Sun conjunct Galactic Center
12/18/2012 @ 27° 01' 52 Sagittarius
12/21/2225 29° 59' Sagittarius
12/21/2226 00° 00' Capricorn -- the location of the Galactic Center
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| It is cute and a reminder of our smallness in the scheme of things. In order to have a photograph of our Milky Way Galaxy though, you would need a vantage point from outside of the galaxy, and a good ways away in order to fit the whole thing in the viewfinder. So this picture is a gotcha from whoever started it. It is actually a photo of the Andromeda Galaxy. |
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| The Milky Way Galaxy is organized into spiral arms of giant stars that illuminate interstellar gas and dust. Our Sun is in a finger called the Orion Spur. Some of the brightest stars and most famous celestial objects of this constellation (Betelgeuse, Rigel, the stars of Orion's Belt, the Orion Nebula) are neighbors of sorts to our sun, located within the Orion Arm. When we look at it, we're looking into our own local spiral arm. This is not a photograph, it is a portrait. To photograph our galaxy, you'd have to be outside of it, and that's a long, long way. For more visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/gallery/galaxy-location.html http://earthsky.org/space/does-our-sun-reside-in-a-spiral-arm-of-the-milky-way-galaxy |
Hello fans of Astrology in Astrophysics. Doing some cleanup on one of my computers I came upon these calculations that I'd made for the 2012 whoop-de-do. Then as now I prefer to stick to the astrology that I know, and not suddenly jump on a Mayan track and pretend that I know something about Mayan astrology. Not necessarily part of the Mayan thing was the notion, that at the time of the Winter Solstice, also known as the Winter Equinox, that the solstice Sun, viewed from Earth, would be exactly on the Galactic Center in that alignment looking toward the Sun from the Earth (GC then, behind the Sun). Imagine the center of our galaxy (we call the Milky Way, aka Via Lactea) at the moment of the Equinox, that our Sun would transit or eclipse that precise center point.
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| I came upon this by accident and thought to use it here because it depicts the baloney of the so-called alignment of the 2012 Winter Solstice Sun with the Galactic Center. I was gratified to find the word BULLSHIT in the caption with it. Yes folks, it will be 210 years until the event. Then, the marker "C" will have the year 2225 beneath it. |
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| In this photo (probably composit since it is such a huge chunk of space) we look toward the Galactic Center from Earth. It's a rather unpreposing part of the Galaxy. When we zoom in, and we have now, but I'll leave those photos for another time, we find a bright globe. That globe is made of light being sucked into the Black Hole there. I continue to be gratified and amazed at what space exploration has given us in such a short span of time. I know that this will spread out over the page, but I just can't bring myself to smallerize it. |
I pointed out that would not occur until the year 2225 and 2226. I may have said something along the lines of the carnival barker's "Close, but no cigar." Which I suppose was the prize for whacking the base lever with a big sledge hammer to send a weight up to ring the bell at the top, "Close, but no cigar." In fact, at the solstice in 2012, the Sun was just a teeny bit less than three entire degrees away from the center.
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| Here's another view with other galaxies, stars, and objects identified. The letters are abbreviations for astronomical catalogues-published lists of known stars, nebulae, supernova remnants, galaxies, and other objects in space. The New General Catalogue (NGC) was originally published in 1888 by the Royal Astronomical Society and lists 7,840 objects. The Index Catalogue (IC) lists an additional 5,286 galaxies, nebulae, and star clusters discovered between 1888 and 1907. Names with the letter M are Messier objects, named after Charles Messier, a French astronomer. In the 1760s and 70s, he hunted comets and made a list of the 103 objects he found that looked like, but were not comets. All Messier objects can be seen with binoculars or small telescopes under clear, dark skies. From: http://www.mnh.si.edu/exhibits/evolving-universe/science/kidcat.htm |
These are undeniably exciting times, before and after 2012, but there are real astrological events that fit our reality quite well. We'll have to wait until 2225 for whatever is implied by the solstice Sun exactly conjunct the Galactic Center.
Aloha!
© Copyright 2015 Tim Rubald
