I’m One up on Galileo

 

I’m One up on Galileo In February 2022, I got one up on Galileo.  Two of my friends of several decades died within ten days.  I had picked up a case of covid when I found one of them deceased from covid and diabetes. I woke up coughing in the dark a little before 5 in the morning.  I could not get back to sleep, but I remembered a small news entry about a rare conjunction of Venus, Mars, … and Mercury.  Venus is the morning star, circling inside Earth’s orbit.  Mercury is even more so; inside Venus’ orbit, closest to the Sun.  Because it is closest to the Sun, Mercury is much dimmer than Venus and only appears briefly after sundown and briefly before sunrise, and it is only visible near the horizon. In his last years, the great astronomer, Galileo Galilei lamented that he had never seen Mercury.  He was the Pope’s official astronomer (despite the continuing controversy about that Earth moves” thing), so he stayed in the area of Rome, bound with the golden chains of his papal salary. The Roman area often has ground fogs that hid the occasional and faint Mercury.  Galileo missed out. But I had a chance to see Mercury.  I dressed and donned a jacket to stroll into the morning dark.  It was winter dark with a later sunrise, but the Los Angeles Basin around me only had a cool (but not cold) breeze.  Most important, the breeze was the Santa Anna with dry clear air.  Venus looked like a searchlight shining at me from the east, but I was in a housing street with street lights and porch lamps. They outshone the fainter lights in the sky I needed to walk the quarter mile to where my street jogged up against a hillside where I would be above the neighborhood lights. I was surprised at how much the ordinary mundane houses of my neighborhood had become a silent fairyland.  (It was cold enough that the ordinary barking dogs had been let in, and everything was quiet save for the occasional groans of cars and trucks on the Huntington Drive thoroughfare a half mile downslope.)  Bright areas of street lights stood out like lit stage areas.  Some houses had white or yellow porch lamps.  A few yards still sported strings of little Christmas lights of various colors.  One house had a bright purple light.  Who were those people? Finally, Portola met Jennings Avenue and Jennings rose steeply above most of the houses.  Most of the lights below were subdued by buildings and hillside below me.  Lights from the San Gabriel Valley towns to the east flickered like a Vegas casino, but the stars above were clear and steady almost to the horizon.  There was a fainter light down and to the left of Venus.  There was a fainter light down and to the right much closer to Venus.  Did I just imagine that one … because it was faint?  No, it was there after I looked away and came back to it—bright Venus, a lesser light down plus left and a much lesser light down plus to the right but only a third of the distance to the leftmost object.  I looked away and checked again many times until the sky began fading from black to gray and the lights above faded.  I walked back to my house, looking over my right shoulder at Venus and the probable Mars and Mercury.  At my door, and with a nearby street lamp, the probables had faded away … but Venus was still a searchlight. Inside, I consulted the Internet sky news.  Yes, the object below and to the left was Venus.  Yes, the object closer to the right and down was Mars—fainter because it was on the far side of the Sun.  But, I had seen Mercury.  I am now one up on the first person to report on telescopically viewing the moons and rings of Saturn, the first person to change humanity’s view of the cosmos.  If I can do that, I can do a lot more things.  Thus, this is the beginning of some serious blogging … and other things.