’hudah — a common name back in the day — looks like when it’s transliterated into my language. Except when it’s rendered as Judas.
This particular Jude may be Jude, brother (cousin or some other relative) of Jesus. And that Jude probably isn’t Jude the Apostle, who’s “Judas the son of James” in The Gospel According to Luke.
“Is he not the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother named Mary and his brothers James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas?” (Matthew 13:55)
“When day came, he called his disciples to himself, and from them he chose Twelve, whom he also named apostles: “Simon, whom he named Peter, and his brother Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, “Matthew, Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus, Simon who was called a Zealot, “and Judas the son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.” (Luke 6:13–16) [emphasis mine]
On the other hand, maybe Jude the Apostle had good reason to remind the letter’s recipients that he was “…and brother of James”, rather than flashing his Apostle credentials.
Small wonder we’ve got ongoing discussions over who wrote The Letter of Jude.
I could let that — and the very minimal information we have about St. Jude the Apostle, St. Peter the Zealot, along with exactly when The Letter of Jude was written — bother me.
But I won’t.
I’ll grant that it’d be interesting, maybe useful, to know whether St. Jude the Apostle wrote The Letter of Jude, or whether the Jude who wrote the letter was so obscure that he identified himself by reference to his more famous relative.
It’d also be interesting, maybe useful, to know exactly when The Letter of Jude was written.
I gather that many academics say it must have been written later than either Jude/Judas the Apostle or Jude the brother of James. Mainly, I gather, because the letter refers to stuff that was happening during and after the late 1st century.
Specifically, problems with what St. Irenaeus called “he legomene gnostike haeresis:” “the heresy called Learned (Gnostic)”, or “the sect called Learned”, or something like that.6
Beliefs, Assumptions and Jude’s Letter
Maybe so, but The Letter of Jude doesn’t mention Gnosticism specifically. If it did, that’d be evidence that it had been written during or after the 17th century.
That’s when Henry More, a Cambridge Platonist, took an ancient Greek word and plopped it into English.
I’ve seen Gnosticism labeled as a Christian and Jewish idea and/or heresy.
There’s something to that, since self-identified Christians have acted as if they thought God made a horrible mistake by creating a physical reality as well as the ‘nice’ spiritual stuff.
I don’t see it that way; but then, I haven’t seen a reason for arguing with God:
“God looked at everything he had made, and found it very good. Evening came, and morning followed—the sixth day.” (Genesis 1:31))
Gnosticism is a catch-all category for the idea that folks with spiritual knowledge are special and the material world is icky. Or unimportant, at any rate. It got traction in the late first century and took off in the second.
If that sort of religious fastidiousness and/or license popped up out of nowhere, The Letter of Jude must have been written after the late first century.
But I suspect that current flavors of Gnosticism are rebrandings of Platonism, with roots going back to at least the Axial Age. And that’s another topic.7
In any case, the letter is none too clear about exactly what the folks who “revile what they do not understand” called themselves. (Jude 1:10)
Saints, Emperors, and Our Heritage of Faith
(“The Fire of Rome”, July 64 A.D., by Hubert Rober. (1785))
So, how come we know so little about St. Jude the Apostle, AKA Jude Thaddeus? And why isn’t the authorship and provenance of The Letter of Jude well-documented?
My guess is that if Judas, son of James, and all the rest had known how important those details would be to English-speaking scholars of the 20th and 21st centuries, then they might have kept scrupulous records. And their successors would have preserved those records.
Or maybe they wouldn’t have. The point is, they didn’t.
But the Apostles and their successors have been passing along what is important.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. “He was in the beginning with God. “All things came to be through him, “and without him nothing came to be. What came to be “through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1:1–5)
Passing Along What We Received
What’s important — is Jesus.
The Bible, the Magisterium and Tradition? Those matter, too. That’s Tradition, with a capital “T”, which isn’t trying to live as if it’s 1947, 1066 or whatever.
Our capital “T” tradition is the Apostolic Tradition. It’s a “living transmission, accomplished in the Holy Spirit”, passed along from the Apostles. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 75-79)
Our heritage of faith also includes the Bible and the Magisterium. All of which interact. (Catechism, 74-95)
The Magisterium is the Church’s teaching authority, which came from Jesus; and is maintained through the Holy Spirit. (Catechism, 85-87)
Reading, studying and understanding the Bible is literally Catholicism 101. (Catechism, 101-133)
But it’s not just ‘the Bible and me’ — and I’ve talked about that before.8
Roman Law, Dead Emperors and Beliefs
Again, the Apostles could have kept detailed accounts of who did what and where.
They could have saved those records, too. If they’d been living in an ideal world. But they didn’t and they weren’t.
Their homeland was occupied territory, held by the Roman Empire.
That wasn’t, as I see it, entirely bad news.
Like the Republic before it, the Roman Empire was run by very religious and very tolerant folks. By standards of the day.
Roman emperors had no problem with imperial subjects worshiping however and whatever they liked.
As long as they obeyed Roman law, paid their taxes and followed whatever beliefs their ancestors had.
Roman emperors did, however, have a problem with Christians. And Jews.
Pretty much everyone else was willing, sometimes grudgingly, to add dead emperors to their roster of deities.
The Roman imperial cult wasn’t exactly like its analogs in, say, Egypt. But a blending of religious and secular authority was a familiar part of the ancient political landscape.
Jews and Christians were — unaccountably, from a Roman viewpoint — unwilling to acknowledge the deity of deceased emperors.
What impresses me isn’t that eradicating Christians happened sporadically, until Constantine decriminalized our faith.
It’s that Roman officials weren’t consistently trying to stamp out what must have seemed like a subversive anti-Roman movement.
Speaking of Constantine and Christianity, I think his decision made sense; and that Emperor Theodosius I did us no favors by making Christianity a state religion.
I see how it looked like a good idea at the time. But legitimate ideas about authority and law morphed into notions like the divine right of kings.
That, decisions by folks like England’s Henry VIII and Louis XIV of France, plus centuries of religion-themed propaganda, made a mess we’ll be cleaning up for centuries. And that’s yet another topic.9
“A Class Hated for Their Abominations”
(“Nero’s Torches”, by Henryk Siemiradzki. (1876))
The year before Saints Jude Thaddeus and Simon the Zealot were executed, fire broke out in a retail district near Rome’s Circus Maximus.
Some Romans evacuated the area. Others tried putting the quickly-spreading blaze out, while still others looted abandoned structures and occasionally lit new fires.
Six days later, the fire was out. Temporarily. Then, three days after the fire’s second burn started, Romans began clearing rubble, rebuilding, and finding someone to blame.
Roman politics was more volatile than contemporary America’s. We have learned a bit over the last couple millennia, and I’ve said that before. Often.
According to records we have of the fire and its aftermath, opinion was divided.
Some folks said Nero hired arsonists, then sang while playing a lyre as he watched the fire from his Palatine Hill palace. Or from the Tower of Maecenas on the Esquiline Hill, or that he was singing on a private stage somewhere.
That’s a nifty story, but others acknowledged that Nero was out of town, in Antium, when the fire started. And that the fire was an accident.
But blaming Nero was popular, at least in some circles. Which may be why Nero said Christians started the blaze, since ‘everybody knows’ what they’re like.
“…ergo abolendo rumori Nero subdidit reos et quaesitissimis poenis adfecit, quos per flagitia invisos vulgus Chrestianos appellabat. … igitur primum correpti qui fatebantur, deinde indicio eorum multitudo ingens haud proinde in crimine incendii quam odio humani generis convicti sunt.”
“…Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. … Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind.” (“Annals”, 15.44, Tacitus (14-68 A.D.) translation by A. J. Church and W. J. Brodribb (1876) via Wikipedia)
I get the idea that Tacitus wasn’t a fan of either Nero or those Christians. I also think that post-Enlightenment academic efforts to sort out what actually happened — have been influenced by fallout from events like the Thirty Year’s War and Beeldenstorm.10
Patron Saints
Thanks in part to the policies of folks like Nero, we’ve got Christians who became Saints because they wouldn’t play ball with some secular leader.
But a messy death isn’t what makes them Saints, it’s that they showed “heroic virtue”, and “lived in fidelity to God’s grace….” (Catechism, 828)
Some Saints, like St. Francis of Assisi, are so high-profile that many non-Catholics know about them. Some, like St. Edmund Arrowsmith, aren’t.
St. Jude, AKA St. Jude Thaddeus, the Saint I had in mind when I started writing this, is arguably toward the high-profile end of the ‘awareness’ spectrum.
I’ll admit to a bias. I know about St. Jude in part because he’s the patron Saint of, among other things including Armenia and St. Petersburg, Florida — I’ll start that again.
St. Jude is the patron Saint of desperate situations. And hospitals.
A patron Saint is someone who has shown heroic virtue by living as if Jesus matters, and who has died. That, and canonization, makes the person a recognized Saint.
The “patron” part of the “patron Saint” designation is that they’ve got a reputation for being an advocate for some place or occupation.
I started a “novena to St. Jude” earlier this month, praying on behalf of someone else.
And that brings me to one of the few things I don’t like about my native language.
Prayer
I’ve been “praying to” St. Jude.
That most emphatically does not mean that I’ve been treating the Apostle as if he’s God.
In my dialect of English, at any rate, “praying to” a Saint means that I’m asking the Saint to pray for me, on my behalf: just as I’ve been praying for someone else.
Asking Saints to pray for us is a good idea. “…We can and should ask them to intercede for us and for the whole world.” (Catechism, 2683)
And my getting around to mentioning St. Jude the Apostle is long overdue. I asked him to put in a word for me and my family, decades back, when we were in — maybe not a desperate situation, but one in which I felt very close to being “helpless and alone.”
We got out of that situation, moved here to Sauk Centre, Minnesota; and I’m finally getting around to “gratefully encouraging devotion” to St. Jude.11
Procrastination can be a very real problem and that’s — yep, that’s yet again another topic.
In case you haven’t had enough of what I write, here’s more:
Understanding the Bible Mary Elizabeth Sperry, Associate Director for Utilization of the New American Bible, USCCB (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops)
(From NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; used w/o permission.) (The Cartwheel galaxy group, 500,000 light-years out, in the constellation Scorpius. (James Webb Space Telescope image released by NASA (August 2, 2022))
I’ll be looking at some of the first pictures sent back from the James Webb Space Telescope, starting with the Cartwheel Galaxy.
Update: August 7, 2022
I became aware, after finishing “James Webb Space Telescope Early Results,” that a “top scientist” had told his social media followers that a slice of choizo was a JWST image of Proxima Centauri. (July 31, 2022) Etienne KLEIN — @EtienneKlein — Photo de Proxima du Centaure….)
“A French scientist has apologized after tweeting a photo of a slice of chorizo, claiming it was an image of a distant star taken by the James Webb Space Telescope.
“Étienne Klein, a celebrated physicist and director at France’s Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission, shared the image of the spicy Spanish sausage on Twitter last week, praising the ‘level of detail’ it provided….
“…Klein admitted later in a series of follow-up tweets that the image was, in fact, a close-up of a slice of chorizo taken against a black background….”
The CNN article explains that the “celebrated physicist” had a good reason for the hoax. A reason that seemed good during “cocktail hour,” at any rate.
The ‘Proxima Chorizo’ image has been getting considerable attention in news media.
That, and perhaps an over-abundance of caution, has inspired the following statement.
I am reasonably sure that NASA, the European Space Agency and the James Webb Space Telescope Team are not trying to pass off photographs of a pizza as JWST images of the Cartwheel Galaxy.
Now, back to this week’s post.
Astronomers have known about the Cartwheel Galaxy at least since 1941, when Fritz Zwicky photographed the “cartwheel” ring. He’d been using the 18-inch Schmidt telescope on Mount Palomar.
I gather that the 1941 image showed the galaxy’s outer ring, a bright patch at the center, and not much else.
Rings, Spokes and Explanations
(From STX, STScI, NASA; used w/o permission.) (The Cartwheel galaxy group (left), Cartwheel Galaxy in infrared light. (1996))
Since then, astronomers learned that the Cartwheel Galaxy is about 500,000 light-years away, 144,300 light-years across, and the largest of a group of four galaxies.
Besides the outer and inner rings, the Cartwheel Galaxy has at least two sets of ‘spokes.’
We’re pretty sure that the Cartwheel Galaxy’s rings formed when one of the smaller galaxies in the group fell through the Cartwheel. Which was a normal spiral galaxy before the collision.
On the other hand, maybe a Jeans instability led to the Cartwheel’s current look.
Jeans instability has nothing to do with denim slacks. It’s a relationship between sound waves, gravity and density described by Sir James Hopwood Jeans in 1902.
I gather that it’s also controversial, or was. Maybe that’s why more scientists figure the collision explanation is correct. Or part of the reason, at any rate.1
“Consequences of the Jeans Instability “Let’s evaluate the Jeans length and mass, Equations (23) and (24), for parameters of astrophysical
interest. Plugging in numbers typical of dense molecular cores (with particle mass m = 3.3 × 10−24 g), we obtain [about three square inches of equations omitted] where cs = 260 m/s for T = 10 K and γ = 5/3, although given the effectiveness of cooling in maintaining constant temperature, a better approximation might be the isothermal γ = 1, as assumed in S&G, in which case cs ≈ 200 m/s….” (“Jeans Instability and Gravitational Collapse,” Physics 431, Drexel University College of Arts and Sciences)
One reason I had for quoting that bit from “Jeans Instability and Gravitational Collapse” was showing how many factors go into figuring out what goes on when galaxies collide.
Another was getting some use out of the time I spent finding what I could about Jeans instability. Now let’s take a closer look at the Cartwheel Galaxy.
A Galaxy of a Different Color
(From NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; used w/o permission.) (The Cartwheel Galaxy, detail showing ‘spokes.’ (James Webb Space Telescope image released by NASA (August 2, 2022))
That’s a detail from the first image.
These ‘spokes’ connecting the inner and outer rings of the Cartwheel Galaxy are the ones detected by the Webb telescope’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI).
Other spokes show up in visible light, and still others in radio wavelengths. And they’re not the same spokes. They don’t overlap. Whatever’s going on in that galaxy, it’s complicated.
Speaking of complicated, I talked about thermal radiation back in June. Basically, anything warmer than absolute zero glows.
The warmer something is, the more it glows. We call that glow thermal radiation. It’s one sort of electromagnetic radiation.
As something gets hotter, its thermal radiation wavelengths get shorter. Well, the peak wavelengths do, at any rate.
When stuff is warmer than 977 °F, 525 °C, we can see the glow, because that’s when the glow is in wavelengths short enough for our eyes can detect.
The part of the electromagnetic spectrum — I’m going to call it “light” from here in, regardless of wavelength — we can see has wavelengths between 420 and 680 nanometers. Or between 310 and 1,050 nanometers. That’s under ideal conditions and for children and young adults.
Our name for light between about 700 nanometers and one millimeter is infrared light.
Longer than that, it’s microwaves (from extremely to ultra high frequency), and radio waves (from very high to extremely low frequency).
But those are just convenient labels we use. It’s all light. So are ultraviolet rays, X-rays and gamma rays: all of which have wavelengths shorter than visible light.2
Mid-Infrared: Cool
(From NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; used w/o permission.) (The Cartwheel galaxy group, Image from Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). (James Webb Space Telescope image released by NASA (August 2, 2022))
That Webb image of the Cartwheel galaxy group, the one at the start of this post, isn’t what the galaxies look like.
Or would look like, if we were close enough and if our eyes collected enough light to register such definite colors.
That’s because this post’s first image combines what the Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) saw.
NIRCam sees in the near infrared: wavelengths between 600 and 5,000 nanometers.
NIRCam has to be cold to see those wavelengths — I’m going to call them “colors,” since that’s our name for different wavelengths of visible light. It’s designed to operate at 37 Kelvin, about minus 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
MIRI is a camera and a spectrograph that sees light with wavelengths of 4,900 to 28,600 nanometers, so it needs to be colder. Much colder: around 7 Kelvin.3
So neither the NIRCam and MIRI combined image nor the only-MIRI image show what the Cartwheel Galaxy really looks like.
Or maybe what it literally looks like would be a better way of putting the idea.
Astrophotos: More Than Pretty Pictures
(From NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; used w/o permission.) (NGC 3324 in Carina Nebula, Image from Webb’s NIRCam.) (James Webb Space Telescope image released by NASA (July 12, 2022))
Now, there are folks who apparently feel that color images of astronomical subjects aren’t serious science.
I suspect that the ‘color images aren’t serious science’ demographic overlaps folks who think serious anything isn’t ‘real’ science, poetry or whatever unless discussions of it are as dull as dishwater.
I’ll grant that the James Webb Space Telescope team probably picked non-ugly colors as stand-ins for their infrared analogs.
Partly, I suspect, because attractive images help non-scientists get interested in what the scientists are doing.
Partly because they’ll be looking at the ‘pretty pictures’ more than most folks.
And partly because it’s a whole lot easier to see how stuff that’s glowing in a particular way is distributed in a galaxy, a nebula or whatever if it’s a particular color.4
The way I see it, any subject — science, history, sports, whatever — can be presented as reams of statistics without obvious context, or as easily-seen patterns of data. And if the data’s attractively presented, then that’s a bonus.
The Cartwheel Galaxy Group as We Might See It
(From NASA, ESA, K. Borne (STScI); used w/o permission.) (The Cartwheel galaxy group, colors as we would see them, from Hubble space telescope. (released May 15, 2007)
Even that ‘true color’ astrophoto, made using images from the Hubble Space Telescope, isn’t a color photo like the ones my camera takes.
Scientists combined an I-band (814 namometer) and a B-band (450 nanometer) image, then balanced the red and blue composite to approximate what our eyes would see.
What our eyes would see, that is, if they were huge, collecting enough light for the cone cells in our eye’s retina. One of these days, I may talk about astrophotography, human vision, surface brightness and all that.5
But not today.
A Famous Quartet-Plus-One
(From NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI; used w/o permission.) (Stephan’s Quintet.) (James Webb Space Telescope image released by NASA (July 12, 2022))
Édouard Stephan spotted Stephan’s Quintet in 1877. It’s in the constellation Pegasus and is the first compact galaxy group discovered.
It’s also not really a quintet. Four of the five galaxies are part of a group, and are merging with each other. The fifth member, NGC 7320, is much closer to us: very roughly 39,000,000 light-years, or maybe 40,000,000 light-years. Give or take.
The four associated galaxies are between 210,000,000 and 340,000,000 light-years out.
Like the Cartwheel image, this picture combines images from the Webb telescope’s NIRCam and MIRI.
Another fun fact: Stephan’s Quintet, which is really a quartet-plus-one, is also called the Hickson Compact Group 92 or HCG 92.6
Fun? Details like that are fun for me, at any rate.
There’s a mess more to say about those galaxies, but that’s a set of facts and analysis I’ll leave for another time. Except for the Stephen’s Quintet and a 1947 film.
Featured in “It’s a Wonderful Life”
(From Liberty Films, Hubble and Chandra Space Telescopes, Alfred Charles, Tony Rice, WRAL/Capitol Broadcasting Company; used w/o permission.) (Stephan’s Quintet, “It’s a Wonderful Life” and the Hubble & Chandra Space Telescopes)
Stephan’s Quintet, three fifths of it at any rate, may be the most-televised galaxy group.
A made-for-the-movies version of the galaxy group appeared in “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
The RKO/Liberty Films feature bothered critics, cost the studio something like a half-million dollars — that’s 1947 dollars, mind — and was flagged as a possible communist plot by the FBI.
I am not making that last bit up. Seems that some zealous official wrote a memo:
“With regard to the picture ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’, [redacted] stated in substance that the film represented rather obvious attempts to discredit bankers by casting Lionel Barrymore as a ‘scrooge-type’ so that he would be the most hated man in the picture. This, according to these sources, is a common trick used by Communists. [In] addition, [redacted] stated that, in his opinion, this picture deliberately maligned the upper class, attempting to show the people who had money were mean and despicable characters.”
(FBI memo (May 26, 1947) quoted by Will Chen, Johnny Goodtimes, Kat Eschner; via Wikipedia)
As I’ve said before, and probably will again, I do not miss ‘the good old days.’ I mentioned communist plots and climate change last week, and that’s another topic.
Anyway, “It’s a Wonderful Life” collected dust until the 1976 Christmas season. It’s been a holiday staple ever since.7
And that’s all I have for this week.
Apart, that is, from notes and resources that didn’t make it into this post. Which I’ve saved for future use. Assuming I remember where I put them, and assuming that scientists analyze data from the James Webb Space Telescope and publish what they’ve learned.
The latter is, I think, a safe assumption.
Now, links to posts that are about astronomy and galaxies; and one that’s not:
“Collisional Ring Galaxies,” Introduction P.N. Appleton, Curtis Struck-Marcell; Erwin W. Fick Observatory and Department of Physics and Astronomy, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa; Published in Fundamentals of Cosmic Physics (Vol. 16, pp. 111-220, 1996) via NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database, Caltech
“Collisional Ring Galaxies,” Introduction; P.N. Appleton, Curtis Struck-Marcell; Erwin W. Fick Observatory and Department of Physics and Astronomy, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa; Published in Fundamentals of Cosmic Physics (Vol. 16, pp. 111-220, 1996) via NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database, Caltech
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Something new each Saturday.
Life, the universe and my circumstances permitting. I'm focusing on 'family stories' at the moment. ("A Change of Pace: Family Stories" (11/23/2024))
Blog - David Torkington
Spiritual theologian, author and speaker, specializing in prayer, Christian spirituality and mystical theology [the kind that makes sense-BHG]
I was born in 1951. I'm a husband, father and grandfather. One of the kids graduated from college in December, 2008, and is helping her husband run businesses and raise my granddaughter; another is a cartoonist and artist; #3 daughter is a writer; my son is developing a digital game with #3 and #1 daughters. I'm also a writer and artist.
On the ‘up’ side, I’m getting over what I’m calling a summer cold. And I’ve even decided what I’ll be writing about this week.
![Great Seal of the United States, 'Annuit coeptis Novus ordo seclorum' 'He favors/has favored [our] undertakings - New order of the ages' (2008) rendered by Ipankonin, via Wikipedia, used w/o permission.](https://i0.wp.com/brendans-island.com/blogsource/20170721ff/20170720-Great_Seal_of_the_United_States_reverse-329.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)
