Galilean Moons 400 and More Years Later

Last Saturday evening, Paul and I visited Capitola Village after celebrating Jim's 70th birthday at Lee and Judy's and a quick in-and-out purchase of BBQ accessories at Home Depot.

As it was a Memorial Day weekend, the village was hustling and bustling with both locals and out-of-town visitors, with very few parking spaces available. In front of our space by the Esplanade, stood our guy from the Santa Cruz Astronomy Club, demonstrating to interested passersby live images captured by his gigantic telescope. I was ready to walk away, not totally impressed, thinking that I had seen it all before. Paul asked me to stop and have a new look into the telescope. To my true surprise, I saw our Moon accompanied not by Jupiter alone, but its four largest moons, Lo, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto all neatly strung like jewels along the same orbital plane. Collectively they are called the Galilean moons.

 Courtesy of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galilean_moons

According to the man from ites of Jupiter in 1610, with his improved telescope of 20 times magnifying capability. Unfortunately, his discovery of celestial bodies orbiting something other than Earth, and outspoken support of heliocentrism gave rise not only to an outcry from the Geocentric, or Ptolemaic world view, but also to his ultimate trial and condemnation by the Roman Catholic Inquisition in 1633. He was excommunicated for hundreds of years for his scientific findings, even though 359 years later in 1992 Pope John Paul II declared that Galileo was right, before the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

That was the price for Galileo Galilei to speak the truth in 1610. What about now?

Courtesy of http://astronomy.nju.edu.cn/~lixd/GA/AT4/AT411/IMAGES/AACHCTR0.JPG

A Fully Lived Sunday

Probably inspired by another magnificent royal wedding the day before, we had lived one of the fullest Sundays the following day. From the moment I woke up around 10:45 Sunday morning, I was rushed to get ready on an ongoing 15 minutes' deadline. After 12:15 pm when the deadline was finally expired, Paul drove us both to 24 Hour Fitness. As soon as our exercise routine was done, we crossed Soquel Avenue to join the 49th anniversary of Staff of Life Natural Foods party. There were lots of people milling around various demo canopies. Some of them were extremely popular, attracting many faithful spectators with giveaways of their unique shopping bags, large and small. Garden of Life is one of them. Dozens gave away all sorts of gifts by asking people to spin the wheel. A nursery exhibitor from Monterey even provided people with live plants. We were gifted three baby artichoke plants, even though we had no idea how to plant them.

More than half the booths let visitors sample their vegetables, chips and dips, ice creams and Mochi rice cake, health supplements, drinks, and of course, cheeses and wines. While sitting on a curb to enjoy barbecued beef and chicken meatballs, Paul filled out two free raffle tickets for a grand prize of a Weber Grill displayed in the store for many days prior to the party. I was so busy eating that I just caught a glance of our phone number being written down on the slips.

We met a few friends or acquaintances there, including Fran and Lillian, and Grant Wilson. As it was after 3:00 pm, close to Hui's daily calling time, we decided to leave the party, heavily loaded with both free gifts and food. "I will be back," Paul said half-jokingly.

Hui did call once we got home. While chatting, I heard a call coming in. Since I did not know too well how to deal with the function of call waiting, I tried to ignore it. Paul rushed in the room and picked up the call. It turned out that it was from Staff of Life and Paul was the final winner of the Weber Grill, the largest and most lusted-after item at the party. Thus we are qualified as a Weber family, in fact doubly so, as Nick already owns an identical grill at his home.

Once the grill was wheeled into the side-yard under the eves, the Golden State Warriors started earnestly to compete with the Houston Rockets. Perhaps also inspired by the Duke and Duchess, the Warriors won a decisive home game with a score of 126 to 85. Since the day was still young, Paul planted the three artichokes in the front yard, with the roses, accompanied by rabbit and frog ceramic figures for company.

Around 9:30 pm, Paul drove us out to East Cliff to spot the passage of the ISS (International Space Station). The sky was clear and shimmering with stars, three heavenly bodies, the moon, Jupiter and Venus, and a constant stream of airplanes. At exactly 9:47 pm, ISS appeared on the horizon, top of the trees and proceeded to pass directly above our heads. It stayed with us for nearly 7 minutes, until winking out of sight at a distance of over 900 miles. It was amazingly bright and straight on course. For some reason I was happy to be alive.

Before going to bed, we chipped away at the middle episode of NSU German History X on Netflix. It was such a waste of life both on the parts of predators and victims. Fascism, in the name of national socialism and the fiction of a pure Aryan breed, is the root of true evil. What a program to end an inspiring day!