Playing in April at the Imaginarium
The Hokulani Imaginarium Friday April 7, will be closed in observance of Good Friday
Wednesday April 12, - 7pm Stargazing
Join the ever engaging and entertaining presenter/storyteller Krissie Kellogg as she takes you on a tour of the night sky in the Imaginarium.
Saturday April 22,
1pm Earth, Moon and Sun . . .
. . . is a family favorite that explores the relationship between Earth, Moon and Sun with the help of an amusing character who has a sharp wit but is a bit confused about what he sees in the sky..
2:15pm Earthquake is a sweeping geological journey that explores the forces that transform the surface of Earth from the San Andreas Fault, to the break up of Pangaea 200 million yers ago. Learn how scientists and engineers collaborate to help society prepare for a safer environment given the dynamics of our restless planet.
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Happy Easter
Space Science and Spirituality rendered in a special stained-glass window at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.
At this Easter season, how appropriate to appreciate a beautiful stained-glass window that underscores how science and spirituality are connected. It is known as the
Space Window – in the
Washington National Cathedral and contains a moon rock collected by Apollo astronauts during the first moon landing. The black dot in the center of the big red circle in the stained-glass window is a moon rock from the historic 1969 Apollo 11mission. The unique design of the window is one of the most beloved and most photographed parts of the cathedral.
So, how did this unique collaboration come about?
Frances Bowes Sayres Jr., dean of the Washington National Cathedral during the Apollo years, teamed up with
Thomas Paine, the administrator who led NASA during the first seven Apollo moon missions. They came up with the idea of the Space Window as a symbol of our
spiritual and scientific connections to the cosmos.
The moon rock enshrined in the window came from a two-pound sample affectionately called 10057, a piece of which also sat in President Clinton’s Oval Office. Astronauts Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, and Michael Collins, presented the moon rock to the Washington National Cathedral on July 21, 1974, five years and a day after they plucked the mineral from the Sea of Tranquility on the moon. It is the only moon rock NASA ever gave to a nongovernmental institution.
Using inspirations from photographs taken during the Apollo 11 mission, St. Louis artist,
Rodney Winfield, created and crafted the window. The white path represents the track of the spacecraft between dark orbs and tiny stars. A quote from the book of Job (22:12) runs along the base of the window: “Is not God in the height of Heaven.”
The quote from the book of Job is quite significant since most biblical scholars agree that the book of Job is one of, if not the oldest book in the Bible thought to have been written 3500 years ago before Genesis. God takes Job to task regarding how little he knows about the Cosmos and its creation when he refers to several heavenly constellations:
“Can you bind the cluster of the Pleiades, or loose the belt of Orion? Can you bring out Mazzaroth in its season? Can you guide the Great Bear with its cubs? Do you know the ordinances of the heavens? Can you set their dominion over the Earth?” (Job 38-33)
It is also quite significant to design and craft a stained-glass window that informs the public of the spiritual and scientific connections to the cosmos. While the Egyptians were likely the first to use colored glass for jewelry, perfume and tincture bottles, Romans used stained glass windows in their homes. However, stained glass windows that most of us are familiar with in churches began in the middle ages in the gothic period as a way to tell the stories of the Bible to those who could not read it since the Bible was largely written in Latin, a language of the clergy and not the common people.Consequently, having a space window in a cathedral is simply a visualization of Psalm 19:1: “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork.”
Whether terrified or thrilled by the grandeur of the cosmos, there is no disputing that it is the source of all of us.
Carl Sagan once said, “We are made of star stuff.” The
Kumulipo, Hawaiian creation narrative proclaims that we come from the awesome unadulterated darkness of space. The chemical elements that shape the breadth of creation also form our galaxy, our planet and even the cells of our body. What better way to acknowledge the magnanimity of creation than a stained-glass window in a national cathedral marking man's first adventure into the cosmos?
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Lanihuli Observatory has a new dome
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Holy Conjunctions Bat Man - Did you see Venus and Jupiter March 1?
Like clockwork, the planets dance in the night sky, passing one another in predictable, repeating orbits: a dance that’s been ongoing continuously for billions of years. Even despite the effects of General Relativity and the gravitational influence of the other planets on one another, the simple laws of planetary motion that date back to Kepler dictating how quickly the planets move, in ellipses around the Sun, relative to one another are so perfect that they require no corrections over the timescale of many centuries to successfully predict where, at any given time, the planets will appear relative to one another.
On March 1 and 2, 2023, Venus and Jupiter aligned in a spectacular conjunction: an astronomical event where the two brightest planets in Earth’s night sky were separated by merely half-a-degree, or about half the width of your pinkie finger’s nail when you hold it at arm’s length. Easily visible in the post-sunset skies if you had a clear western horizon, this marked the closest, most easily visible meeting of our two brightest planets since 2015, and there won’t be a better show until 2039.
The picture below taken with a cell phone at Duke's Waikiki March 7, by our own Krissie Kellogg shows bright Venus above Jupiter. By March 7, the planets were aligned rather than conjoined.
More to see in our April Sky (All times a hst)
- April 5, Full Moon 6:35pm
- April 10, Conjunction Venus and Pleiades (2.5 degrees apart 7:30-9:30pm)
- April 12, 7:00pm Mercury at highest point int he sky (17 degrees)
- April 22, Conjunction of Moon-Venus (4.3 degrees apart) 7:00pm-9:45pm
- April 25 ,Conjunction of Moon-Mars (3.3 degrees apart) (7:15 pm-12:10am)
- http://aerospace.wcc.hawaii.edu/AstroCalendar/Celestial%20Events%20for%20current%20year.pdf **********************************************************
