Science in Rome

What surprised me most about the 7th Annual Rome Science Festival, devoted this year to the theme of Time, was the attendance. I had heard that Festival events sold out quickly, but I still found myself amazed to see hundreds of Romans of all ages milling about the Parco della Musica and crowding into its spacious lecture halls at every opportunity. I had spent two weeks preparing my talk, "How Time Put the World in its Place" -- or, as it appeared in the Festival program, "Come Il Tempo É Riuscito a Mettere il Mondo al suo Posto." That left me free to sample the other offerings, which the organizers had scheduled without overlap. In theory, one could take in the entirety of the Festival's lectures, concerts, and panel discussions, beginning with the inaugural address by cosmologist Jean-Pierre Luminet of the Paris Observatory. Luminet spoke in French. I queued up for the simultaneous-translation headphones being distributed in the lobby, but found French-to-Italian the only available option.

Although my command of Italian suffers from disuse, I accepted the Festival challenge of "when in Rome."  I especially  loved listening to author Stefano Benni read aloud some short pieces he'd written under the rubric "Che Ore Sono?" ("What Time Is It?"). One of these sketched a weather-perfect, happy day at the beach, interrupted all of a sudden by a cry from a mother who realizes her son has strayed too far from shore. She screams his name, and the other bathers rush to help the boy. In that instant, the narrator sees the distraught parent divide into two women: One gives way to grief over the tragedy of the drowning, while the other embraces the child who is returned to her. The narrator closes his eyes for just a moment, but when he opens them, he finds the beach deserted, with no sign to tell him which of the alternate worlds he now inhabits.

The Festival coincided with the Italian publication of A More Perfect Heaven by Rizzoli, as Il Segreto di Copernico.  In celebration, my astronomer friend Ettore Perozzi and his colleagues at the science bookshop Libreria Assaggi arranged a partial play reading in the store. Perozzi is pictured below, setting the scene for Retico (Fabio Condemi) and Copernico (Stefano Onofri). Thanks to the actors' perfect diction and enthusiasm for their roles (and further aided by knowing what they were supposed to be saying) I understood every word.

Year of Wonders

On the first truly frigid night of winter (Jan. 3-4), I set an alarm for 2 a.m. and went out to take in the Quadrantid Meteor Shower. I'm fond of meteor showers because they're so low-tech. You don't need a telescope to observe them, or even binoculars, but just the willingness to lie outside in the dark and look up.

Over-eager, I started my vigil too early. My fingers (inside mittens under blankets) froze before the first shooting stars arrived. While waiting I got reacquainted with the available constellations: the Big Dipper, from whose ladle the promised meteors would pour, Gemini standing on Orion's shoulders, and Leo, looking like a real lion, pinning Mars underfoot. The cloudless dark and absent Moon set up perfect viewing conditions.

I had the cordless phone in my coat pocket. Should the display turn spectacular, I would call a couple of not-quite-die-hards and encourage them to leave their beds. But I counted only eleven meteors in the two-plus hours I could bear the cold. The forecast had predicted as many as one hundred or more per hour. I wondered whether the friends I'd alerted in advance to these potential fireworks were also out somewhere in the night, perhaps annoyed with me for sending them on a fool's errand.

I found plenty of time to question what made me want to spend the pre-dawn hours this way, and also to realize why. Staring up at the unchanging pattern of the stars, panning for surprise, I thrilled every time a bright ball of fire materialized out of that reliable background to slide across the heavens in less than a moment.

The new year promises other meteor showers along with two major astronomical events -- the Transit of Venus in June and a total solar eclipse in November. Attendance at those sky shows will demand large investments of time and travel expense in addition to pluck, plus readiness for a different flavor of risk. No one doubts that the syzygies -- the exact planetary alignments that permit Venus to be seen crossing the Sun's face or a sector of Earth to immerse in the Moon's shadow -- will occur on schedule according to the laws of physics. The only question is, Will the local weather in any particular viewing area allow witnesses to watch the natural miracle unfold?

First Christmas in the Cloister

"We'll plant trees in the spring," their leader promised. Meanwhile the few young nuns newly arrived from Chicago must embrace the sere brown fields of their new home in New Mexico, and try to forget about snow. The story of the first Christmas at the Poor Clare Monastery of Our Lady of Guadalupe was the first season's greeting to reach me this year. The nuns of this convent belong to the same religious order as Galileo's two daughters. The friendship we formed while I was writing Galileo's Daughter continues, although Mother Mary Francis, my special correspondent and guide to the cloistered life, died five years ago. I'm grateful to the current abbess, Mother Mary Angela, for sharing this memory from Mother Mary Francis, who woke on December 24, 1950 to sing the solemn Christmas Martyrology, only to find her surroundings strangely bright:

"The 15-watt bulb in the dormitory hall furnished the only light for all our cells, and what illumination this Poor Clare chandelier managed to provide through cell doors open two or three inches to admit it was rather less than dazzling. The light that was washing down our habit skirt this morning and gleaming on my bare feet was something different. Then I saw it -- the snow! Snow whirling, singing, laughing everywhere! Snow insistent on the window ledge, snow fitting great ballerina skirts on the elm trees. It tore the last cobwebs of sleep form my eyes before the cold water in the pitcher followed to shiver me awake. I swept down the dormitory stairs and across the community room to the east window.

"There was the big field. But, no, it was a huge lake of light! Thick masses of stars reached down arms of light toward our new little monastery. The white grounds reached back. Evidently our Lord had decided to tear up the weather forecasts for Roswell this year of our first coming. I looked at the light streaming up from the snow and down from the sky again; and I walked slowly into the choir, a little shaken with the beauty of the embrace."

In his element

A few friends sent me excited word this week that a new element had been named for Copernicus -- and perfectly timed for the release of my book about him. Only, I had already reported this news in the new book. The  designation of super-heavy atomic element number 112 as "copernicium" (symbol Cn) occurred nearly a year ago, on February 19, the date of Copernicus's birthday (his 537th), as announced then by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. The recent news concerns the acceptance of the name copernicium by a sister organization, the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, which voted in favor during its General Assembly in London this past week.

Nice to know that everyone agrees.

Copernicium is a radioactive element that does not exist in nature. A few atoms' worth were created in 1996 from a fusion of zinc and lead under laboratory conditions at the Center for Heavy Ion Research (GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung) in Darmstadt, Germany. The tiny sample of new substance decayed into extinction within microseconds of its synthesis. Yet its significance lives on. Chemists and physicists the world over have since reviewed the experiment and authenticated its results.

According to custom, the scientists who produced the copernicium earned the right to suggest a name for it. The team's leader, Sigurd Hoffman, drew a nice comparison between Copernicus's world view (of planets orbiting the Sun) with the structure of a copernicium atom, in which 122 electrons orbit a nucleus of 122 protons and 155 neutrons.

Enduring Legacy

Being interviewed by NPR's science correspondent Joe Palca would have been thrill enough, but he also chose the perfect venue for our meeting on Thursday (October 27) -- at the Dibner Library of the History of Science & Technology, a trove of rare books and manuscripts tucked inside the National Museum of American History on the Mall in Washington, D.C. Set out on a table for our inspection was a pristine looking first edition of Copernicus's great book, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres. Next to it sat the much rarer First Account of his heliocentric theory, written by his only student, Georg Joachim Rheticus. The two sixteenth-century titles served us well as conversation pieces.

After weeks in and out of bookstores, seeing hundreds of new hardcovers, paperbacks, and e-reader accoutrements, I found myself startled anew into appreciation of early books as sturdy artifacts.

Copernicus was covered in a deep brown tooled leather. Rheticus wore white. He shared his elaborate binding (held closed by two antique clasps in good working condition) with a set of astronomical tables by his mentor Johann Schöner, plus eight other related tracts from famed cosmologists of his own and earlier eras. Since book buyers in the 1500s purchased treatises unbound, they could create custom volumes according to their personal tastes.

Palca and I delighted in the texture of the pages, which felt more like fine fabric than paper. The librarian looking over our shoulders, Kirsten VanderVeen, attributed their creamy durability to a rag content of predominantly pure linen.

On close inspection, the Copernicus displayed a hole drilled through a succession of chapters by a bookworm. The insect had eschewed the ink as it ate its way through On the Revolutions, leaving the text unexpurgated.

Dividing Lines

As I travel from book store to book store in cities around the country, I find that my talk of Copernicus's Sun-centered cosmos quickly raises questions about the relationship between science and religion. Last week in New Hampshire a pamphleteer deemed Copernicus's ideas "anti-God." This week a Denver resident attacked science more broadly, bringing evolution into the discussion of heavenly revolutions. Copernicus himself conceded he feared censure from people who might twist scripture to discredit him. As a canon of the Catholic church, he could hardly have considered his own theory irreligious. Rather, it was non-religious--separate from theology. As he declared in the opening pages of On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, "Mathematics is written for mathematicians." At the same time, he bowed to an omnipotent creator. "Thus vast," he wrote later in that same book, "is the divine handiwork of the most excellent Almighty."

Nothing in Copernicus's faith prevented him from trying to understand natural philosophy on its own terms. Nor from insisting that faith alone was insufficient for probing the mysteries of the universe. Galileo, another Catholic, shared that conviction, quoting a quip by a cardinal friend of his: "The Bible is a book about how to go to Heaven--not how the heavens go."

Kepler, who was so true to his Lutheran faith that he moved to another town to avoid forced conversion, agreed with Copernicus and Galileo on questions of science and religion. Kepler warned against "wantonly dragging the Holy Spirit into physics class."

An op-ed piece in The New York Times on Tuesday (October 18), "The Evangelical Rejection of Reason," added a valuable current perspective on science and religion. Karl W. Giberson and Randall J. Stephens-- a physicist and a historian, both affiliated with Eastern Nazarene College--rue the anti-intellectual rhetoric of most Republican presidential candidates. As men of faith, the authors distance themselves from fundamentalists who insist the Bible trumps all other sources of information. "When the faith of so many Americans becomes an occasion to embrace discredited, ridiculous and even dangerous ideas," they write, "we must not be afraid to speak out."

Last night (October 19) in Milwaukee, I found another hopeful sign during the event Boswell Book Company arranged for me at Discovery World Museum. A man asked me to inscribe a copy of my book for his brother: "To Peter, who follows science and respects faith." I was happy to do it.

Time travel?

The first round of U.S. travel to promote A More Perfect Heaven landed me last Sunday (October 9) in Concord, New Hampshire as a guest of Gibson's Bookstore. Two extraordinary experiences bracketed my talk at the Capitol Center for the Arts.

First, on approaching the theater for the 7 p.m. event, I saw my name in lights.

Upon exiting later, however, after speaking to a most congenial audience, I learned that every car parked near the venue had been leafleted with anti-Copernican literature.

The headline on the three-sheet handout, "Selected Profiles in the Geocentric-Heliocentric Debate," made me think the document must be a prank. Surely no one in New England in 2011 still clung to a flat Earth or an Earth-centered cosmos. But I regret to say I was wrong.

"In the 16th century, anti-God forces waged an all out war on Biblical truth," the printed diatribe began. "Copernicus proclaimed that the earth was not stationary--in direct contradiction to the holy scriptures. With no proof, Copernicus dethroned the earth as the jewel of all creation and enthroned the sun in its place."

Since the distributor of this document did not attend my talk to confront me, I had no chance to defend Copernicus--or Galileo, who was similarly defamed on page 2: "None, but none among the fanciful assertions of the believers in Galileo's sun-centered astronomical gospel has ever been proven."

Surrounded by friendly nerds as I usually am, I've been shielded from this desperate brand of deceit. It jibed all too well with the laments I heard last month from staff at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, ruing the energy they expend fending off "deniers" who insist the Apollo landings were faked.

Things are worse than I thought.

Second debut

On Tuesday, October 4, the official publication date of A More Perfect Heaven, "And the Sun Stood Still" enjoyed its second debut in the town where I live. It felt good to launch the new book with a staged reading of the play inside it, right here at home, among family and friends -- and under my son's professional direction. His sister, Zoë, and I were both very proud.

I think it's fair to call this event a "second debut" because the play changed a great deal from the first reading of the first draft, held here on May 22, 2007. Most of the same actors returned to resume their roles, I'm happy to say. Thanks to Hugh King, Trevor Vaughn, Peter Fitzgerald, Josh Gladstone, Kate Mueth, and Max Tabet for their fine performances.

Neither of these evenings would have been possible without the support -- without the existence -- of The Naked Stage and its home at Guild Hall in East Hampton, New York. As the name suggests, The Naked Stage offers straightforward readings of plays, without scenery or lighting effects, almost every Tuesday evening in fall, winter and spring, free and open to the public. Founder Josh Perl engages the community in choosing the plays to be read, volunteering as actors, and attending with enthusiasm. Four years ago, when he learned that I -- one of his Tuesday night regulars -- was writing a play, he scheduled me for the season finale and played the part of the printer who published Copernicus's book.

I'm glad Josh is still speaking to me after I eliminated his role in the course of rewriting. With typical grace and good humor, he agreed to read stage directions this time.

Thanks, too, to our local book store, BookHampton, for setting up temporary shop in the Guild Hall lobby to sell copies of A More Perfect Heaven.

In the audience of familiar faces, I was particularly gratified to find my editor and publisher, George Gibson of Bloomsbury - Walker & Co., who drove out from Manhattan for the occasion. An even longer-distance visitor was Will Andrewes, organizer of the 1993 Longitude Symposium that cemented our friendship and changed both our lives. Will arrived just before show-time from Concord, Massachusetts with his daughter, Elizabeth, and returned there immediately afterward.

Bertram Kalisher, publisher of Chronos Magazine, brought his wife Marcie, of course, and also a tellurium clock that enlivened the intermission with its mechanical representation of Copernicus's cosmic conception.

Relics from the Moon, still good as new

While in Houston last week to lecture for the Lunar and Planetary Institute's "Cosmic Explorations" series, my hosts took me to the nearby Johnson Space Center on a thrill ride -- a tour of the Lunar Curatorial Lab, where the rocks the Apollo astronauts collected on the Moon now reside. By coincidence, I'd received a message immediately upon arrival in Houston from my friend Carolyn, the only person of my acquaintance ever to have eaten real Moon dust. The memory of that incident had been on my mind the whole day, and now here she was in a rare communication, writing to say she'd just located the astronomer who gave her that Moon dust as a love token four decades ago.

There was no Moon dust lying around the Lunar Curatorial Lab. It was a clean room in the technical sense -- so clean that I had to remove my jewelry before entering lest stray atoms of gold contaminate the environment. Obeying regulations, I put on a protective cap and suit (for the protection of the lunar samples) and stood several minutes in an air shower designed to relieve me of Earthly dust particles.

Within the facility's work area, Moon rocks lay untouchable inside glass cabinets giving them temporary shelter plus an atmosphere of pure nitrogen gas. Even Andrea Mosie, who has worked here for thirty-six years, handling Moon rocks on a daily basis, has never felt the Moon on her skin. She must put her hands in white fabric gloves first, then into the bulky black apppendages of the glove boxes, then don clear teflon gloves as a third barrier before picking up a hammer or chisel to break off small samples for the scientists who request them.

Only half a dozen rocks occupied the various cabinets. The rest -- approximately 800 pounds' worth -- hid in the adjacent vault, protected by a system of combination locks worthy of the secret service.

Cosmochemist Gary Lofgren, who holds the singular title of "Lunar Curator," gave me a glimpse of a Moon rock through a modified microscope set atop one of the glass cases. The rock sparkled at me, flashing tiny beams from a hundred shiny inclusions. I must have gasped, startled by the unexpected show of beauty. "They're still fresh," Dr. Lofgren explained, with an equally fresh enthusiasm for the specimens. "Ancient as they are, they never weathered on the Moon's surface, and they're protected from weathering here."

Thanks to all my new friends in Houston for this privilege.

To be a Solar System Ambassador

Last Sunday, during the question-and-answer session following my talk at the Shelter Island Historical Society, someone pointed out that the Longitude Problem had been solved during the Age of Reason at a time of great discovery -- but that now we seem to be entering an age of un-reason and un-discovery. (This event followed a certain governor's remarkably uninformed remarks about Galileo.) "What can be done?" my commenter wanted to know.

It was too big a question for a simple answer, but I suggested we all try to share what we know. Later it struck me that I already belong to a volunteer group trying to share knowledge about the planets.: NASA's Solar System Ambassadors Program, which is recruiting new members this month for year-long terms beginning January 1.

Kay Ferrari, who administers the program from her office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, especially seeks candidates from states with only a few active Ambassadors: Alaska, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii (Kauai), Iowa, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming. (New York has 23.)

You need not be an astronomer or own a telescope to apply. Kay herself comes from a theater background. When I asked her what constitutes "right stuff" for an Ambassador, she said, "The chief criterion is wanting to make a difference in the lives of others…and then doing it.  We are one huge family of like-minded people.  Sure, we all love space exploration, but our love of sharing the best of ourselves is what makes the program work so well."

Once accepted, Ambassadors can listen in on teleconferences in which scientists and engineers explain specific space missions. The program also gives Ambassadors materials for making their own presentations to groups of interested adults or children. Former Ambassador Sister Clarice Lolich, who died in 2009 at age 90, made a specialty of  talking about planetary science to the inmates of women's prisons near her home in Palo Alto. "She brought small NASA handout items with her for the women to give their children and grandchildren when they visited," Kay recalls. "She wanted them to pass along the inspiring message of space exploration as well."

In a program first this year, two Solar System Ambassadors are getting married -- to each other -- on 11-11-11.

The Moon's Name

The Harvest Moon, just setting this morning as I write, reminds me how most of the Moon's names have fallen away with disuse. Not the names on the Moon, such as Mare Tranquilitatis (the Sea of Tranquility) and Sinus Iridum (the Bay of Rainbows), which have held their lunar ground since selenographer Giovanni Riccioli dubbed them in the mid-seventeenth century. I mean the names of the Moon, which predate the telescope's invention and reflect the daily lives of many cultures. I've read that Siberian reindeer herders, for example, recognized the Moon of Water, the Moon of First Leaves, and the Moon of Shedding Antlers. Only full moons, rising at sunset and staying up all night, have ever earned their own seasonal names. The other phases mark the passage of time but don't call so much attention to themselves.

The Harvest Moon still clinging to collective memory sounds quaint as an old love song, though whoever named it favored a work ethic over romance. Arriving as it does toward Summer's end, when the days grow shorter but the crops require farmers to put in longer hours, the Harvest Moon recognizes their plight: It alters the normal interval from one Moonrise to the next, so as to give them more light.

Most of the year, the Moon rises an average of fifty minutes later than it rose the day before. But during autumn in the mid-to-high latitudes of the northern hemisphere, the Moon returns sooner -- less than half an hour later on successive evenings -- letting the work-day continue into the night.

By a more indoor definition, the Harvest Moon is the full Moon closest to the autumnal equinox, which will occur this year on Friday, Sept. 23 at 5:05 a.m. Fall is (almost) here.

Missing Person

Contemporary portraits from the sixteenth century depict nearly all of the key figures in Copernicus's life story - his fellow astronomers and churchmen, the printer who published his magnum opus, a few friends and family, the enemies who opposed him, and the royalty who commanded his allegiance. The sole and surprising exception -  the missing face in the portrait gallery - belongs to his lone disciple, Georg Joachim Rheticus, the brilliant mathematician who traveled five hundred miles from Germany to northern Poland to seek out Copernicus and convince him to publish his novel cosmology. The absence of any such likeness belies the fact that Rheticus authored several of his own well regarded mathematical treatises, paid formal visits to prominent scholars in foreign countries, and lived, despite his own dire predictions, to the age of sixty years.

Last week I thought I saw him in Bristol at The Watershed.

The actor from the Show of Strength Theatre Company who took the part of Rheticus in a staged reading of scenes from "And the Sun Stood Still" gave such an earnest portrayal as to imprint his face on the character.

The actor who played the Bishop, on the other hand, was far too handsome for the part, though his performance perfectly captured the character's demanding attitude and demeaning treatment of Copernicus.

As for our stage Copernicus, a retired physicist with no previous acting experience, his zeal for the role was exceeded only by his mastery of the subject matter. Many thanks to Andrew Kelly of the Bristol Festival of Ideas for organizing this most enjoyable event.

How I Learned to Write My Own Name

For the launch of A More Perfect Heaven at the Edinburgh Book Festival on Saturday (August 27), two Scottish actors took the roles of Copernicus and Rheticus, and read aloud scenes from the play-within-the-book, "And the Sun Stood Still." A local reporter from The Scotsman interviewed me on stage and moderated a question-and-answer session. Of the several hundred readers who attended the event, many "queued up" afterward with just-purchased copies of the book for me to autograph. I was happy to see them. Although speaking in public can be anxiety-provoking, signing books provides a pleasant opportunity to meet the people who like to read what I write.

The first person to approach me held up two books, and apologized for asking me to sign them both. Why, I wondered, would I object to such a request? I sat alone in a room for years to produce this work. Now someone else wants to read it - and also make a gift of it to a dear one. I'm delighted to inscribe a message to her in one copy, and wish her daughter a happy birthday in the other.

Several well-wishers had brought along worn copies of previous books (most often Longitude) to be signed along with the new, which I was also pleased to do.

Despite the long line, a few individuals seized the moment to confide something personal about their own lives, or to suggest something I should see while briefly in the city.

This was how I found out about the new statue of Edinburgh-native scientist James Clerk Maxwell sitting on George St., just a few blocks from the Festival grounds. I also learned that the hotel where I was staying had once been the home of Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton, so I made sure to look for the maps from his expeditions hanging in the ground-floor conference room.

For an event last night (August 30) here in Dublin at the Science Gallery, Trinity College, I showed some photos I'd taken of Copernicus-relevant sites in Poland. Science Gallery director Michael John Gorman, himself a science historian, joined me for a conversation on stage and then invited comments from the audience.

During the book-signing that followed, I appreciated the many expressions of concern that I might end the evening with a bad case of writer's cramp. I find that using a fat pen wards off any such suffering and allows for a legible signature. Thanks to everyone who turned out and made me feel so welcome to Ireland.

United and Divided

This week finds me in the British Isles, where the first foreign edition of A More Perfect Heaven makes its debut at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in Scotland -- a month before the American edition comes out. It's the same book on both sides of the ocean, of course, except for the spelling of certain words and the contrast between the two jackets. Just as the United Kingdom and the United States are "divided by a common language," as George Bernard Shaw once quipped, we seem further divided in the way we judge books by their covers.

The background color of the U.K. jacket suggests the bluest depths of the night sky that Copernicus might have observed, while the U.S. jacket glows in a burnished brass-gold reminiscent of an early astronomical instrument. Both are beautiful, and I'm glad I didn't have to choose between them.

An important first edition copy of Copernicus's own book resides at the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh. It belonged to astronomer Erasmus Reinhold, a Copernican contemporary who made copious notes in the margins of many pages -- notes that indicate how the book's first readers reacted to its original ideas. I was hoping to view Reinhold's annotated copy while visiting the city, but, unfortunately for me, the librarian who has custody of the rare volume will be away on vacation.

The Book Festival coincides with Edinburgh's Festival Fringe, said to be the world's largest annual arts festival. The crowd of performers coming to town has made it easy for my publisher to find a couple of actors willing to portray Copernicus and his lone disciple, Rheticus. The two men will read aloud a few scenes from "And the Sun Stood Still," the play at the center of my book, during my Festival event.

After leaving Edinburgh, I'll take Copernicus to Dublin and Belfast, then England, with events in Bristol, Bath, Greenwich, and London. For a play reading at the new Peter Harrison Planetarium of the National Maritime Museum, the staff have promised to create stellar theatrical effects (or theatrical stellar effects?) on the dome with their digital laser projector.

A Date with Greatness

Often I'm asked to speak about Galileo to interested audiences, but last week The Tech Museum in San Jose invited me to speak for him--to answer a series of questions about his "personality traits" and "lifestyle preferences" as I imagined Galileo might respond. For example, would he describe himself as "shy and quiet"? Enjoy playing sports or games? Prefer eating meat to eating vegetables?

Put another way, Can an individual who lived centuries ago find a match in today's online social network? I wasn't sure I wanted to put Galileo to that test, but the Museum staff convinced me to think again. They plan a small exhibition about the "scientific formulas based on social science theories" used by dating services to connect people with similar personalities, interests, backgrounds, and values. An accompanying interactive display promising “A Date With Greatness” will allow Museum visitors to take a short quiz that tests their compatibility with characters out of history.

As someone with a longstanding crush on Galileo, I felt confident choosing the personality descriptors that pegged him as "warm," "sympathetic," "adventurous," and "open to new experiences." I was sure he'd like "watching movies, concerts, and plays" (well, concerts and plays), just as much as "making art, music, or new inventions." Asked to list hobbies and other interests, I offered that he loved writing letters and verses, also debating, and playing the lute, although I wasn't sure these qualities would appeal to the middle- and high-school students in the exhibition's target audience. You never know.

The Museum didn't ask for a picture, but I engaged in a little "cyber-stalking" to see what images might be available for their purpose. Galileo counted several well known artists among his acquaintances, a few of whom drew or painted his likeness. Unfortunately, all the portraits depicted him as a bearded old man. Tucked in among these head shots, however, was a lone photo of a genuine stud--a handsome piece of horseflesh also named Galileo.

According to ematings.com, an online matchmaker service for thoroughbreds, 12-year-old Galileo is currently stallion of the week, stallion of the month, and stallion the year.

Looking ahead, I've asked the Tech Museum to consider adding shy, quiet Copernicus to their roster of Greatness Date candidates.

Playfully en route to Jupiter

The Juno spacecraft, designed to peer through the cloud layers of Jupiter just as the mythical Juno saw through her husband's high jinks, launched last Friday from Cape Canaveral. In addition to its suite of scientific instruments, Juno bears a plaque honoring Galileo, the discoverer of the giant planet's four largest moons. Also aboard the solar-powered spacecraft -- and causing much e-mail controversy among the members of HASTRO-L (the history of astronomy discussion group) -- is a trio of Lego figurines: a bearded and telescope-toting Galileo, a longer-bearded Jupiter (Zeus in the Greek pantheon) with a thunderbolt in hand, and a child-like female carrying an oversized magnifying glass to represent the investigative Juno (Hera), who was both sister and wife to the king of the gods.

"Unbelievable!" a physics and astronomy professor exclaimed in disgust as soon as the news and photo hit the HASTRO list. Another concurred in finding the Lego group aesthetically distasteful: "Of all the representations of Jupiter and Juno that are available..."

However, for every subscriber who questioned the threesome's right to passage ("I wonder how much Lego is contributing to the cost of this mission for all this free advertising?"), another spoke in the toys' defense: "I credit most of my software-designing skills to playing with Lego." "As an undergrad engineering student, I anecdotally recall that Lego was a pretty common experience for those who entered many engineering fields."

A historian of science reported that she had shared the news story with her 37-year-old son, asking how he thought "sentient Jovians" might respond to the Lego people. He replied, "They'll probably wonder why we didn't send more sets along for them to play with."

A couple of older discussants opined that the more senior Meccano "provided much better education in engineering."

The first scoffer rejoined the conversation at this point to lament, "Seriously, this is another indication that the great vision and sense of wonder which once surrounded our space program is gone....instead of having a truly inspirational educational program for the next generation of space scientists and engineers...maybe a student-run experiment from Jupiter...NASA has decided to send Lego blocks...what a disgrace!" But a foreign correspondent told him to lighten up, pointing out that in fact Juno carries a color camera, "Junocam," for the specific purpose of wow-ing students and the public at large with the first-ever photos of Jupiter's aurora-rich north and south poles.

Just before the debate detoured into the psychological motivations for sending "little keep-sakes into space," a retired pastor recalled the gold-anodized recording of Earth sights and sounds adorning the two Voyager spacecraft. He asked fellow list subscribers to "imagine the perplexity of an alien race that found both the Lego and the golden record!"

Colors of the Moon

My friend Sally James (aka Dr. Sara James, Professor of Art History at Mary Baldwin College) visited me this past weekend, fresh from a week-long seminar in New York about scientific techniques for analyzing and dating works of art. I had been Sally's house guest in Staunton, Virginia, for most of May, when I taught a short course in "Writing Creatively about Science" for Mary Baldwin students. The planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter were clustering in attractive dawn patterns during much of my stay, but every time we set our alarms early to observe them, the weather foiled us. As consolation, I suggested Sally fan her interest in astronomy by starting a Moon journal: She would look for the Moon every day and night; write down where and when she found it, and describe how it looked in those moments.

The following month, while on vacation at Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, Sally got two of her granddaughters to keep Moon journals, too. On the evening of June 15, while a lunar eclipse unfolded over parts of Africa, the Middle East, central Asia, and western Australia, Sally saw the full Moon rise out of the Atlantic looking as red and gold as autumn leaves. She took several photos of it.

Having heard that the Moon turns red when submerged in the Earth's shadow, she wondered whether the color she'd captured with her camera had anything to do with the night's big event on the other side of the world.

In fact the Moon as viewed from North Carolina owed its redness to effects entirely unrelated to the eclipse. Just as the Sun glows reddish near the horizon at sunrise or sunset, the Moon, too, may blush while rising or setting, as its light (the sunlight reflected by the Moon's surface) travels through the thick, dust-laden lower atmosphere. The ocean mists may also contribute a reddening effect. Sally's later photos showed how the Moon whitened when it climbed higher into the sky.

We had a "new Moon," meaning "no Moon visible," for Sally's brief stay here. We sat outside till late on her last night, watching the Milky Way, counting occasional meteors even as lightning flashed in the west.

Cultural Exchange

On a cruise to the mid-Pacific to view the total solar eclipse of April 8, 2005, I sat at dinner one evening near Tomasz Mazur, a young mining engineer from Poland. I told him about my Copernicus project and said I would soon be visiting his country. Without hesitation, he asked for the dates of my trip, offering to take time off work to serve as my translator and guide. Copernicus was his hero, Tom volunteered, and it would be his pleasure to accompany me to the cities where the astronomer had lived.

Tom fulfilled his promise that summer, and again two years later, when I returned for a second round of research. We enjoyed our finest hour in Krakow, being treated to a rare, private glimpse of Copernicus's hand-written manuscript for De revolutionibus. The curator held the volume in gloved hands and opened it to several interesting pages -- the iconic diagram of the Sun-centered cosmos, the author's ink-smudged fingerprint in a margin. She told Tom (in Polish) how unusual it was for the priceless document to come out of its temperature- and humidity-controlled safe. As we left the building, Tom compared the viewing to the eclipse we'd seen together: difficult to achieve, over too soon, but stunning and unforgettable in its impact.

Staying in touch with Tom by e-mail, I knew he wanted to visit the States, most of all to see a Shuttle launch. Last February, thanks to another friend's good luck in winning a lottery for launch-watching privileges in the Kennedy Space Center's Rocket Garden, I invited Tom to Florida. Finally, I thought, I might return one of his countless favors.

The launch experience proved as addictive as eclipses for Tom. He returned to Cape Canaveral with his brother earlier this month, to witness Atlantis's last lift-off. Since I couldn't join him this time, he sent me a report:

We came to Miami 7th of July in the afternoon, drove several hours north to our booked hostel in Kissimmee, and were quite tired and sleepy at 11 p.m. when we finally arrived. I was especially afraid about my brother who was driving whole time after long, tiring flight from Europe (with overnight in Madrid airport), so the news about poor weather prospects and 70 percent chance for postponing the launch didn't make me very happy.

At 3 a.m. we learned that fueling was underway, and we left for Jetty Park, our chosen place of observation. We got there at 4 a.m. and found really great spot on small mound. We put our tripods there immediately and pointed our cameras on the small white point on the horizon (about 16 miles away), which appeared in the viewfinders as beautifully lighted with powerful beams. In that chilly  night it was the only moment when the Shuttle was clearly visible and we could take pictures of it on the launch pad.

After sunrise haze rose from the lakes and canals, and one could see no more than a gloomy irregular shape in the distance. As the hours passed, the weather got better, mocking all forecasts for heavy rain. About one hour before the launch we knew we were on the way to see the take-off. Now only technical problems could stop it. Everything was going smooth even in that area, and for a few minutes my heartbeat quickened and this special kind of excitement I always have before the eclipse arose in me. I started to believe that we will be presented with that wonderful experience against all odds and grim foresights, but when I was gluing my eye to the camera and placing sweaty hands on the remote release at T minus 31 seconds, we heard on the NASA radio that some failure occurred. All the people around us stopped their breath and froze. We knew only a few minutes remained to solve the problem before the start window will close. Voices in the radio started quick and tense information exchange, and even though I couldn't understand everything, I felt tremendous tension and nervousness in those short sentences. No, not at the very end! I thought to myself. And then with great peak of hope I caught a sense of relief in the next communications, and, with cheerful applause of all people gathered around, the countdown resumed and we saw the flames of main engines and solid rocket boosters a few seconds later.

The column of plume rose to the sky and pierced the first layer of clouds. A glimpse of fire appeared one or two times more in the scatterings. The sound reached us long after the last visual contact with the climbing spaceship.

That was the end. We abandoned the Moon and our aspirations for Mars, as well as other ambitious goals in space conquest. Now we canceled the most advanced and versatile spacecraft. Next years will bring us slow degradation and finally sad end of Hubble telescope and ISS unavoidable retirement. No one really believes in loud but empty words about return to Moon and building the base there.

To finish this letter less grimly I want to tell you that in the days after the launch we had great time exploring the main nerve of America and American Dream, as Hunter S. Thompson described it, visiting all theme parks around: SeaWorld, Universal Studios and Disney. We also toured Key West, but the thing I will remember the most (excluding the launch itself, of course) from that short sequel to my holidays will be the night before my birthday spent jogging on the beach with full Moon above and silent ocean silvered by its light below.

Micro-moments in Time

This week I received an invitation to a conference considering the future of the leap second. An extra dose of moment, a leap second is occasionally introduced into modern time reckoning to keep the rotation of our planet in synch with the march of time. Because the Earth's turning has been deemed erratic compared to the atom's vibrations, the definition of a second changed several decades ago from a minuscule fraction of a 24-hour day (1/86,400) to the time it takes a cesium atom under certain specified conditions to execute a great many vibrations (9,192,631,770).

Time was, the Earth itself served as the only timekeeper people used or needed. Before anyone conceived of the planet's ceaseless motion, the spinning of the Earth on its axis changed day to night reliably enough. And the Earth's tilted orbit about the Sun brought each season round in predictable order. Not until the 18th century did scientists suspect that the Earth clock was gradually winding down, retarded by the pull of the Moon. The Moon's tidal force brakes the Earth's rotation. As a result, over the course of a long human lifetime, the length of the average Earth day may grow by as much as one-thosandth of a second.

Although atomic time is far more precise and accountable than the clockwork universe, we naturally cling to our time-honored dependence on the heavens to define the length of days, months, and years. Astronomers especially, for the pointing of telescopes and other reasons, want to keep the Earth's position in space a factor in the accepted notion of time.

The parties responsible for global time-keeping include the International Bureau of Weights and Measures and the International Earth Rotation Service. Since June 1972, these bodies have melded the two systems -- atomic and astronomical -- by adding a total of 24 leap seconds. The last such addition occurred as 2008 came to a close with a minute of 61 seconds' duration. That particular leap second may have been the last of its kind.

Next January, an organization affiliated with the United Nations, the Radiocommunication Sector of the International Telecommunications Union, will vote in Geneva on the wisdom of doing away with leap seconds once and for all. The question has been debated among professional clock-watchers in various fields for at least ten years, and the debate will no doubt intensify in the coming months. The abolition of leap seconds would eliminate the elaborate, expensive protocols for deciding upon and distributing them, but it would also disconnect our clocks from any connection with the universe at large.

Small Nemesis

Living as I do in a tick-infested region, I've contracted my share of tick-borne diseases. Three bouts of successfully treated Lyme disease inured me to the danger, and over the years I grew cavalier in my attitude toward ticks. Before saying another word I want to assure you there will be no pictures of ticks accompanying this post. It's not as though you could avoid a tick encounter by positive identification, since they're so tiny. You can see one on the Centers for Disease Control site, crawling among the letters of a Lincoln penny. I considered including a schematic diagram of the tick's life cycle on its various animal hosts -- the white-tailed deer and white-footed mice that also live in my neighborhood -- but the complex of connecting circles would not fit here.

It's possible I picked up the latest tick that bit me while I walked through the grass, or petted a cat or dog, though I really can't recall. As I said, I've grown careless and don't bother tucking trouser legs into sock tops or applying tick repellent. I started to feel sick about four weeks ago. At first the fatigue and headache didn't derail my normal activities, but other symptoms accrued while I awaited a positive diagnosis. By the time the words babesiosis and ehrlichiosis came back from the lab, I had anemia severe enough to land me in the hospital for blood transfusions.

When I get home again, maybe later today or tomorrow, I'll be more careful.