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And Venus Was Her Name, …..the Two-Faces of Luck.I clipped out of the newspaper a small portrait of a two-faced cat. It was such a remarkable photograph that I stapled it to the bulletin board in our coffee room at work. It was a focal point of interest and conversation, and it often got me to thinking about how such events happen---against astronomical odds of pure chance----and their meaning to the rest of us. This is my story of the what my quest unmasked, the trail that I unearthed with its unexpected discoveries and magical links. A cat named after our closest neighboring planet, our sister or twin planet. What is in a good name? What can an appropriate name symbolize? In this case, a connection to our powerful need as demonstrated by people worldwide many years ago, to understand the nature and dimensions of the solar system that we call home, and our place in it. As well as serendipitous discoveries of varying degrees of importance; some of continental magnitude...*******************A stray female cat found on a dairy farm in North Carolina in 2009 was adopted by the family as a pet. Good fortune one might correctly surmise for the family and especially for the critter. Her coloring and markings are unique---half of her face is jet black with a green eye while the other half is striped, domestic tabby; featuring a tortoiseshell pattern consisting of patches of orange and black with a startling, bright blue eye. Her feline visage is spilt exactly in two, creating a straight line down the center of her face. A mystery in genetics. Some experts say she is a feline chimera. A cat whose cells contain two types of DNA joined when two embryos fuse together at conception. In that case, Venus is like conjoined twins except it is just her facial features that are split. Tortoiseshell cats are nearly all female. Most male tortoiseshell cats are chimeras where they possess an added X chromosome required for that coloration and fur pattern; they are rare and usually sterile. As a female though she already has two X chromosomes. Also, her one blue eye is quite remarkable in that cat eyes are almost exclusively yellow or green. If not a chimera, it may just be a matter of her defying the odds in the game of genetic inheritance. Unique is an understatement, and her picture gained much notoriety once her owner posted it on Facebook. And, Venus was her name.SHOCKING BLUE [Dutch Rock group]“Venus” [Robbie van Leeuwen-1969]A goddess on a mountain topWas burning like a silver flame,The summit of beauty & love,And Venus was her nameShe’s got it,Yeah, baby, she’s got it.Well, I’m your Venus,I’m your fire at your desire [repeat]Her weapon was her crystal eyesMaking ev’ry man mad;Black as a dark night she was,Got what no one else had.Wow!************************Venus is the second planet from the Sun, named after the Roman goddess of love, womanhood and beauty, and aside from the Moon it is the brightest object in the night sky. It rotates clockwise which is opposite of all planets save Uranus, it has no rings or moons, its axis is only slightly tilted [2.7 degrees] so Venus does not have seasonal changes and it rotates so slowly that just one of its days lasts longer than its year. Only Mercury and Jupiter have no tilt to their axes. It takes Venus 243 earth days to spin once on its nearly perpendicular axis. Venus’s clouds reflect sunlight like a mirror, and its luminosity is ten times that of Sirius, the brightest star above us. The ancients tracked this “wandering star” against the background of fixed stars; its position shifts from the eastern sky when seen in the morning to the western sky when spotted in the early evening. Its silver light is never seen twinkling like starlight from afar but shines direct. Mercury and Venus are never far away from the Sun in our sky and because their orbits are closer than Earth’s they are known as “inferior” planets. In astronomy, elongation refers to the angle between the Sun and a planet as viewed from Earth when an inferior planet is furthest from the Sun, whether to the east or to the west. When either Mercury or Venus has a western elongation from the Sun it is a morning star; they can be seen in the eastern sky by us just before sunrise. When either have eastern elongation, they are evening stars; Venus or Mercury can be seen by us in the western sky just after sunset. In ancient times, it was not realized that both Mercury and Venus appeared alternately on one side of the Sun then on the other. Mercury was thought to shine only in the evening sky while Apollo was another distinct planet that shone brightly as a morning star. Venus was known as Phosphorus in the morning sky and Hesperus in the evening sky by the Greeks; and, Lucifer and Vesper accordingly by the Romans. This dusk to dawn shift in planetary position happens when the interior planets shorter orbits around the Sun overtake Earth’s longer orbit, thus they change from being visible after sunset to being observable before sunrise. Both Mercury and Venus possessed dual identities in ancient times but it turned out to be just two sides of the same face for both planets. We owe gratitude to Pythagoras of Greece for figuring out in the fifth century B.C. that it was but one planet for each.********************The ancient Greeks were obsessed with the properties and relationships involving right triangles as evidenced by the Pythagoreans accomplishment to develop and prove their famous mathematical theorem. Trigonometry [triangle + measure] evolved later, and is derived from the relationships between the sides and angles of right triangles; right triangles have played a role from the earliest of our civilizations dating back to their use by the Egyptians in constructing the pyramids. Today, right triangles and trigonometry are pillars supporting our comprehension of art, design, engineering, surveying and the dimensions of Outer Space.********************It turns out there is a link in astronomy between Halley's comet and the planet Venus. A tie that has absolutely nothing to do with the famous comet itself but rather with Mr. Halley, the English astronomer for whom it is named. But I first must regress in history a bit more to the works of the German astronomer Johannes Kepler who worked with the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe during the last year of that Great Dane's life. Tycho Brahe over a lifetime of observations collected data of unprecedented accuracy concerning the orbits of the planets. After his death, Kepler "borrowed" or frankly stole the reams of observational information collected by Brahe. What Kepler did with it though was astounding in its scope and in his correct interpretation of the mechanics of the planetary orbits within our Solar System.************************ Johannes Kepler wrote three laws of planetary motion. The first two in 1609 and the third in 1619.1st Law: The orbit of a planet is an ellipse-remember geometry- where one focus is the Sun.2nd Law: A line from the planet to the Sun sweeps out an equal area in equal amounts of time. This means that the planets speed is not constant, moving slowest in its elliptical orbit the furthest from the Sun and clocking the fastest speeds when closest.Good things often occur in groups of threes but it took 10 years for Kepler to decipher the final law of his trilogy. But for our story the last is by far the most important. The third law states that one can pinpoint the relative distance of each planet from the Sun by timing its orbital period. By timing the actual year of each planet---the time it takes to revolve once in its orbit---you can compare its distance from the Sun relative to the distances from the Sun of the other planets. The operative word here is relative because no one had any idea just how far in miles we were from the Sun or the actual distance in miles between the planets. Kepler determined that if he designated the Earth at a distance one [1] from the Sun then Mercury is 0.39, Venus is 0.72, Mars is 1.52, Jupiter is 5.2, Saturn 9.54 and so on with the other outer planets. Was a planet like Venus hundreds of thousands of miles away or many millions of miles away? No one knew. ...but in 1716 English astronomer Edmond Halley devised a methodology to find out and published it; but he died 19 years before he could put it to the test...that is 19 years before the next transit of Venus crossed the face of the Sun. The concept behind Halley's scheme was based on parallax, a clever exploitation of that visual shift in position that comes from sighting any object from two different viewpoints or sight lines.***********************Now think of two observers on Earth, one stationed at each opposite pole, gazing at the transit of Venus in the skies above. Because of their differing vantage points and respective differences in perspective they both see the transit path across the disc of the Sun somewhat altered. Let us emphasize that there is but one planet Venus traveling the same distance in its true orbit as it eclipses the Sun as viewed from Earth. The observer at the North pole sees the planet traverse one apparent path across the Sun; the South pole observer sees the apparent path of Venus slightly shifted to the north. Halley proposed that the two apparent paths would have not only shifted positions but also different lengths too. And, furthermore the best way to pinpoint the placement of the transit paths and the precise length of each apparent path across the Sun as viewed from the widely-separated vantage points on Earth was for both observers to accurately time the transit simultaneously. The Sun is a circular orb and if the transit path appears shifted across a different segment of its disc due to the change in perspective on Earth it will take a different amount of time to complete its journey across that segment of the globe of the Sun.Transits are rare. They come in pairs, just eight years apart, but subsequent transit pairs are separated by about 120 years. They occur in sets where there are two December observations eight years apart, followed not until the next century by two June transits 8 years apart. There are 243 years between one June or December observation pairs and the next. Halley died 19 years before the next upcoming pairs of transits of Venus but others travelled to far off destinations to make the sightings. Far off destinations widely separated in distance but coordinated geographic locations nonetheless. The viewing points chosen by the geometry necessary to construct a right triangle in the sky to deduce the true distance between the planets: one in each the northern & southern hemispheres, located on the same East-West meridian of longitude, each as far apart as pragmatically possible to give the greatest degree of visual parallax--that shift in apparent position when viewing an object from two different points---during Venus's transit. Half the distance between the two lined up viewing points on Earth forms one side of a right triangle while Venus forms the apex of the same triangle caught in the center of a visual "cradle" formed at the crossing of the two lines of sight that mark each North or South transit paths on the Sun. We can calculate the angle between the two paths as seen from Venus. See exploratorium.edu/venus/questions4.html for diagrams, calculations. We need to know the distance between the two observers on Earth. A line midway between the two observers to Venus forms another side of the triangle while the longest side opposite the right angle is the hypotenuse. If the Earth's distance is 1, then Venus's distance from the Sun is 0.72. With trigonometry, it is possible to determine the actual distance of the side that is representative of the Earth to Venus distance and with Kepler's third law we can easily calculate the Earth-Sun distance in actual miles. The observations in 1761 led to a distance approximation of 95 million miles. A calculation that is close to the actual distance now measured by radar at 92, 655, 807 miles. During the 1761 transit, some observers of the time noticed a blurry halo surrounding the dark spot of Venus when the planet first contacted the Sun's edge. Venus must possess an atmosphere. With Kepler's third law denoting the relative spacing of the then 6 known planets it was simple to deduce the actual scale in miles of our solar system. Uranus and Neptune were not yet discovered in 1761.*********************England may not have commissioned James Cook to make the voyage of the Endeavor in 1769 if it wasn't for its quest for the scientific knowledge concerning the Transit of Venus. Much earlier the Dutch and the Portuguese explorers had landed on Australia but did not grasp the continental scope of the island. In short time, other European explorers would have explored it further and taken possession. How do we know how far away the Sun is? Prior to 1761 Europe was fascinated and excited about the possibility of calculating the Astronomical Unit---the distance from the Earth to the Sun. The first transit in 1761 occurred at the peak of the Seven Year's War [1756-1763], scientific collaboration was difficult and there were some unexpected technical viewing problems experienced by those countries that did sponsor expeditions. In 1769, both the English and the French sent scientific expeditions. Political rivalry was intense. England sent Cook to Tahiti on a scientific quest to make the observations. He was commissioned as the master of the sailing ship Endeavor and before departure he was given a sealed envelope from the Admiralty with strict instructions to not open its contents until after the transit observation. He set sail and the day after the transit on Tahiti Cook opened the letter to find out that he was ordered to sail south to explore the vast sea for Terra Australis incognita--the rumored, unknown southern lands. James Cook by training was a skilled cartographer and when he mapped the eastern seaboard of the Australian land mass he recognized the full scope of the new continent. In now Botany Bay outside of what is now Sydney he claimed it for England while planting the Union Jack flag despite the presence of the native Aborigines. Thus, the scientific requirements for successfully making the transit observations in selecting the Endeavor's crew and officers also added greatly to the discoveries and success of the reconnaissance mission for England.**********************The 1769 Transit of Venus was observed by astronomers all over the world including a contingent of learned men that set up an observation platform on the hilltop of College Hill in Providence, Rhode Island. They spent months in preparation for the June 3, 1769 sighting even ordering special optical equipment including a "three feet reflecting telescope" for the viewing from England. They also employed a sextant made in Newport, and "two good clocks," one of which was made locally in their city by clockmaker Edward Spalding. The platform was constructed "of seasoned pine plank, as smooth and level as art could make it" 100 feet east of Benefit Street near the end of Thayer Street close to what is now called Transit Street in honor of the 1769 accomplishments. Nearby is Planet Street, named likewise after the 1769 transit. The Providence sky-watchers were part of a worldwide effort to gauge the size of our Solar System. A sky-watcher from Rehoboth, MA who was self-taught in astronomy, Mr. Benjamin West, later documented the Providence observation efforts. Despite the archaic style of the writing, you can still sense the enthusiasm of those who participated in what was an interesting and rare event. Others local participants included Governor Stephen Hopkins, Dr. Jabez Bowen and the Brown brothers, Joseph and Moses.***********************Serendipity is a term first introduced in the mid-1700s in England in writings by a British nobleman derived from an ancient fairy tale from Persia. It is good luck in making unexpected fortunate discoveries. If you go to the supermarket with no coins in your pocket and you need a quarter to unlock a secured, shopping cart you are out of luck unless you by serendipity find a quarter on the ground, someone kindly gives you one or someone who is lazy, hurried or apathetic abandons a cart in the parking lot. Otherwise you scamper to a cashier for the required change or negotiate a coin from a fellow shopper. There is an aspect of this good fortune that must be recognized. You by your own devices put yourself in position to possibly exploit a possibly fortuitous outcome. You are in the right place and at the right time for such an opportunity. Necessity is the mother of invention and your dilemma motivates you to search for a solution. It is not just random, blind luck if you find a quarter if one considers the likelihood that at least one shopper out of possibly many may have been clumsy. You are in a place where such a mishap as a lost coin may happen; someone’s loss becomes your gain; you are lucky but your luck is dependent upon related, understandable circumstances; not in an astounding way blessed by the heavens above like the genetics behind Venus the two-faced cat.By Robert A. Saritelli3/03/2017 ................
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