NEW MOON REPORT
Nehemia Gordon from Jerusalem, Israel compiled the
following New Moon Report for August 2007 and the beginning of the Sixth Month
on the Biblical Calendar.
“On Tuesday August 14, 2007 the New Moon was sighted
from Israel. The moon was first sighted
from Jerusalem at 19:36 by Nehemia Gordon followed a few seconds later by
Devorah Gordon, Avi Marcus, Dina Marcus, and Johann Schutte, then a minute
later from the same location by David Linvill and Ziw Arieli. The moon was also sighted from Ranen by Magdi
Shamuel at 19:35 and from another part of Jerusalem by Neria Haroeh at 19:36.”
The next New Moon is expected to be visible from
Jerusalem near sunset on September 13, 2007.
That will mark the beginning of the first day of the Seventh Month on the
Biblical calendar also known as the month of Tishri on the Hebrew
Calendar. The first day of this month is
Yom Teruah or Yom Zicron, the Day of Trumpets or Day of Shouting. This day is also popularly known as Rosh
Hashanah. On the Gregorian calendar that
day will be from sundown September 13 to sundown September 14. I will have the other dates of the Fall
Feasts in the September/October 2007 issue of Biblical Astronomy. You can also find all of the Feast dates
for the current Biblical year in the March/April 2007 issue of Biblical
Astronomy.
MOON AND MERCURY IN CONJUNCTION
The first crescent of the New Moon will be seen from
Jerusalem as the moon and Catab (Mercury) come into conjunction on
September 13, 2007 (Tishri 1, Yom Teruah).
Chart 444 shows the position of the moon and Mercury in the
sign Bethulah (Virgo) as seen from Jerusalem at the time of conjunction
on September 13, 2007. It is also around
the time, if not the exact time, that the first crescent will be sighted. The moon is shown oversized here for better
graphics.
Chart 444 – Mercury and New Moon
conjunction on September 13 as seen from Jerusalem
The planet Mercury represents Gabriel the messenger
angel in one of its major portrayals.
Perhaps Gabriel will be blowing his horn (trumpet, shofar) at the onset
of Yom Teruah (Day to Trumpets) which begins with the sighting of the crescent
New Moon.
VENUS AND SATURN IN CONJUNCTION
The planets Nogah (Venus) and Saturn came into
conjunction on August 9, 2007. This is
the second time this year that the two planets were in conjunction. The first was on July 1. Venus is doing a retrograde loop in Arieh
(Leo) the Lion, and will come into conjunction with Saturn again on October
15, 2007. This is known as a triple
conjunction.
This may be of some significance since Nogah
is the bright and morning star and is doing a retrograde loop in the Lion of
Judah. Y’shua is the bright and
morning star and the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. During this loop, Nogah is performing a
triple conjunction with Saturn (represents Satan).
Chart 445 shows the position of the two planets in Leo as seen
from Jerusalem when they were in conjunction on August 9. They are not very close together here but are
in the same celestial longitude which is the astronomical definition for a
conjunction.
Chart 445 – Venus and Saturn in
conjunction on August 9, 2007 as seen from Jerusalem
This conjunction was most likely very difficult to
see since the planets were very close to the horizon shortly after sunset. It is very doubtful that Saturn was seen with
the naked eye at that time.
TOTAL LUNAR ECLIPSE
There will be a total eclipse of the moon on August
28, 2007. This will be best seen from the Pacific Ocean, western North
America, and eastern Australia. It will be partially visible throughout
the Americas, eastern Asia, and Australia. This eclipse will not be visible from
Israel.
Chart 446 shows the position of the moon in the sign Deli
(Aquarius) near the peak of the eclipse (around 3:30 am PDST) as seen from
Portland, Oregon. The moon may appear
blood red at that time to viewers in western North America.
Chart 446 – Total
Lunar Eclipse in Aquarius on August 28, 2007 as seen from Portland,
Oregon
The sign Deli (Aquarius) represents God’s
blessings being poured forth to His people.
This also portrays the pouring forth of holy spirit from The Holy Spirit
(The Almighty).
A note of interest: It
was on August 27, 2003 that the planet Mars reached is closest approach to the
earth in about 60,000 years. Mars
reached opposition the next evening, August 28, 2003. The position of the moon in the August 28,
2007 eclipse is close to the same the position that Mars was in Aquarius when
it was in opposition on August 28, 2003 – exactly 4 years to the very day. Mars is red and represents the atoning blood
of Messiah in one of its portrayals. A
blood red moon can also represent the atoning blood of Messiah that was, and
is, necessary so that the blessings or holy spirit can be poured forth, through
which we have our salvation. It was at
the end of the 4th millennium from the creation of Adam that Messiah
was crucified and paid the atonement for our sins and thus our salvation.
PARTIAL SOLAR ECLIPSE
There will be a partial eclipse of the sun on
September 11, 2007. This eclipse will be
visible from Southern South America. It
will not be visible from North America or Israel.
Chart 447 shows the position of the sun and the moon in the
sign Arieh (Leo) the Lion at the peak of the eclipse.
Chart 447 – Position
of the sun and moon in Leo during the solar eclipse on September 11, 2007
Lunar eclipses occur about every 6 months. Solar eclipses occur or can occur 2 weeks
before a lunar eclipse or 2 weeks after a lunar eclipse, and sometimes
both. So, about every six months we can
look forward to a lunar eclipse and a solar eclipse visible from somewhere on
planet Earth.
POSSIBLE METEOR STORM
There is the possibility of a major meteor shower on
the evening and early morning of August 30/September 1, 2007. It was on August 12 that we had the Perseid
Meteor Shower (see the July 2007 newsletter for details), but the one coming up
at the end of the August and beginning of September is the Aurigid Meteor
Shower. This normally is not much of a
shower to get excited about, but this year we may get a big surprise.
The following is an August 17, 2006 news release
written by Joe Rao from Space.com. Yes,
the date of the news release is correct, August 2006. I had this article in my files for a year now
waiting for this newsletter.
Spectacular
Meteor Shower Possible for 2007
“A
spectacular meteor shower might be in the
offing late next summer, SPACE.com has learned.
It may
not last very long, but could produce a bevy of bright, swift shooting stars
for favorably positioned skywatchers. The prediction is found in a technical
report, co-authored by two astronomers who are targeting Sept. 1, 2007 as the
date for the potential display.
The
meteors are called "Aurigids" because they appear to fan-out from the
constellation of Auriga, the Charioteer.
At
least a strong shower
Meteor
showers occur whenever we ride into the dusty debris left behind in a comet's
orbit. The debris left behind by Kiess, a comet last seen in 1911, is what
produces the Aurigids. The comet takes approximately 2,500 years to orbit
the Sun, but there are also dense trails of dust traveling along its
orbit. Earth has had glancing blows in the past with a few of these dust
trails in 1935, 1986 and 1994.
In
2007, however, the Earth is expected to pass very close to the center of a dust
trail, which astronomers Esko Lyytinen of Finland and Peter Jenniskens of the
SETI Institute in California said, should result in "a spectacularly rich
shower of bright meteors."
The
researchers in the past used computer models to predict outbursts of the Leonid
meteor shower, which wowed skywatchers in 2001 and 2002.
Shooting
stars, or meteors, are common any night of the year; five or six per hour are
normal. During a respectable meteor shower, they can be seen streaking
across the sky every few minutes. But occasionally the sky explodes in a
shower of sparks, a rare meteor "storm" that is something to get
excited about.
Meteor
storm possible?
No one
is certain how strong next year's Aurigids may be, but tomorrow, Jenniskens
will make an announcement at the General Assembly of the International
Astronomical Union in Prague concerning an "Aurigid Meteor Storm" of
Sept. 1, 2007.
Meteor
storms are typically said to involve at least 1,000 meteors per hour, a rate
sometimes achieved only in 15-minute bursts. It is not clear what sort of
hourly rate Jenniskens will announce as his prediction, however.
"I
do not know why Peter Jenniskens will announce this as a storm," Lyytinen
told SPACE.com. "I have not especially tried to predict the
strength but I would guess only a good or moderate shower, a storm not
impossible."
The
peak of the shower is predicted to occur at 11:37 GMT. Unfortunately this
comes during daylight for Europe and much of North America. But the
western United States and Canada, as well as much of Alaska and Hawaii will
still be in pre-dawn darkness and would be in an excellent position to view
it.
Another
drawback will be a gibbous Moon, four days past full, whose light could
interfere with observing. But, Lytinnen said, many of the meteors are
expected to be very bright. "So, maybe the moon does not make very much
harm in the observations ... I hope."
Update:
Aug. 18, 2006
At the International Astronomical Union General
Assembly in Prague today, Peter Jenniskens revealed his outlook for the 2007
Aurigid Meteor Shower. He forecast rates of at least 400, possibly
even exceeding 1,000 meteors per hour.
This prediction is based on the modeling of the
trajectories of dust particles ejected from comet Kiess, which in turn fits the
three past outbursts of the Aurigids. But this time we will hit - according to
the model - very close to the center of the dust cloud, within 39,000 miles
(63,000 km.).
Since this has never been the case with this shower
before, there's no way to know how strong the shower might be.”
The Aurigids’ radiant is in the constellation Auriga,
the Shepherd. This constellation
portrays the Great Shepherd, Messiah Y’shua, protecting his flock from the
wrath of the Almighty in His judgment on his enemies on the day of His
wrath. For His sheepfold that belongs to
Him, he took that wrath upon himself when he suffered for the atonement of our sins
when He was crucified. (See the article
on Auriga in the June 2005 issue of Biblical Astronomy for further details).
The chart below shows the radiant of the meteor
shower in the bosom of the Shepherd.
That is also where he is holding his suckling lambs.
INTERESTING PHOTO OF STAR MIRA
The
photo below is a mosaic of photos of the star Mira taken by NASA’s Galaxy Evolution
Explorer (GALEX) satellite.
The star looks
like a monstrous comet with a very long tail.
The following article on this star is from an August 17 news release posted on the
Sky & Telescope website.
Mira's Marvelous Tail
“The famous long-period variable star Mira
(Omicron Ceti) is just a tiny pinpoint in the eyepiece of a telescope. But,
astronomers announced today, Mira has blown off a gassy hood and tail so big
that they wouldn't even fit into your telescope’s field of view.
Like puffy smoke from a steam locomotive in an old
Western, Mira’s tail consists of gas and dust puffed out by the star during its
speedy trek through the interstellar gas of the Milky Way. The tail was
discovered only now because it emits only far-ultraviolet light. As reported in
the August 16th issue of Nature, D. Christopher Martin (Caltech) and his
colleagues spotted signs of Mira's tail during routine inspection of images
from NASA's Galaxy
Evolution Explorer (GALEX) satellite, which is on a mission to map the
far-ultraviolet sky. “One of our team members noted a bit of fluff around
Mira,” says Martin, “and we decided to take deeper images.”
Mira is an old, pulsating red giant on the verge of
becoming a planetary nebula. The star has about 1.5 times the mass of the Sun
and is orbited every 18 years by a much fainter companion. Like all long-period
red variables, Mira is shedding a lot of material into space: about one Earth
mass every eight years.
Mira is plunging through our part of the Milky Way
with an unusually large space velocity, 130 kilometers per second. This
accounts for the length of the tail that it has left behind in the interstellar
medium. In addition, some the blown-off gas piles up in a bow shock in front of
the star, as is dimly visible in the GALEX images.
According to the team, the far-ultraviolet glow is
probably caused by fluorescence of hydrogen molecules hit by energetic
electrons.
At Mira's distance of 350 light-years, the 2° length
of the tail translates into a physical length of 13 light-years — the distance
the star covers in about 30,000 years. Thus, the tail serves as a fossil record
of the star's mass loss over the past 300 centuries. Says Martin, “This will
tell us how other stars like our Sun [in the far future] age over time.”
The tail is wider and brighter at positions that
correspond to roughly 10,000, 20,000, and 30,000 years ago, suggesting a
long-term periodicity in Mira's stellar wind. “It all fits together very nicely,”
says astrophysicist Lex Kaper (University of Amsterdam). Theoretical models
predict long-term “thermal pulses” for Mira-like stars, Kaper notes; these are
probably related to the shell-like structures seen in the outer regions of some
planetary nebulae.
However, Martin and his colleagues note in their
paper that the thermal-pulse period for lightweight old red giants like Mira
should be much longer than 10,000 years. So, large-scale turbulence or density
variations in the interstellar medium may be what shaped the tail instead.”
Mira is a star in the neck of constellation Cetus
(the beast from the sea). Mira means
THE REBEL. The following is from E.W
Bullinger’s The Witness o the Stars on the star Mira.
“The star o (in the neck) is named Mira,
which means THE REBEL. Its name is ominous, for the star is one of the most
remarkable. It is very bright, but it was not till 1596 that it was discovered
to be variable. It disappears periodically seven times in six
years! It continues at its brightest for fifteen days together. M. Bade says
that during 334 days it shines with its greatest light, then it diminishes,
till it entirely disappears for some time (to the naked eye). In fact, during
that period it passes through several degrees of magnitude, both increasing and
diminishing. Indeed its variableness is so great as to make it appear unsteady!
Here,
then, is the picture of the Great Rebel as shown in the heavens. What is it, as
written in the Word? The Almighty asks man: (Read Job 41:1-10)
But
he whom man cannot bind can be bound by the Lamb, and He is seen with "the
Band" that has bound the fishes, now in His hands, which he has fastened
with a bright star to his neck, saying,
(Read Isaiah 51:22, 23; Isaiah 26:21-27:1; and Psalm 74:12-14).
BIBLICAL ASTRONOMY SEMINAR
There is a Biblical Astronomy Seminar tentatively
scheduled for September 14 and 15, 2007.
If it is a go, this seminar will be held at or near Bonners Ferry,
Idaho. If you live in the vicinity of
northwest Idaho and wish to attend the seminar, RVSP to Linda Elliston at 208-267-2348
for further information. We
need at least 25 people to attend to make it happen.
There will be a fee of $25.00 for each person
attending the seminar to cover the expenses and teacher’s honorarium.
Yahweh bless you super-abundantly above all that you
can ask or think through His beloved son Y’shua HaMashiach (Jesus Christ).