Capturing the Elusive Mercury, April 2016

All observational photos taken 4/13/16

This is the time of year when, because of its proximity to the autumnal equinox, the obliquity, or angle of the ecliptic - the apparent path of the sun across the background stars, is narrow relative to the horizon.

An easy way of illustrating this is with the moon. As a general rule, the moon rises approximately 50 minutes later than it did the day or night before, except during the full Harvest Moon period of September.

Because of the narrow angle of the ecliptic around the time of the autumnal equinox, the moon rises only about 30 to 35 minutes later each night, and seems to hug the eastern horizon longer before making its way across the sky.

So, here we are just shy of six months on the opposite side of the calendar, not long after the vernal equinox of spring, which means the obliquity of the ecliptic is widest. The effect is that objects will stand higher from the horizon than other times of year, while their speed across the sky remains the same. If you noticed recent waxing crescent moons looking oddly like the ghostly grin of Lewis Carroll’s vanished Cheshire Cat suspended in the western sky after sunset, this is why!

The planet Mercury, one of the five original “wanderers” of astronomical antiquity, is famously elusive even in the best of apparitions. Because it orbits inside the orbit of the Earth, both it and Venus never stand in opposition relative to the sun – that is to say they will never be visible all night long. Instead they are only visible briefly each night, either minutes, in the case of Mercury or hours for Venus, before or after sunset, depending upon which side of the sun they appear relative to the Earth, or of course if they are in superior or inferior conjunction (behind or in front of the sun’s disc, depending on their orbit).

The speedy messenger of the gods is currently shining in the evening twilight at an approximate magnitude of -0.2, making it an easy naked-eye object, and of course bright enough to be captured by my cell phone camera.

If ever you wanted to see Mercury with your own eyes, there is no better time than the present! All you really need is a clear horizon to the northwest.

Mercury’s greatest elongation – when it will appear farthest from the sun from our perspective and therefore highest in our sky, is April 18th. But don’t wait long. The planet’s 88-day orbit around the sun means these apparitions are fast - as befits the messenger of the gods, and the planet will quickly sink back into the glare of the sun toward inferior conjunction in a few weeks, transit across the sun’s disc on May 16th – an event visible from western Europe, eastern North America, Northern South America, and emerge ahead of the sun in the morning sky late next month!

Continental Mask of Infamy, Style Circa 1680

More from my days at Manion’s, sold January 2004:

“He who lusts for quarrel and hate shall carry me around the state.”

Multi-piece formed steel construction, exaggerated and contorted facial features, hinged with lock to reverse. Used for the public humiliation of wrong-doers, alongside other instruments of torture such as the Shrew’s Fiddle – a variation of the yoke, and the insidious Judas Cradle.

Mask styles varied according to the crime they were meant to punish, from stealing, lying, adultery…and disagreeable or scolding women.

Ten Years Ago: Getting the Hammer at Manion's International Auction House

It’s been a while since I’ve done a TBT, but today is too good to ignore. In early 1998, I took a job in the 'description department' at Manion’s International Auction House. The company specialized in historical militaria and for a time dominated that collecting field on a truly international scale.

Unfortunately the company was not able to harness and ride the Internet as well as might have been expected. A devastating tornado in May 2003 further hobbled Manion’s at a time it should have been making progress, and in the mid-aughts, the namesake of the company abruptly retired, even as the firm found itself on a slide into shabbiness and eventual collapse. Hmmm.

When I started with the company, there were around 50 employees. When I and several others were laid off on March 31, 2006, there were perhaps just 25 remaining. The numbers sank from there until the company officially cried uncle in early 2014.

Yes, this was for internal use only.

For all of the company’s failings - some being considerable, I look back on my time there very fondly, especially remembering my department, which was manned by a well-educated freakshow of the eccentric and genuinely unsane: Former Smithsonian Institute archivists, Johns Hopkins staff, authors, Fort Leavenworth Command and General Staff College instructors, etc. I’ve never felt more comfortable, professionally speaking, and in time I became the department’s head weirdo.

Starting around 2001, I kept a series of notebooks at my desk so I could record the random outbursts of the staff, and I maintain that in the unthinkable event of a house fire, they would be among the few items I would try to save on my way out. I sometimes think I should publish them...with names redacted.

Anyway, it has been ten years to the day since my days there ended. The company is now gone, which is a good thing ultimately, but its memory lives on…infamously to those burned in its declining years, famously to those of us that inhabited that twilight zone.

Comet Hunter David Levy's Observing Logs at the Linda Hall Library

After finishing an appraisal inspection in midtown Kansas City a last month, I stopped by the Linda Hall Library of Science and Engineering on the UMKC campus.

Opened in 1946, the library is privately funded and is "the world’s foremost independent research library devoted to science, engineering, and technology."

It had been a while since I last visited and was reminded of the fact when I found a story online about how Canadian comet hunter David Levy had donated his observing logs to the library last September. How I missed that, I don't know.

The library has seen several significant renovations since I ast visited, including the William M. Deramus III Cosmology Theater, and an expanded area for Special Collections and Rare Books.

I was chatting with the assistant librarian for the History of Science about our both having attended the University of Virginia's Rare Book School and endured the Principles of Descriptive Bibliography course, when Bill Ashworth, instructor for the university’s History of Astronomy course I took over 20 years ago, came by. I had not seen him since Dr. J.A. Stack's memorial service at the library in 1997, and it was good to catch up.

Anyway, apart from getting a new library card, I wanted to see David Levy's observing logs, which are now on display. I was very pleasantly surprised to see his observing log from when he was eleven looked very much like my own at that age. Of course he went on to become of the 20^th century’s most prolific comet hunters. 

Perhaps the most famous of his discoveries was Shoemaker-Levy 9, a comet that fragmented and crashed into Jupiter over the course of six days in July 1994.

Here are some pics from the exhibit:

David Levy and Clyde Tombaugh

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February 2016 New Moon

Caught the 23 hour old moon tonight on the way to our Cub Scout Pack's committee meeting tonight.

The German Military Connections of Rudolf the Victorious in H.G. Wells's "Things to Come"

In the mid 1930's, noted writer, historian, and social commentator H.G. Wells, among the world's most famous men of letters of the day, teamed up with producer Alexander Korda and director William Cameron Menzies to produce what would become the world's most expensive film produced until the time, Things to Come (1936).

While Wells was present on set, his control over the film itself was far from complete. The film was, of course, produced for entertainment and not just for propagandizing in the name of Wellsism, although he believed the film served that end until his death in 1946. Cuts had been made by the time of release, and some scenes were simply not filmed. His novelization, or "treatment" of the script had been released a year earlier in 1935, complete with introductory notes, and offers a fuller picture of his intentions with this particular work.

In case you don't know, the story is of a catastrophic world war that collapses the world's economy and sends most areas back to a feckless feudalism governed by upstart warlords and despots. Redemption comes in the form of an international consortium of airmen intent on rebuilding a bigger, better, more orderly and peaceful world. 

Interestingly, the location of the film never actually leaves one place, Everytown. But around the Mediterranean, a group of these airmen calling themselves Wings Over the World, unite under a common order opposed to war, greed and wasteful competition, and spread their gospel of international brotherhood through a miraculous "gas of peace." A space shot is planned, which upsets Luddites among Everytown's citizenry to the point of violence, and the film climaxes with the ultimate triumph of progress in using the tools of science to stretch out man's vision and presence among the stars, closing with trademark Wellsian philosophic soliloquy.

But getting back to the point of this post, H.G. Wells had seen Fritz Lang's view of a possible dystopian future in Metropolis (1927), and thought it "quite the silliest film." I happen to love it. But so put off by Lang's vision was he that when it was his turn some eight years later, his production notes included the admonition that the production crew take Lang's film as a blue print for what not to do.

Wells described each character in good detail, but of course left openings for the costume department to "let their imaginations go." 

Regarding "The Boss" of Everytown, Rudolf the Victorious, played by the inimitable Sir Ralph Richardson, his description was thus:

The Boss can be a heavy, brutish-looking man of the condottiere type. He is in a rough costume between that of a boy scout, a Far West cowboy and a Cossack. A rosette is his symbol and it is everywhere present’ the last degradation of the English Tudor rose. He carries himself with a self-conscious swagger. … The salute is made by standing up stiffly, hands by the side and nose in the air. No hand lifting. The producer should bear in mind that the Boss is not intended to be a caricature of a Fascist or Nazi leader [emphasis added]. He is as much South American or Haytian or Gold Coast. He is something more ancient, more modern and more universal than any topical movements. There is a big flag with a rosette behind him.

But interesting it is to note that in the film, Rudolf's uniform, vaguely reminiscent of a German tunic, features the collar tabs of a German general, and shoulder boards of a German junior officer. 

A case can be made that these accouterments are the province of the nominally apolitical German army, so was this a test of Wells's eye for detail played by the costumers, a happy accident, or a purposeful symbolic stab at the rising threat emerging from the heart of Europe? It is this that I will attempt to expand upon for an upcoming H.G. Wells Society publication.

Stills from Things to Come courtesy of The Criterion Collection.

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Mystery Soviet Headgear from the Ethio-Somali War, 1977-1978?

My late father collected international police and law enforcement related headgear, and by the time of his death in April 2015, had amassed a respectable collection. His most exotic examples were a Baden Police spike helmet (circa 1900), a plumed Italian Carabinieri (national military police), Thai royal palace guard, Bahaman spiked pith helmet, and an NVA military police pith helmet.

Sometime around 2000 he also acquired at auction, by accident – meaning he was mildly intrigued and happened to win it for the minimum bid, a curious piece outside his usual law enforcement scope. At the time of acquisition, its vague attribution was a Somali death squad helmet. My thought is that it was simply military hardware repurposed by a local militia. Skeptic that I am, though, I’ve always wondered if a finer point may be put on it, and on a whim the other night began to look into it.

First, the anatomy of the steel helmet: The shell is clearly a stock Soviet M40 style. The liner rivets are copper, which some helmet experts believe point to a North Korean origin, though I cannot confirm it. This particular example lacks the liner, though traces of the steel band remain. 

The exterior is painted olive-grey with a light sand finish, and features a striking yellow stenciled horned and pointy-toothed skull and bones. The interior is heavily oxidized, but an Arabic number code “2 – 15” is visible at the back inside rim.

So what of this Somali attribution? Well, let’s check the historical record for clues. The “scramble for Africa” between European powers in the late 19^th century saw Britain appeal to Somali Christians, which of course caused friction with their Islamic countrymen, leading them to look to the Ottoman Empire for support. 

A series of military victories led by Mohammad Abdullah Hassan helped establish the Dervish state, though it had collapsed by 1920 after British bombardments. Enter Fascist Italy with its La Grande Somalia idea.

Italy consolidated political control over Somalia throughout the 1920’s – though never ruling without instability, and by the time Mussolini declared the Italian Empire in 1936, the Africa Orientale Italiana – or A.O.I., it included Ethiopia, Eritrea, and, of course, Italian Somaliland. By the end of 1940, Italy had pushed the British out of British Somaliland and the East Africa Protectorate.

Of course with the collapse of Italian power during World War II, the British regained British Somaliland and eventually conquered Italian Somaliland, which became protectorates until the Potsdam Conference of 1949 granted Italy trusteeship over their old portion. Britain retained theirs until 1960.

Eventually disputes would lead to the Ethio-Somali War, also known as the Ogaden War of 1977-1978, which is where I suspect this helmet came from. In an odd twist of fate, the Soviet Union had been supporting both countries – while the United States had been supporting Ethiopia. At the outbreak of hostilities – when Somalia invaded Ethiopia, Somalia broke ties with the USSR in favor of the USA, while the USA ceased its support of Ethiopia to side with the Somalis – though not militarily. 

Interestingly the USA stayed out of the conflict, which saw Ethiopia and her allies, the Soviet Union, Cuba, and South Yemen take on Somalia and her allies, Western Somali Liberation Front, China, and Romania – the brutal authoritarian Nicolae Ceausescu being one to break with Moscow’s official line when it suited him. 

War crimes against civilians were committed by both sides, and the conflict only ended when Somalia evacuated back across the border and a truce was declared – though an insurgency continued by the Somali National Army and Western Somali Liberation Front.

So, with both Ethiopia and Somalia having been given Soviet hardware at one time or another,  just whose side was this helmet on? I still can't say for sure. Historical research can be like that. Could be Somalian, could be Ethiopian. But I’ll let you know if I ever figure it out! 

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