STAR GAZER
Episode # 08-46 / 1615th Show
To Be Aired : Monday 11/17/2008 through Sunday 11/23/2008
"The Return Of Three Cosmic Birds For Thanksgiving
And the Two Brightest Planets Meet"
Horkheimer: Greetings, greetings fellow star gazers. Cosmically speaking this year Thanksgiving week will be very special because in addition to the usual turkey bird for Thanksgiving dinner we have our annual return of three cosmic birds which you can see right after Thanksgiving dinner or any night Thanksgiving week. Plus the two brightest planets are preparing for a super close meeting and you can watch them come closer every night!
O.K., we've got our skies set up for any clear night this Thanksgiving week about one hour after sunset facing southwest where just above the horizon you will see the two brightest planets in our solar system, super bright, 8,000 mile wide Venus and second brightest, 88,000 mile wide Jupiter, eleven Venuses wide. And if you watch night after night they will move closer and closer to each other and on November 30th and December 1st will be super close and actually spectacular! So start your Venus / Jupiter getting closer to each other each night watch now.
Next if you look high above the horizon you'll see three bright stars which if we connect with lines make up what is officially called the Summer Triangle but which every November I unofficially call the "Thanksgiving is for the birds" triangle because historically these stars have been associated with cosmic birds. The highest star is Deneb, the bright tail star in Cygnus the swan. So in addition to our Thanksgiving turkey we have a heavenly swan to be thankful for. The bright star farthest to the left, Altair, is the brightest star in Aquila the Eagle, and the brightest of the three stars and closest to the northwest horizon is Vega in the constellation Lyra the Harp which, strange as it may sound, has had more feathery incarnations than the other two birds put together.
You see, Lyra was not always a harp. In fact long before it became a lyre it was a cosmic turtle but before it was a cosmic turtle it was a bird of one sort or another. Ancient records tell us that Lyra's association with birds goes back over 2,000 years. In ancient India Lyra was seen as a heavenly vulture. But when Babylonian kings and their queens strolled through the hanging gardens of Babylon they looked up and identified Lyra as their great mythological bird of storms, Urakhga. In ancient Arabia people depicted Lyra's stars, depending on what tribe they belonged to as either a desert eagle or would you believe, a cosmic goose. And Lyra was also seen as a great osprey and as a wood falcon. Anyone for a wood falcon or osprey drumstick?
At any rate, only in the past couple hundred years or so have we in the west seen Lyra exclusively as a lyre, a small harp of ancient Greece. In fact as recently as the American Revolution these stars were still depicted as a bird, a great American eagle, but with a lyre in its beak. So perhaps we should play lyre music after Thanksgiving dinner? At any rate, step outside just after dinner any night this week and look for some birds of a different feather and be truly thankful you won't have them served up as Thanksgiving leftovers for several nights in a row, although you will be able to see them many, many nights in a row. Yes indeed, Thanksgiving is really for the birds but in a really nice way. Keep looking up!
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