My course on astronomy 2024

Like Methodism, I am committed to lifelong learning and enjoy exploring areas of knowledge, historical biography, and so on. Much of my research has gone into papers on the Methodist Heritage website (https://www.methodistheritage.org.uk/methodist-history/methodist-missionary-history-project/ ) or talks to local history societies. Astronomy has fascinated me for decades from primary school days when the Children’s Newspaper had a regular feature on the night sky and Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future appeared in the Eagle comic. I made a little telescope and was transfixed by my first view of the moon at 30x magnification. Since then, in a very amateur way, I have watched the skies on and off for about 70 years. My star atlas came with us to Africa where I organised a school astronomy club. Around 2014 I came across distance learning courses with the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) and signed up for Introduction to Astronomy, set at Level 4 (first year university). It gave a good overview of the subject; the sun, planets, stars, constellations, galaxies, gravity, relativity… That whetted my appetite and over the years I took a few more modules. They need about 8-9 hours study a week with course notes, assignments, and online tutorials. Those modules took me through the Sun, Earth, and Climate (relevant), History of Great Astronomers (loved it!), Cosmology (mind bending), Astrobiology (fascinating) and Physics and Maths (hard work and useful) to complete a Certificate in Higher Education with distinction this year. Level 5 and 6 could follow but I plead age and am stopping at this point.

These courses have expanded my view of the material creation and I have preached a sermon in a few of our churches on science, God, and the wonder of creation. It is a beautiful creation with order and variety to be treated with respect and with hidden wonders that often turn out to be useful.

In one of his long poems TS Eliot said, ‘old men ought to be explorers’. Astronomy has taught me a lot but there are other things to explore.

 

Supermoons

The Supermoon of Monday 14 November 2016 and other Supermoons.

The moon goes round the earth in an elliptical or oval orbit so each month there is a near point and a far point from the earth. At its nearest, or perigee, it appears bigger and brighter than at its farthest and since about 1979 these have been known a supermoons. The difference is around 15% in size and 30% in brightness. The moon will be at its nearest to the earth for nearly 80 years at 1132 UT on 14 November and so will appear correspondingly larger than at other times. According to Astronomy Now the moon will then be 356512 km away with an angular diameter of 33̍ 31". That’s about how big a table tennis ball appears at 4.1 metres. The full moon comes soon after at 1352 UT. We can’t see the moon here at those times but people in Australia and NZ can and AN claims that it will subtend a whopping 33'.8 at around 3am in NZ. Actually they will do better to look at midnight when it will be closer to them than at 3am (see below) and the moon’s diameter will be 33'.86 with the moon as good as full.

Nevertheless, in the UK the moon will not be far off full and still near its closest point to earth by the time we see it on the Monday evening. In addition, the earth’s spin brings us closer to the moon when it is near to due south from our location. This reduces the range by a few thousand kilometres. The heavens-above website has a wonderful sky map which gives the range or actual distance of the moon from any chosen location on any date. I am near Wellington, Somerset, so looked up the figures for my location. An optical illusion makes the rising moon appear bigger than when it is high in the sky but the range at around moonrise [1707] will be 356451 km with a maximum diameter of 2012 arcseconds. The closest point, 351629 km, comes at 20 minutes after midnight on Tuesday morning when it is near the meridian. It would then subtend 33'.98 or 2039 arcseconds; a small but significant increase of 1.3% on moonrise and 2.6% in brightness. The lower latitude of Wellington NZ means that the moon will be 352867 km from there and Wellington NZ’s best would be 33'.86 or 2032 arcseconds so we get a bigger moon here, just[!] and we will be 1238 kms closer, which is a lot of kms. And, if the range is to the moon’s centre which seems to be the case then we are another 1738 km closer to its surface which is good news for observers of central features of the moon although it will be dazzlingly bright.

However, the best place of all would be at somewhere south of Hawaii around 13ºN latitude where the moon will be some 350142km away and 34'.13 or 2048 arcseconds at the time of perigee. Indeed we can generalise by saying that for any perigee the closest point on the earth to the moon will be wherever the moon is directly overhead at that moment.

The actual distance depends a lot on where we are on the earth and what time perigee happens. The best ones in the UK are full moons between mid-November and mid-January and around midnight when the moon is high in the sky and perigee close to midnight. The perigee of 14 November 2016 is the closest centre to centre approach until 25 November 2034. However, for my location and probably the whole of the UK we actually get a better one here at the beginning of 2018. On 1-2 Jan 2018 perigee at 2154GMT will be 356566 km from earth not as close as this November but heavens-above shows a range of 351116 km for us just after midnight, much closer [by 513km] than this year’s and 2042 arcseconds. 23/24 Dec 2026 is even better with the moon at a closest of 350938km from my location.

The 25/26 November 2034 supermoon is the next closest approach to the earth with a perigee of 356448 km at 2206 GMT which is good for us but the range from here will be 351230 km – closer than this year but not quite as close as either 2018 or 2026. For us, and as far as I can tell the December 2026 supermoon will only be bettered here in 2043 and 2080.

11 November 2016

References. Information drawn from:

http://astropixels.com/ephemeris/moon/moonperap2001.html [accessed 4 November 2016]

www.heavens-above.com  [accessed 4 November 2016]

Bible Translation in Africa and Asia

The Bible in African and Asian Christianity

From 27-29 June I attended a conference on this very important topic at the Creative Campus of Liverpool Hope University.

 Professor Daniel Jeyaraj who organised and led the event is Director of the Andrew Walls Centre for the Study of African and Asian Christianity at Hope. Professor Andrew Walls, a Methodist, is highly respected internationally as an expert on mission history and theology. Attendees came from nineteen countries.

The Jerusalem Bible translation appeared fifty years ago so we began with an excellent evening lecture by Dom Henry Wansborough who surveyed the history of English Bible translations and explained how the Jerusalem Bible came about. He outlined its strengths and weaknesses and suggested areas for improvement and updating. For example, JB Old Testament uses Yahweh for the divine name but is likely to be replaced by LORD as in most other modern versions.

Asia and Africa occupied us for the next day and a half. Professor Walls gave two fascinating sessions on Bible translation and interpretation in early nineteenth century China with the pioneer work of Robert Morrison and the extreme way the Bible was used by some of the Taiping revolutionaries. Other speakers described how the famous Chinese evangelists, Wang Mingdao and John Sung handled the Bible in their mid twentieth century ministries. Professor Jeyaraj who comes originally from South India told the story of the Tamil Bible.

Bible translation in Africa was covered from many angles for the rest of the conference. The original use of the Bible in African Independent churches was vividly described by several speakers. Other scholars dealt with Nigeria, South Africa and Botswana. We also heard about the history and present situation of Biblical studies in Egypt. A Ghanaian Methodist minister now serving in South Wales gave expert evaluations of translations of Amos in Ghanaian languages. Altogether, we listened to a rich variety of contributions.

My presentation was on Edwin Smith (1876-1957), a prolific author 

   who had been a Bible translator in Africa and in the 1930s directed Bible translation at the British and Foreign Bible Society. Smith held that translations should be faithful to the original languages, understandable to the reader and beautiful in style, a difficult and challenging art. He emphasised the recipients need to understand and experimented with versions in Simplified and Basic English for new readers. His approach helped to open the way for the reader friendly translations that we enjoy today. The talk was well received and I hope it will appear in due course on the Methodist Heritage website.

There were excellent meals and welcome breaks for tea and coffee so we had plenty of time for networking and interaction with specialists from many places. After it closed I had a couple of hours before my train and visited the Metropolitan Cathedral, a remarkable building, modern, circular and with excellent use of light, especially from the central lantern window. 

 

                                                                     

Depression

Depression

Last week, 11-17 May, was mental health awareness week and in the USA it is a whole month of awareness. It is necessary because of the stigma attached to mental ill health. Also, I find that there are ‘sunny’ people, Christians and others, who can’t see what it is all about. I have come across folk who are very dismissive of the mentally unwell or who cannot see that inward pain is a very real and profound affliction which afflicts the sufferer and those near and dear to them.

I usually find the winter most difficult but depression, for example, can strike out of the blue. At such times I find it helpful to take walks, read, generally slow down and avoid potentially stressful situations at least for the time being. I also get myself ticking along by making to-do lists with simple tasks as well as bigger ones. At one time the antidepressant fluoxetine helped to numb emotional pain. On Sunday, 11 January, 2015, there was an interesting programme on R4 about 'Mindfulness' which seems to be a recent development and is being promoted this year by the Mental Health Foundation. It was said that CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) helps people with depression but ‘mindfulness’ enables better functioning afterwards. When I asked a psychologist friend about mindfulness he said it was a very good thing so it’s worth following up but he pointed out that it helps some people more than others.

In 1975 I came across a book, Overcoming Depression by Paul Hauck. I must have given it away because I can’t find it anywhere now. He traced depression to three main causes and fortunately I have his later book, How to be your own Best Friend (1988), which outlines them briefly.

[1] Self-pity. We may well feel sorry for ourselves at times and justifiably so but obsession with self-pity will most likely end in depression. Hauck says we should challenge the idea that it is awful that life doesn’t treat us as we want it to. It’s time to count our blessings.

[2] Other-pity. Compassion is an excellent trait but being incessantly involved in other people’s troubles can be overwhelming and result in burnout and depression. People in need may require our help but if we break down emotionally over them we will not be able help them. So the motto is to do what we can.

[3] Self-blame which Hauck later called self-hate. Whereas self-pity often involves blaming other people for our troubles the opposite, self-blame, is a potent source of depression. Again it is good to be self-aware and to put our hands up when we are wrong but when the whole thing becomes obsessive or out of proportion the spiral of depression can begin and swallow us up. Hauck says that we should learn to forgive ourselves for falling short over things we are not really gifted at anyway, for not getting everything right first time (parents need to accept that they are on a learning curve) or things we do when highly disturbed, ‘there is no way we can be fully rational when very upset.’ [Best Friend p. 42]. And it’s worth basking in the realisation that there are people who really value us.

It’s all a form of cognitive behavioural therapy that was refined by Albert Ellis who called it rational emotive therapy. Basically it involves straightening out irrational thinking so that the sources of depression don’t get out of hand or even get a foothold.

In my opinion there is plenty of good, practical, common sense in this and clearly thoughts can affect emotions and sometimes a lot of straightening out is needed but I’m not entirely convinced. It seems to me, for example, that conflict over equally balanced alternatives can spin into depression. Furthermore, I’m not sure that it recognises the sheer depth of the black hole of despair involved in this affliction. Also, our varied temperaments and personalities pitch in to varying degrees so ‘depression stories’ and their outcomes are likely to be diverse. Finally, brain chemistry seems to contribute as well which is where antidepressants play a part.

A few years ago I attended a lecture by Professor Lewis Wolpert, a medical biologist, who was struck down by depression to the extent of being suicidal. He wrote a book about it. Perhaps not surprisingly for a biologist he brought in such factors as genetics and concluded that a mixture of drug and cognitive therapies is the best treatment at the moment. It’s complicated, there are seldom quick fixes and I am very suspicious of some treatments but that’s another story. Sometimes we just have to grind our way through depression.

Truro Day 2014

Truro Day 14 September 2014

 

 We went to Cornwall especially for this event. My wife, Hilary, comes from Truro and has been following websites about Truro and out of them heard about Truro Day which was conceived about six months ago, so 14 September went into the diary. A committee of ten organised every aspect and it all happened at Boscawen Park about a mile out of the city. Altogether it was a very impressive occasion. After attending Truro Methodist Church and stopping for a sandwich and tea in the city centre we headed off on foot along the riverside to the Park. It was a lovely sunny day and lots of other people were going the same way and shuttle buses were travelling forth and back too. 

 

There was a bandstand/stage which was occupied by a variety of performers; groups, choirs and bands all compèred by Hilary’s brother, Justin, in his Roy Orbison outfit. Around the nearby field there were stands occupied by various local organisations and charities. There were bouncy castles and pony rides and the Truro history theme was followed in a tent which housed a large collection of photos. Hilary was signing the visitors’ book when a lady recognised her name and they got talking and during the afternoon she came across several other friends and acquaintances so the time passed quickly.

 

 After buying pastys and tea we listened to the rugby club choir, world champions no less, who concluded their hearty session with ‘Trelawney’, words printed in the programme for all to join in. This piece, ‘The song of the Western Men’, was written by Robert Hawker of Morwenstow who reinvented the Harvest Festival in the nineteenth century and his poem has become a national anthem for Cornwall. There were tributes to the Truro Day committee and that made it clear what a lot of work and skill had gone into putting it together and raising the £8500 needed to stage the event. And 13 September 2015 was publicised for the second ‘Truro Day’. 

      We, and the 1000s of people who went there, had a wonderful time and as we left the Park we were grateful for the shuttle bus that took us the last mile or so into a quiet city centre.