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The Night Sky Podcast | Jupiter And The Chinese New Year
Hello, and thank you for listening to this episode of the night sky podcast. My name is Billy Newman. And I’m Marina Hansen. Thanks so much Marina for doing Episode 21 of the night sky podcast with me again today. Hey, thanks, Barry, it was pretty cool. Yeah, so we got a couple of things to talk about. It’s been a while since we really discussed a lot of the different changes that have happened with the location, the planets along the ecliptic, and where they are and what what times are going to be up. So we could talk a little bit about that was cool on our last episode, talking more in depth about the intricacies of Venus, I think specifically, and then a little bit of Mars too. But what I was looking at tonight, a dimension where they are, it’s like in you know, too, if you look out, if you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, you look out toward the west, and then toward the Southwest, up in the sky a little bit, maybe after, I guess, five o’clock or so while it’s still in the winter timeline that we’ve got, you know, while the sun goes down around five o’clock, as we look up into the Southwest, we’ll see Venus really bright at the bottom, and then really quite dim now is Mars up above it, which is kind of interesting. So we talked mostly, or we talked about all those planets and what they’re doing last week, which you can check out that podcast. But what was kind of interesting to me, and what we were talking about earlier was how fascinating it is. And I guess what we should explain on the podcast is that when we look up a night, and we see Venus and Mars, and we see them really right next to each other, it’s sort of a mind trip to get yourself around this idea that the Earth would have to pass right in between those two celestial bodies. Is that interesting? It’s weird to think about right?
It is. Yeah, it’s a really interesting perspective to think of it from when you’re looking at it. Yeah, it gives you a or give, it gave me a kind of different view of where we’re lined out, sort of
isn’t it interesting to get a feel for it, in a sense, when we look at the planet interior, to the sun from us, and the planet exterior from the sun, it’s really interesting to think that Oh, wow, in that gap of space that we see physically, right now, our Earth actually has to pass in between and had even sometime earlier this year, right? Like if this was a spaceship or something, and we could hold our universal coordinates for a few minutes, and spaceship and a time machine. So we’re asking for a lot right now. And we were able to stay right here in the universe, you know, and watch the earth go backwards in time, if we were to run time backwards, we’d see the earth leave where we were in our position, we’d see open space around us. But we’d watched the earth pass right back through that location where we see Venus and Mars out in the solar system is really interesting thinking with sky that way, or at least thinking of the location of the planets a little bit more of a of a 3d plane that exists spread out. Yeah, interesting. Yeah.
I’m sorry, I was just gonna say I always like things that help me have a better, like, a better three dimensional perspective of where I am. While I’m looking at. Yeah, I think I’m this guy. Oh, yeah, it’s
really interesting. It’s really interesting to get that when you see it more definitely is, yeah, because and that’s a strange thing to see, for so much of human history, people had looked at all these objects with at least summon or a basic understanding that it was a geocentric system that the Earth was in the center for the longest time, they were trying to figure out all these weird different maps that God used to keep a pattern of stars, which weren’t understood to be any type of physical mass existing, you know, separate from the earth, but it was just points of light out in space, but is thought to be this roller that God had. And there were the stars that would roll by. And then interior from that there were the cycles of planets that would roll by such a weird kind of idea. It was like, it was just the silliest thing. But it was, yeah, totally off base from the more concrete understanding that we started to get, I guess, about 1000 years ago. Is that what it would be? I think Copernicus is about 1100 or so. And so that’s where we start to get that heliocentric model of the universe. Whereas before that we had all sorts of, I think things called epi cycles. Have you heard of that? before?
I have heard of that before, you’ll have to explain to me what it means, again, by recognize that
it’s pretty confusing. That actually is the thing to remember about epi cycles is that it was the scientific theory that was being built on and built on and built on, but it was partly scientific, elite, or at least it was scientific with the information that they had at the time, but it was the system built to keep the wrong idea in place. But to change that wrong idea so that it fit the things that we were seeing better, but it just made it exponentially more complicated. The idea is that there is that the earth is in the center. And then there is a Mars out there that maybe is going around the planet Earth. But as sometimes, and in ways that maybe we don’t totally understand that big cycle that it does around the earth will start to do a tiny cycle around itself. That’s where we get retrograde motion.
Interesting. That’s interesting. That’s what I thought it was. Yeah, it was retrograde.
It was all sorts of weird things, it was that they all had complicated independent movements where they would stop and then physically start to spin around themselves. So that there are that there. Were there were other forces or things that would that would cause them. Other? I don’t know. It was just it was just seems so confusing. Yeah. And so every time it didn’t work, because we actually go around the sun, they would add this other element to the epi cycle theory. That’s it. Oh, no, no, no, this is why we’re geocentric. This is why it actually works, is because Mars is just doing a little loop in the sky. That’s why it’s happening, or because Saturn’s doing a little loop, because as that retrograde loop to that it goes through. So everything had something or Mercury is just on some, some weird little spinny thing out there as it goes around the earth. And that’s why we see it kind of go up and down closer to the sun, independently of the sun, very strange type of thinking. But all that got more and more clear over the years. And it probably was, I don’t know, maybe we’re at like the 500 years of human history where it’s actually been more conceptually understood that this this heliocentric model of the universe where we can have those conceptual breakthroughs, like what we were talking about tonight, when we look up into a clear winter sky, we look out at Venus, the interior planet Mars, the exterior planet and have that conceptual realization that, oh, the earth as the third Rock from the Sun, would have had to a past in between those two planets, at least on some path. So whatever that gap of distance is, it actually represents real three dimensional space across the ecliptic, across our solar system, where the Earth orbit and all of our humanity has existed for 1000s of years, just in that path somewhere in that line, the planet Earth, and all 1 billion to 7 billion people over the years have have passed right in between that line. All 24 of your birthdays have taken place somewhere in space in between those two planets.
And it’s really interesting to see like that. Yeah, really fascinating. But pretty fun. It was cool. I got kind of thinking about that sort of stuff with you. Oh, yeah. It’s really, it’s nice having a clear view of it, too. Yeah, it was really nice. And it’s really nice right now. For as difficult as it is in Oregon in the winter, like we complained about last year to get a lot of good observation nights in for sky watching. It’s pretty difficult. Like I hear that the other guy, one of those other sky and telescope podcasts. And he talks about like, Oh, yeah, the wind is great, because it’s darker, longer. So you get more hours of night sky, I think must be in like Arizona, or California or somewhere somewhere that doesn’t have to deal with the same kind of perpetual fog that we have to deal with. Or this, this kind of cloud, sticky, rainy cloud cover that we have all the time. So that’s what that’s what northern Oregon is like, this time of year. Yeah, January, February. That’s when Oregon really shines.
It’s been nice these last few days, I have in a nice clear view. Oh, it has been really nice. We’ve had some cool morning views to Jupiter.
See, that’s Yeah, that’s the other thing too is right. What we had been focused on and so far is those evening planets that we can see in some of the evening constellations that we see coming up. And that’s all really interesting, because it’s a few things coming, coming our way. But what’s interesting, like you’re saying is Yeah, with this clear morning’s going out to the south facing window, we look up, you can spot the moon, you can spot Jupiter, like you’re saying you spot a few of the summer constellations that we’re used to a few months ago. And it’s kind of interesting seeing where a few of those things have changed, and seeing what’s changed in relation to everything else. Like last year, when we looked at Jupiter, that was in the constellation Leo, right, we’re around about in the constellation Leo kinda has that tail end of it. And I remember watching that with you Like last spring and last summer, like we were looking at Jupiter’s moons. Yeah, remember that? Yeah. Do you remember that? Yeah. And so the constellation Leo really isn’t too far from where we’re looking at it now and the constellation of Virgo. And, and right now, Jupiter is right up next to the star spika, the brightest star in the constellation of Virgo. And I think Virgo is the the Zodiac constellation for the month of September. Before that’s the month of August. The Zodiac constellation for the month of August is the constellation Leo. And that’s what we saw last year. Right? It’s really interesting. And then there’s kind of furthermore interesting to consider that with Jupiter. Like when we go out we look at in the morning sky. Now a year later, it’s back to Virgo, maybe next year is we think it would be another constellation over closer toward Libra. And then furthermore, toward the east along the ecliptic into the constellation Scorpio. interesting to think how it kind of progresses like that through the year.
That is interesting moves down like that, or how it moves through the constellation.
Yeah. And it’s, it’s interesting that it moves down. That’s the same type of pro grade motion that we see with with Mars right now or with other planets right now, but we see it at different speeds. And it’s interesting that it goes because like, I think with Mars is 500 or 400, or something each day year, it’s going to go around a lot faster. Whereas like with Jupiter that next pointed out, there’s Mars, the asteroid belt, and then Jupiter so much for their way. We go from a 500 day year of our planet of Mars, to a 12 year, year for the planet Jupiter, as we get that much further out. Isn’t that fascinating? so strange. So long. Yeah, really long. But so that’s another interesting thing. And what I wanted to tie it in with some of the stuff that you were looking at about the upcoming Chinese New Year. A lot of people celebrate that. Have you celebrated that before?
Yeah, my my mom used to celebrate it with us.
When is the case with it? I never really celebrated what is the type of Americanized small celebrations you guys would do?
We would try to do some foods that were kind of vaguely specific. Okay. It really wasn’t too significant of a celebration Really?
Well, I was just trying to cue in a little bit more on, like, what it is due for? Yes. So there’s books and such. I know that there’s a couple colors that are I think it’s old and red. If I had understood, right, which is part of it. And the reason that the New Year’s occurring now. At the end of January, whereas last year, it occurred almost at the end of February seems like it’s not the same day. Right. And we talked about it. I think last year, when we’ve gotten into calendar stuff a little bit this year, we’ll focus pretty tightly in on just the the Chinese New Year holiday. But it’s it’s the new moon coming up this weekend. Right, right. Yeah. And I think we just seen a crescent of it this morning, when we looked out over the western horizon. So that means really only a day or two until it’s in that position to being a new moon. And when we come about to the new moon, that’s the day of the Lunar New Year and the Chinese New Year. And that’s why we have the Chinese New Year coming up on this day. And that’s why that date moves around.
Right. Yeah, I think it’s a between January 21. And February 20. Yeah.
And I figured that, I mean, that’s like, that’s about a month or so. Yeah, you know, and so it’s interesting that that there’s going to be a full moon within that period. And that’s the one that it’s going to fall on. It’s kind of perplexing, like how they selected that in China. And I know all that goes way back, if you’re interested in that I get into more detail. Marina and I both to, I think it’s like Episode Four of the nightscape, maybe episode six or seven or something. But it was a Chinese New Year, it’s titled The Chinese New, you can go back in our archives at night sky.io. And check that episode out. But on this one, the Chinese New Year coming up, we got the new moon to new year for they run on a lunar new year or a lunar solar year, Luna Luna solar calendar year. interesting how that goes and how that tries to, to match the the 12 New Moon periods that we have, through a 365 day year, it tries to match those numbers up, I think it’s like 350 days to 365 day year, sort of there’s a little bit of a mismatch. Yeah, does that make sense? You know, days, versus the 31 days, we count as our month that we break up our 365 plus a leap year day, year into so it’s a little bit shorter, which is why we see the Lunar New Year holiday move around a little bit, but why we see it stay in this winter season because it’s still attached to that solar year, at least in some way. That’s why it’s a lunar solar year. And I think like if we were to think of the other alternative option to that, do you remember that one that the what’s the holiday, the Islam holiday? The Muslim holidays that happen? I think that those like the Jewish calendar, I think is a lunar calendar. And I think the Muslim calendars and Muslim calendar so like Yom Kippur War? I think I think that a lot of them are lunisolar calendar. A lot of them are, but there’s a there’s a there’s one that moves its day. And that’s the one that I’m talking about as well. I’m not sure do you know, or do you know what it is? No. Okay. Yeah, so there’s a there’s a lot of or there’s a few of them that are lunar calendars. And that’s where things get into issues because the year would actually lap itself over time because There’s like a 15 day discrepancy, but that there’ll be issues. So that’s why some of those holidays actually float through the entire year. And that’s how they keep track of it is through this lunar calendar year. That’s when they know that their holiday is gonna happen. It’s interesting. So stick back on to China and the Chinese New Year. That’s the lunar solar. New Year. That’s happening this weekend. What date is that? The 28th. It’s Saturday, the 28th. So we got the new year for China coming up. And I’m sure that’s like a big celebration over there. But
yeah, I think they call it like the Spring Festival. I think that that’s what it’s called. Oh, yeah.
A Spring Festival. That’s cool. I guess it must be a couple more weeks. But the thing that I wanted to get into about this, and this is the part that I had not known even last year, when we talked about the Chinese New Year was a little bit about the Chinese zodiac. And so you understand this part, like where we’re going with this, you know, like the, the when you go to the Chinese restaurant and you get the Zodiac on your on your placemat.
Yeah, that’s with all the years. Yeah. What are a few of them like rat? Dog monkey? Yeah, I’m the monkey. You’re the monkey. I
think you’re the dragon. The dragon. There’s the rabbit. There’s an ox. There are a lot of animals. And there’s a snake.
Yeah, it’s interesting, I think. I think Zodiac is a Greek word. But strangely, it means circle of animals. But really only a few of the Western Zodiac symbols are animals. perplexing, right, like Aries. Now that’s a that’s a ram. I think Scorpios you know, like, there’s a center or the the Sagittarius and whatever. It’s a Capricorns a man Aquarius, I think is a man. But uh, yeah, okay, interesting. So it’s different. But in the Chinese system, the Zodiac is all animals, like when we go through, it’s, it’s all 12 of those animals. Now, this is the thing that I’d never really been able to put in place before because the American or the, the modern Western system for astrology. Doesn’t really, you know, whatever that counts for, but it lists our zodiac sign as being something specific to the month that we were born in. So there’s always been this discrepancy, like similar to what you had thought about? How is it that the Chinese New Year has a Zodiac symbol that lasts for a person for a whole year last for the entire year period, and everyone born in that year is under that symbol? What does that mean? What’s that connected to? It’s really strange. I’d wanted this for a long time. And it turns out, as you we kind of brought up a second ago that it’s associated with Jupiter. Is that fascinate?
That is interesting. How does that tie in?
Yeah. So like we were talking about a little bit ago. Right now. Jupiter is up next to the star spika in the constellation Virgo last year. He was in Leo, right? Is it and it’s 1212 year cycle? Yeah, so it’s a 12 year cycle that Jupiter has, it’s an 11.86 year cycle that Jupiter has to get around the solar system, back to the same position in the stars that we would see it at night. So this has been an interesting marker. And it was used in China has said that this Chinese zodiac system, and it was a simple way of counting by 12 backwards and making sure that your years worked correctly, or your calendar years were accurate. So you could count the location of Jupiter and mark that against the year. And you can verify hundreds and hundreds of years into the future. If that day is correct. Does that make a little bit of sense? I think so. Yeah, like you wouldn’t get it as wrong, because you could match that you could sync that up with the location of Jupiter may be and you’re tracking that, in a sense culturally with your zodiac system. And then probably, scientifically, I’ll say in quotes for ancient Chinese. But, you know, to whatever that system of gaining more knowledge was about the solar system about the movement of planets, it’s interesting that they’re able to identify that 12 year cycle for Jupiter to get around. And then that moving appropriate motion backwards through the constellation of Zodiac symbols that are in the sky. So like, last year, it was in Leo, this year, it’s in Virgo. That’s one step. So that’s what we have those 12 Zodiac constellations. Jupiter takes one year to move between each Zodiac constellation. That means that the count is for Jupiter, one Zodiac constellation per year. So when we talk about the Chinese zodiac, what we’re noticing is that like if I’m the Year of the Dragon, or year, the year of the monkey, the monkey, here, the year, the monkey the next time we’re in the year of the monkey, that means Jupiter is in the same place in the sky as it was the day that you were born or the year that you were born.
That’s really cool. I had no idea that you Lipitor was, what connected it?
Yeah, I have no idea either. And really much of the much of the information that I had looked up before had really never been been explicit or clear about that topic. And it would have been so easy to explain. I think it’s really truly because no one knows about that fact. No one knows about that correlation and that association that it’s really just attached to Jupiter. That’s really fascinating. That’s cool. You’re about Yeah, I think that I’m not totally sure on the on the cultural understandings of Jupiter but I think that it was understood to be a symbol of good luck. It was like jovial. Oh, that’s interesting. Yeah. You know, I’m not really sure either. I know it was seen as steady. And it was seen as like a you know, a steady marker, or it’s, it’s persona was steady, same as Saturn was seen as steady. I think Saturn was a symbol of wisdom a lot of the time. However, Jupiter was a symbol of power and steadiness in whatever ways those are different than wisdom. Wisdom was the long cycle the 2728 year cycle of Saturn. However, Jupiter, a long cycle still was establishment and leadership and jovial activity you know, and jovial is interesting because the word jovial is pretty close to Jovian, which is the name for things that are Jupiter. Ah, yeah. Jovian class planets are ones that are like Jupiter. So it seems that there is some kind of common route there, I think, probably in Latin to for meaning. jovial or positive out of attitude, or I don’t know, however, that connection comes about. But it’s kind of interesting that it’s there. And I think it’s sort of similar in how it was in Chinese culture, but it was the sign of good luck. That’s why it was brought up as a as a good fortune symbol. And that’s why it’s being tracked here the year of the monkey because Jupiter was there. And that’s good luck. That that’s your symbol. Right there. You were born. Good luck for you life. This I think kind of the, the intention? Yeah, I
think that’s kind of the center of the holiday. Right? Yeah. Good fortune. Yeah.
Yeah. So that’s the idea. But I think it’s really fascinating to kind of track back and see, I guess what that’s like, in the past years, or you know how that worked in a few different ways. Now understanding it’s a little bit of what it’s actually attached to. It’s kind of cool. So like, are looking at seeing Okay, so I’m the year of this. That means Jupiter was in this constellation the year I was born. That’s cool. Interesting. Are you guys see that cycle? Come back around. So it’s kind of curious how that is. But But yeah, I thought it was, it was kind of an interesting little factory to get into. Yeah, that’s really cool. Learn about Yeah, I’m really glad that we we started talking about that a little bit. It was cool. It’s cool. Learn about those more esoteric, cultural, culturally significant attachments to the stars, planets that are there. Even for things like this, like the Chinese New Year’s, it’s coming up. It’s kind of it’s cool. It’s cool to examine it. And to kind of have a better understanding of what that meant the people that were talking about it, outside of the silly, Astro logical way, astrology, you know, that, like the goofy belief system attached to it as like a separate thing. Outside of the more cultural understandings of how things work similar, I think, kind of like what we’re reading that book of argue astronomy, getting past that part, and kind of diving in more to the truth. The root of the truth, you remember that that line in Indiana Jones? archaeology is the search for truth. Not fact. I get it. Yeah. But it’s kind of similar to that, too. It’s how do we identify a cultural truth that was representative to those people in a way that makes sense instead of disqualifying the understandings? I think that’s really fascinating. But yeah, it’s cool. It’s cool. Talking about Chinese New Year with you. Yeah. That’s cool. That’s cool. It’s coming up in just a few days. Yeah. I think it’d be pretty neat. Yeah, thanks a lot for chatting about some different things going on in the night sky. I think it’s pretty cool. Yeah, thanks for doing that episode. I really appreciate it. Yeah. So I think the last thing I would have to say is Yeah, go check out night sky.io. Our website we’re working on that you can check out then night sky podcast, at night sky podcast on Instagram. Go ahead and subscribe to the night sky podcast on iTunes. So you can go ahead and search for it in the search bar or in your podcast app on your phone. And you can find it, save it, get some fresh episodes of our podcast whenever they come out. It’ll be kind of cool. If you are interested in sending us an email or a comment, I’d be great to hear from from anybody who’s still able to listen to this podcast, or any other observations that people out there have been able to make from some things that we’ve talked about. That’d be cool to hear about too. But yeah, on behalf of Marina Hanson, my name is Billy Newman. And thank you very much for listening to this episode of the night sky podcast.