Memorial Day By Joyce Kilmer -- Poem

 

The bugle echoes shrill and sweet,
But not of war it sings to-day.
The road is rhythmic with the feet
Of men-at-arms who come to pray.

The roses blossom white and red
On tombs where weary soldiers lie;
Flags wave above the honored dead
And martial music cleaves the sky.

Above their wreath-strewn graves we kneel,
They kept the faith and fought the fight.
Through flying lead and crimson steel
They plunged for Freedom and the Right.

May we, their grateful children, learn
Their strength, who lie beneath this sod,
Who went through fire and death to earn
At last the accolade of God.

In shining rank on rank arrayed
They march, the legions of the Lord;
He is their Captain unafraid,
The Prince of Peace...Who brought a sword.

~Joyce Kilmer (1886 - 1918)

Sergeant Joyce Kilmer, 69th New York Infantry Regiment was killed in action
during the Second Battle of Marne in the last year of World War I on
Tuesday, July 30, 1918.

Never Forget!

Night Sky Photography -- 05-24-2023 -- Venus & Mars After Sunset

Hello fellow amateur stargazers!

If you are blessed to have clear mid-spring skies this time of year, look towards the west about an hour after sunset and you will see our Earth's two closest planetary neighbors moving closer together in the sky at dusk as we move closer to the summer solstice.

As you can see from my photograph (taken on one of the rare cloudless evening skies this month here in South Carolina), both Venus and Mars can both be seen in and near the twin stars: Castor and Pullox -- the two brightest stars of the Constellation Gemini.

Because Venus -- the second planet in our Solar System -- is closer to the Sun, it has a much faster orbit. There are 225 of our Earth days that make up a yearly trip around the Sun for Venus. I say our Earth days because (fun fact) Venus has a very long day -- approximately 243 days for the hot planet to rotate on its axis in fact, making a day on Venus slightly longer than its actual year!

By contrast, Mars has a orbital period of 687 of our Earth day, and a day on Mars is about 24.7 of our hours here on Earth (closer to 25 hours) and takes the Red Planet about a little less than two of our Earth years to revolve around the Sun.

Venus is moving higher in the sky away from the Sun, while Mars is moving much slower but also higher in the sky.

In a little over a month, the orbits of both planets will have them meeting in the night sky in conjunction in the Constellation Leo The Lion on the evening of Saturday, July 1, 2023. The two wanderers will be about 3 degrees apart just above the point of the Summer Triangle and the bright star, Regulus.

Conjunctions between Venus and Mars usually happen once a year and both planets stay close together (at least from out point of view here on Earth) for about ten days to two weeks. After this year, the next Venus-Mars conjunction will take place on Thursday, February 22, 2024.

U.S. Armed Forces Day

U.S. Armed Forces Day is celebrated in the United States on the third Saturday in May. It falls near the end of Armed Forces Week, which begins on the second Saturday of May and ends on the third Sunday of May (or the fourth if the month begins on a Sunday).

First observed on Saturday, May 20, 1950, the day was created the year before on Wednesday, August 31, 1949 by U.S. President Harry S. Truman who led the effort to establish a single holiday for citizens to come together and thank military members for their patriotic service.

Then Secretary of Defense Louis A. Johnson announced the creation of the holiday to honor Americans serving in the five U.S. military branches -- the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Air Force (formally the Army Air Corps), and U.S. Coast Guard -- following the formal consolidation of the military services in the U.S. Department of Defense as part of a modern US Armed Forces. The sixth branch -- the U.S. Space Force -- was added in 2020.

On Friday, May 19, 2017, US President Donald Trump reaffirmed the Armed Forces Day holiday on the 70th anniversary of the creation of the U.S. Department of Defense.

This blogger would like to dedicate this post to all those currently serving in the United States Armed Forces branches in defense of American freedom and national sovereignty. Thank you for your service to this nation and God Bless Y'all!

U.S. Army -- Established June 14, 1775.

U.S. Navy -- Established October 13, 1775.

U.S. Marine Corps -- Established November 10, 1775.

U.S. Coast Guard -- Established August 4, 1790.

U.S. Air Force -- Established September 18, 1947.

U.S. Space Force -- Established December 20, 2019.

Night Sky Photography -- 05-07-2023 -- The Waning Gibbous Moon & The Heart of the Scorpion

Late last night -- or very early in the morning depending on how you might look at it -- I was about to capture three really good night sky photos.

In my first photo, I was able to capture most of the major stars of the Constellation Scorpius The Scorpion just above the tree line to the south. The Waning Gibbous Moon can be seen right next to the constellation's brightest star, Antares (also known as the Heart of the Scorpion).

My second photo is a wider shot showing our beautiful Luna, the visible stars of Scorpius The Scorpion, and the interesting asterism known as "The Teapot" which is a part of the larger Constellation Sagittarius The Archer. The last photo is a close-up photo of the features of the Waning Gibbous Moon and the bright star, Antares.

Antares is the 15th brightest star visible in our night sky and lies about 550 light-years (or 170 parsecs) from our Solar System. Its also nearly 10,000 times as bright as our own Sun.

While Antares appears to be a single star when viewed with the naked eye here on Earth, but it's actually a binary star system, with two components called Alpha Scorpii A and Alpha Scorpii B. The brighter of the pair (a Scorpii A) is the red supergiant star that we can see, while the fainter star is a hot white main sequence star similar to our own Sun which is classified as a G-type main sequence star. Both stars are believed to be separated by about 529 AUs.

The name Antares comes from a Greek phrase meaning "the rival of Ares" (or in this case, the rival of the planet Mars) and was probably given because of the star’s red-orange color and brightness similar to that of our small, red planetary neighbor. Unlike Mars however, Antares is very large, with an estimated radius of around 800 million miles (or 8.6 AUs). So large that, if it were replaced with our own Sun, Antares would envelop all the inner planets of our Solar System!

Well I hope y'all enjoyed this presentation and my photographs. Have a wonderful Dixie day and y'all come back now, ya hear!

South Carolina Observes Two Memorial Days In May For American War Dead -- Lest We Forget

The guns have fallen silent, and may they always remain so.

During the month of May here in South Carolina, we observe two Memorial Days: Confederate Memorial Day (May 10th) a State holiday; and U.S. Memorial Day (May 29th) a Federal holiday observed on the last Monday of the month each year -- both to honor the men and boys who served in the War Between The States (American Civil War) 1861-1865.*

South Carolina sent tens of thousands of her sons, brothers, and husbands to fight in the War Between The States. About 60,000 men and boys of all social, racial and religious backgrounds fought with the Southern Confederacy to defend the newly independent State and their homes and families from unconstitutional invasion by federal forces. Another 5,400 African-American men fought with the Union forces among the ranks of the United States Colored Troops (USCT) to defend their new individual freedom and to preserve that same freedom for their own families.

Many of those same soldiers -- Union and Confederate -- never returned home and many of them never received proper burials far from the land of their birth. Some families never learned the ultimate fate of their loved ones.

The exposed skulls and bones of unburied Confederate soldiers near the Orange Plank Road
photographed in April, 1866 -- nearly two years after the Battle of the Wilderness was fought
there on May 5-7, 1864. Approximately 28,700 Americans (Union and Confederate) were
casualties during the battle.
Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Proper memorials to remember them were later built, sometimes decades after the end of the war, because of the high cost of building them in the war-damaged economy. Many others are buried in National and historic cemeteries and local church yards across South Carolina. The Confederate battle flags and United States flags these men fought under fly over these graves every year, placed there by patriotic veterans organizations, descendants of the soldiers, and thoughtful individuals that honor the memory of the dead.

It is to the memory of those sons of South Carolina, no matter their allegiances, who paid the ultimate sacrifice in that long and bloody war that this blog post is dedicated.

 Never Forget!

*Writer's Note: While this blog post explains why South Carolina honors American Civil War dead during the Month of May, US Memorial Day also honors all those in the United States armed forces who died in military service in every major and minor American conflict in this country's nearly 250 year history, especially men from South Carolina -- all of whom this blogger has nothing but the highest respect for their memories and service.

Night Sky Photography -- 05-05-2023 -- The Full Flower Moon Over Downtown Chester, South Carolina

Good evening, y'all!

This evening I have a pair of really good photos of the May Full Moon over the evening lights and buildings of downtown Chester, South Carolina -- my hometown -- as well as a nice close-up shot of the Full Moon and all of its outstanding features.

The May Full Moon is known as the Full Flower Moon (or Blossom Moon) here in the Northern Hemisphere.

Night Sky Photography -- 05-02-2023 -- Venus, Mars & The Moon With Four Asterisms

Good evening, fellow stargazers!

This evening I have some really good shots of two of our closest planetary neighbors, Venus and Mars; along our lovely Waxing Gibbous Moon, with four distinct astronomical asterisms in the same evening sky after sunset.

My first photo was taken an hour after sunset looking to the western sky where the winter constellations are starting to move lower and lower in the night sky dome. You can see the bright planet, Venus, quite clearly in the evening sky close to the Constellation Taurus The Bull.

The faint red-colored Mars is also visible just inside the Constellation Gemini The Twins just beneath the two brightest stars: Pollux and Castor. Both planets are currently visible near the Winter Triangle asterism -- the three stars: Betelgeuse (Constellation Orion The Hunter), Sirius (Constellation Canis Major "The Greater Dog") and Procyon (Constellation Canis Minor "The Lesser Dog"). Find the Winter Triangle, and you'll find the two planets for the next month at least until Mars moves higher into the sky by the end of May and into June. Venus will also move higher and appear beneath the "twin stars" just about where Mars appears now in the photo by Wednesday, May 24th.

In my next photo I captured a wonderful close-up of our lovely Luna in her Waxing Gibbous phase higher in the sky near the eastern sky just days away from becoming the Full Flower Moon -- the name given to the May Full Moon in North America -- on Friday, May 5th.

 

 

Luna currently sits just inside the larger Spring Triangle asterism, but just outside of the smaller unilateral Spring Triangle and the Great Diamond of Virgo asterisms, which are currently rising higher in the night sky as we well into spring here in the Northern Hemisphere.

As y'all can see in my next two photos the borders of both versions of the Spring Triangle are highlighted near the Moon. The smaller, more unilateral Triangle consists of the stars: Arcturus (Constellation Bootes The Herdsman), Spica (Constellation Virgo The Maiden), and Denebola (Constellation Leo The Lion). The larger Triangle includes Arcturus and Spica with the bright star Regulus, the "Heart of the Lion".

I couldn't quite capture Spica in frame with the larger Spring Triangle, although I captured it perfectly in the first photo showing the unilateral Spring Triangle and highlighted its location along with the other stars and Luna in both photos.

 

My final photo shows the four stars of the Great Diamond of Virgo with the Moon just outside of its boundaries. The Great Diamond consists of the three stars of the unilateral Spring Triangle, with the fourth star, Cor Caroli (Constellation Canes Venatichi "The Hunting Dogs") making up the fourth point in the Diamond. 

 

I hope that y'all enjoyed my night sky and planetary photography for the evening. Until the next time, have a good evening and be sure to keep your eyes to the night skies, y'all hear.