(After battling with assorted computer problems the last two weeks we are glad to report the site is fully operational. While getting organized, we found the following missive in the mail from our dear friend Mr. Screwtape. We definitely don’t want to antagonize him – so we belatedly present to you his astronomical observations on the Feat of St. Lawrence.)
Originally from the city of Huesca in Spain, where, thanks to his inspired intervention, the sacred chalice used by Our Lord at the Last Supper reposes, Lawrence was an archdeacon of the Roman Church charged with the responsibility of managing the material goods of the pious patrimony of Saint Peter, and the devoted distribution of alms to the poor of the City. During the persecution of the Emperor Valerian, as the holy bishop of Milan, Ambrose, relates that when a pushy Prefect asked for the “treasures of the Church” the intrepid Iberian brought forward the poor and divinely declaimed: “Behold in these poor persons the treasures which I promised to show you; to which I will add pearls and precious stones, those widows and consecrated virgins, which are the church’s crown.” The furious functionary was not amused, to say the least, arrested the cleric and had a great gridiron prepared, with pounds of fiery coals beneath it. Lawrence’s body was then petulantly placed on the ignited instrument. After some undetermined but objectively painful time elapsed, the lovely legend concludes, he made his famously cheery quip, “It is well done on the one side. Turn me over!”
From a July 2013 NASA press release: “We have found that one meteor shower produces more fireballs than any other,” explains Bill Cooke of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office. “It’s the Perseid meteor shower, which peaks on August 12th and 13th.” Using a network of meteor cameras distributed across the southern USA, Cooke’s team has been tracking fireball activity since 2008, and they have built up a database of hundreds of events to analyze. The data point to the Perseids as the ‘fireball champion’ of annual meteor showers. A fireball is a very bright meteor, at least as bright as the planets Jupiter or Venus. They can be seen on any given night as random meteoroids strike Earth’s upper atmosphere. One fireball every few hours is not unusual. Fireballs become more numerous, however, when Earth is passing through the debris stream of a comet. That’s what will happen this August. The Perseid meteor shower comes from Comet Swift-Tuttle. Every year in early- to mid-August, Earth passes through a cloud of dust sputtered off the comet as it approaches the sun. Perseid meteoroids hitting our atmosphere at 132,000 mph produce an annual light show that is a favorite of many backyard sky watchers. Cooke thinks the Perseids are rich in fireballs because of the size of the parent comet. “Comet Swift-Tuttle has a huge nucleus–about 26 km in diameter,” comments Cooke. “Most other comets are much smaller, with nuclei only a few kilometers across. As a result, Comet Swift-Tuttle produces a large number of meteoroids, many of which are large enough to produce fireballs.” Cooke recommends looking on the nights of August 12th and 13th between the hours of 10:30 PM to 4:30 AM local time. Before midnight the meteor rate will start out low, then increase as the night wears on, peaking before sunrise when the constellation Perseus is high in the sky. For every fireball that streaks out of Perseus, there will be dozens more ordinary meteors. “Get away from city lights,” advises Cooke. “While fireballs can be seen from urban areas, the much greater number of faint Perseids is visible only from the countryside.”
Since the Perseid meteor shower, which has been observed for two millennia, occurs around the feast the magnificent Martyr they have been nicknamed “The Tears of Saint Lawrence”.
Therefore this sounds like the optimal opportunity for a Catholic camping excursion. And don’t forget to bring the barbecue!
Mr. Screwtape
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