So Jen is doing the dishes as I come in from evening farm
chores and I tell her that we really are an astronomy-based farm. “Oh really?”
says she. “Really,” says I.
First of all, I teach astronomy in two different formats: (a)
the regular curriculum astronomy over at Tri-County Community College and (b) a
few stargazing classes through the college’s Community
Enrichment offerings.
Also, our laying flock consists entirely of Golden
Comets, we will probably have a calf named Venus someday (all
of Baby’s calves have V names: Victor, Victoria, next year will be Violet, etc.),
and there are asters all over the place for the bees. Heck, we drive a Saturn and Jen’s phone is a
Galaxy (by Samsung)!
She feels the need to challenge my assertion about the
wildflowers. Aster and astro both come
from the Greek root astron –
star. I press further. An asterism is a group of prominent stars
which make up a picture but are not actually a constellation. Asterisms
are usually subsets of constellations.
The two best examples will shake most people’s knowledge of
astronomy. The Big Dipper and Little
Dipper… are not actually constellations.
Nope. They are asterisms. The Big Dipper is only a part of the constellation
Ursa Major (the
Great Bear). Same story for the Little
Dipper and Ursa Minor.
Of course farming is tied to the Sun’s cycles and path
through the sky. But even that does not
explain the open
clusters of fox grapes we found in the “hedge” along our
driveway or the globular
clusters of grapes I hope to have someday (open clusters and
globular clusters are star clusters of different ages and which are located in
distinctly different regions of the galaxy).
Until then, I’ll just continue to thoroughly enjoy the night sky and my
work as a lunatic farmer.
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