My Dark Sky

I just don’t understand…

Is it so difficult to understand that if there were clouds, we are unable to see planets and stars in the sky? Even if we have a telescope?

The KL weather was very bad for the last month; it had been raining almost every night. If there was no rain, it was cloudy.

Last Friday, I was attending a star-party in a school in KL. As usual, it was cloudy. Once in a while, the clouds cleared a hole in the sky and we managed to have a glimpse of Saturn. But most of the time, the clouds covered everything.

Then came this typical conversation I had at almost all star-party:

“Why there is nothing to see?”
“Because it’s cloudy…”
“How come just now we can see, but now we can’t see?”
“Because just now the clouds cleared up a bit, but now the clouds covered the sky again…”
“How come cloudy we cannot see?”
“Because the clouds blocked the objects in the sky…”
“But you got telescope wat, should be able to see mah…’
“Telescope cannot see through the clouds…”
“Then your telescope in not a powerful one lor…”
“There is no telescope in the world that can see through clouds…”

Sometimes I have to keep on explaining and explaining to the same people that we cannot see anything in the sky if it is cloudy, not even the brightest one such as the Moon or the Sun. I don’t mind explaining but the problem is some just don’t believe me! They thought that our telescopes are lousy, cannot see anything… It is their responses and expressions that disappointed me so much… Come on, this is no technical topic, it is just common sense! How can you expect to see something when there is something else blocking your view???

The worst is that I’ve been approached by the person-in-charge (sometime is a teacher or a headmaster!) and sort of blame me that I “promise” them that they can see Saturn, and cloudy sky is just an excuse from my side. They cannot accept cloudy sky as the reason.

I think next time I have to specifically put a clause that states “We can observe these objects tonight but it is 100% subject to weather condition, no promise”. Do I really have to do that? Is it not understood that if it’s raining or cloudy means there will be no stars/planets visible?

Over the years, I had attended countless of star-parties and what troubled me so much is that this scenario keeps on popping up. I’m left to wonder why this is the case. Why some of the public can’t get the point that “cloudy sky cannot see stars/planets” and “telescopes cannot see through the clouds”. I can just only wonder… and hopefully with my limited efforts, I can make them understand.

This post is only talking about our general public as a whole, not at any specific individuals or groups.

Posted in General Astro Talk

A lot of people always mixed up these two terms – astroNOMY and astroLOGY.  They thought they are the same thing.

Yes, they are the same, but that was the story of once upon a time. Actually astronomy starts from astrology, but over the time they “divorced” and become a field of their own.

AstroNOMY is a science; it studies everything beyond Earth; from objects in our Solar System, out to objects in our Galaxy and other galaxies, out to the edge of the universe, to the first moment when our universe is born. It is linked with other sciences such as mathematics, physics and chemistry.

AstroLOGY is a pseudo-science; it is a belief system. It believes (without proof!) that the position of the Sun, Moon and planets or even the stars will influence our personalities and shape our lives. It tried to relate what happens in the sky, some sort of force from the heaven, to our daily lives (and it is wrong!)

Since astrology is just a belief system, so it depends on which sources you want to believe. The predictions and conclusions from different sources can say very different things. It is just the matter of which source you want to believe, if you ever believe what they predict… (I’ll write another post later why astrology is wrong)

On the other hand, astronomy is a science, thus it must be based on facts and figures. Every source must say the same thing (provided that the fact has been proven right). Open any astronomy textbook and they will tell you that the Sun is shining because it is converting hydrogen into helium. You will not find that some textbook say the fuel is hydrogen, some say is oxygen and some say is carbon.

Many may not know it, but astronomy is the oldest science, much older than physics or chemistry or biology. When ancient people look at the sky, they saw the Sun, they saw the Moon, and they saw the stars. Occasionally they saw some meteors and comets.

And they also realised that some stars were fixed and some stars were wandering, which they called them “planets” (the wanderers). Then, due to human’s curiosity, they seek to understand why. Some they can understand, but some they cannot. Those that cannot be understood turned into fear.

So they start worshipping the celestial objects, hopefully that the celestial Gods will be happy and bring peace to Earth. If a disaster happens, meaning that the God is dissatisfied and sacrifice must be made.

They also monitor the stars, and by using their imaginations, they connected the stars to form the figure of Gods, heroes, monsters, animals and so on and give names to them. And thus constellations were born.

Emperors, kings and rulers of the ancient civilisations always thought that they were from the heavens, and there was a place among the stars that belongs to them. Hence, if a meteor or comet passing close to this region of sky, it will be treated as a bad omen and something had to be done to counteract this threat.

So to make sure that they always response at the first instance to anything that “went wrong” in the sky, they engaged a group of “experts” to monitor the sky, to make predictions and to advise what should be done to counteract any threat from the heavens.

And so, these ancient astronomers/astrologers start to carefully monitor the positions and movements of planets and stars and record any unusually event in the sky such as solar and lunar eclipse, appearance of comets, meteor showers and supernovae. These were very scientific observations. Even until today, we still find some of their records very useful.

Unfortunately, such scientific observations were turned into unscientific predictions.

For example, a prince was born when Mars was retrograde and seems to stand still in a particular constellation. This was abnormal; planets should be wandering and not standing still. So the prince was predicted to have this character. Then it may further said that this character contradict with the current ruler and foreseen that he will kill his father the King when he grows up, thus this prince had to be thrown far far away from the kingdom or even may not be allowed to born.

This is where astronomy and astrology do not have a clear cut.

Humans are learning and improving. Over the time, people start to realise that “things up there” can be explained and can be understood. There is no divine power at work. All work according to scientific laws. Our job is to find the laws that govern them.

So, astronomy and astrology divorced.

Astronomy chooses to walk the path of facts, and becomes a branch of science. Astrology still maintains as what it was thousands of years ago, using outdated astronomical data to predict your life and my life.

Posted in General Astro Talk