Sky and Telescope - July 2016 - 6

Letters

December solstice:

Equinoxes:

June solstice:

Sun sets south of west

Sun sets due west

Sun sets north of west

of the planet, constantly penetrating its
cloud cover in search of its secrets," he wrote,
"just as the mythological goddess Juno
maintained constant vigil over her amorous
husband-god Jupiter and his many lovers."
Read all about the Juno mission and its
objectives in Fran Bagenal's feature article,
which begins on page 18.

S&T: LEAH TISCIONE

Remembering Marc Aaronson

WSW

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WNW

The Sun rises due east and sets due west on the equinoxes in March and September.

An Equinox Sighting
This being a leap year, the equinox
occurred quite early, on March 19th,
at 11:30 p.m. Central Daylight Time -
which I independently conﬁrmed with
a rather unusual method. I live on a
rural line road, part of the vast grid of
square-mile sections found throughout
the Midwest. To the west, where my road
meets the sky, trees on either side create
a rectangular notch at the horizon - and
thus a precise marker for the equinoxes.
On March 18th and 20th, the Sun sank
below the horizon with about half of its
diameter south and north of the notch,
respectively. But at sunset on March 19th,
I observed the last bright spark of sunlight precisely in my "Road Henge" notch
- just four hours before the Sun crossed
the celestial equator.
William Winchester
Collinsville, Oklahoma

Grasping Galactic Distances
Allow me to commend Ted Forte's "Galaxies in the Beehive" (S&T: Mar. 2016,
p. 57). In addition to the usual observing data for the target objects - names,
coordinates, magnitudes, and so on -
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6

July 2016 sky & telescope

his table also gives the distances to these
various galaxies. That's surprisingly rare
in similar S&T listings (after all, when
observing celestial objects their distances
usually don't matter).
Yet this is the information that oﬀers a
sense of the vastness of space surrounding us. For example, the galaxies NGC
2643 and 2647 look alike and insigniﬁcant
in the image on page 58. The table, on the
other hand, reveals that as the light from
NGC 2647 passed NGC 2643 en route to
Earth, it had already been traveling for
more than 500 million years!
Raul Pettai
Montville, New Jersey

The Wrath of Juno
Who was responsible for naming the Juno
spacecraft? What a lack of tact! She is
the lawful wife of Jupiter. What will Juno
think when she surprises him surrounded
by Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, and a
lot of his other lovers? Juno's anger was
proverbial. Perhaps on July 4th, when the
orbiter ﬁnally gets there, we will see the
most spectacular ﬁreworks of our life!
Eduardo Vila Echagüe
Santiago, Chile
Kelly Beatty replies: When Theodore Clarke
proposed Juno as the name for NASA's
Jupiter Polar Orbiter in 2003, he was keenly
aware of the aptness of that suggestion. "The
orbiter will maintain constant surveillance

Katherine Kornei's article on telescope
operators (S&T: Mar. 2016, p. 22) rightly
describes the value and skills of those
workers. But the comment from TO
Joel Aycock, "No lives will be lost," isn't
strictly true. Astronomer Marc Aaronson
died after a freak dome accident during
an observing run at Kitt Peak's 4-meter
Mayall telescope in 1987. The overall risk
is far lower than in truly dangerous occupations such as soldier or lumberjack, but
it isn't zero.
Steven Willner
Cambridge, Massachusetts

Rekindling the Awe
I completely agree with William Sheehan
about the need for awe in our exploration
of the universe (S&T: Mar. 2016, p. 84). I
began studying astronomy in the 1960s
and started leading expedition teams to
observe grazing occultations. In those
Apollo-era times I had no problem recruiting observers. We could go anywhere in
the U.S., at any hour of the night, and were
always welcomed by local citizens wanting
to support our eﬀorts in space.
Today it's very diﬀerent. Few have
interest in participating in an observation that requires eﬀort, and the general
population does not have any idea as to
why we'd be out looking up at the sky.
These days my telescope and I are more
likely to be reported to law enforcement
as an obvious terrorist setting up a rocket
launcher! Our society needs to ﬁnd its
way forward to a new era in which we can
go outside, look up at the sky, and once
again see the awe that is in front of us.
Richard P. Wilds
Almond, New York
Sky and Telescope - July 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Sky and Telescope - July 2016
