CELESTIAL TEASE

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (09-14-23)

 

     I certainly hope you didn't miss last week's "blue supermoon," since the next one won't be seen until 2037. I didn't happen to notice the moon last week, but strangely enough I didn't miss it. I also didn't hear anything about my cat running a triathlon, or no traffic on the Hutchinson River Parkway, or a year of reasonable taxes, things you'd expect to happen once in a blue moon. According to scientists last week's moon, its closest point to the Earth, appeared to be eight percent bigger and fifteen percent brighter than normal, the same things my parents wished they could say about me when I was in the 4th grade.

     I hear about these celestial events, and I stare up in the sky, expecting the same excitement as when the crowd first spots what they think might be Superman: "Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane!" And it turns out to be a bird and a plane. Remember the "cold moon" last December? Neither do I. That's where the moon temporarily eclipses Mars so that you can't see it. If I was actually living on Mars I'm not sure I would be able to find it, so the fact that the moon jumps right in front of my field of vision only saves me the trouble of not seeing it in the first place. Supposedly you could see all this with the naked eye, and I took a look outside, but I couldn't remember if only your eye was supposed to be naked, so I apologize to my neighbors for that misunderstanding. If you saw a super moon that night and you thought it was impressive, I'll take most of the credit.

     Several months ago the stargazing community apprised us of the fact that "C/2022 E3 (ZTF)" would be approaching Earth, and that you SHOULD NOT MISS IT because it won't be passing this way again for 50,000 years! C/2022 E3 (ZTF) is a comet, and by "approaching," they mean 28 million miles away, give or take a few million miles. But they really piqued my interest when they further described that this was a rare GREEN comet. Why I would waste my time on a green, unripe comet? But I stayed up until one in the morning, and I saw what I always see during a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event: cloudy skies. 

     Maybe you know someone who saw the infamous Hale-Bopp comet of 1997. And by the way, if you have a goofy last name, don't be looking up in the sky discovering stuff. Hale and Bopp actually discovered the comet in separate states on the same day and reported it to the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams, which was angry they hadn't discovered it first, and also that they were still relying on people sending telegrams. I'm pretty sure that if Hale and Bopp were together at the time, there would have been a hell of an argument as to who saw it first. "I saw it first," Hale says. "You saw NOTHING," Bopp says. "You couldn't even see Uranus if it came up behind you and bit you on your elbow, which you wouldn't know from it." Hale says, "Why don't you and the boys from Hanson get together and discover the MMMBop comet?" And so forth until Hale bops Bopp upside the head.

     It's entirely possible that whatever's out there in space is not going to help us one bit. Quite the contrary. Scientists say that "2022 AP7" is lurking somewhere out there. It's a giant one-mile-long asteroid which, if its orbit eventually coincides with that of the Earth, could slam into our planet and cause the extinction of the human species. If it slams into downtown L.A., it's possible that no one would notice, but the amount of dust it kicks up could possibly leach into the atmosphere and blot out the light of the sun, or so they say.

     NASA is also tracking an 11-mile-wide comet called "C/2017 K2," with a tail so large that if it belonged to a cat, could knock all the pens off of every kitchen table in the entire country. Should this body impact the Earth, to paraphrase a lot of scientific lingo: we're screwed.

     It seems like the more we befoul our own planet and the more we continue to elect politicians who have no understanding of science, the more we turn our attentions to the stars in the hopes that there is something up there that will somehow help us down here. Astronomers are always freaking out that there might be water on Mars, for instance. I will temper my enthusiasm until it finds its way to my lawn. Is there intelligent life somewhere out there? Judging by the intelligence level here, we'll never know. In the meantime I'm keeping my eyes peeled for a super-DUPER moon.