The fault, dear Brutus

[altariel]

I'm writing a story for a LoTR round robin, in which a character is being taught about the constellations and the stars by another character, his grandfather. I've picked Sirius.

Now, I know nothing about the stars, so I've been learning all this as I go along. If I'm making some mistakes, I'd be really grateful if someone could point them out.

By use of this very clever website, I've got the latitude of the place where the story is set, and the time at which the sun rises and sets on a particular day in the month when the round robin participants have decided this story is taking place.

Then I was sent to a very clever piece of software which tells me what time Sirius would appear above the horizon at that latitude on that same day.

I want to set the story in the early evening.

My problem is that Sirius seems to set round about 6pm, while the sun sets around 7.30pm.

My questions is would Sirius actually be visible at all? And am even asking the right kinds of questions here?

Various people have said to me: 'I think you can have some creative licence here...' or 'Fudge it.' But I think this kind of attention to detail matters in a Tolkien story.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Sirius would not be visible. You have three options:

1) Pick a different astronomical object. Venus (or should I say Earendil) would be worth checking out.

2) Do what Arthur C Clarke would do: go ahead with Sirius, but precede your story with a short note explaining that you know very well that Sirius should have set in real life, but it was thematically important that it be Sirius so you decided to move it 30 degrees in the sky.

3) Do what Tolkien would do: use Sirius, and create a mammoth myth cycle climaxing with a violent and terrible divine intervention in which the orientation of the celestial sphere is abruptly shifted in order to account for the inconsistency. Make no mention of this collossal epic in your story itself, apart from a subtle allusion in the philological roots of a minor character's nickname.

Iain

Re:

[altariel.livejournal.com]

And this is presumably why I prefer Tolkien to Clarke.

Earendil has already gone, alas - someone took that for the first chapter.

Looks like it's gotta be option 3. Now where's that Quenya dictionary...

[ithilwen.livejournal.com]

*snerk* You're absolutely right about number 3; that's exactly how the Professor would have handled it!

Of course, something along those lines MUST have happened in Middle Earth at some point anyway, since the constellations Frodo sees rising during his hike through the Shire in FotR seem to match up pretty well with our current autumn constellations - which shouldn't be the case. The effects of precession of the equinoxes would be quite pronounced over the tens of thousands of years that separate the Third Age from our own time.

So maybe Una's story is set before this colossal act of Divine meddling, and young Faramir CAN see Sirius on a warm Midsummer's evening. Of course, it's odd that no one in LotR makes even the slightest allusion to this recent cosmic upheaval (which occurred within the lifetimes of all the story's major characters), but then again, they WERE a bit preoccupied...

(Sorry, but the explanation that Tolkien probably wasn't aware of the effects of precession of the equinoxes is just TOO prosaic for me.)

[altariel.livejournal.com]

So maybe Una's story is set before this colossal act of Divine meddling, and young Faramir CAN see Sirius on a warm Midsummer's evening. Of course, it's odd that no one in LotR makes even the slightest allusion to this recent cosmic upheaval (which occurred within the lifetimes of all the story's major characters), but then again, they WERE a bit preoccupied...

Maybe it all happened on that day when the Sun doesn't rise. Or, perhaps it happens later in the Fourth Age. If the upheaval was massive enough, it would also explain why we've never found any archaeological remains from Gondor and Arnor...


(Sorry, but the explanation that Tolkien probably wasn't aware of the effects of precession of the equinoxes is just TOO prosaic for me.)

Those kinds of explanation are never as much fun!

[ithilwen.livejournal.com]

Maybe it all happened on that day when the Sun doesn't rise. Or, perhaps it happens later in the Fourth Age. If the upheaval was massive enough, it would also explain why we've never found any archaeological remains from Gondor and Arnor...

No, it has to happen sometime between Faramir's childhood (when he can see Sirius on a warm summer evening), and the first chapters of FotR (when Frodo and Co. see Taurus rising late in the evening on an autumn night, just as it does today). That's what - a 30 year time-span, at most? So it's odd that no one mentions this great cataclysm. Maybe they're still too traumatized by the memories? (After all, the last one sank Numenor; who knows what was destroyed in this one?)

And then, we'll need yet ANOTHER cosmic upheaval to explain why precession of the equinoxes hasn't changed the rising time of Taurus between Frodo's day and our own, despite only 20,000 years or so separating our Age from the Third Age. THAT must be the cataclysm that destroys the remains of Gondor and Arnor.

This is fun! Anyone out there up for myth-making?

[altariel.livejournal.com]

we'll need yet ANOTHER cosmic upheaval to explain why precession of the equinoxes hasn't changed the rising time of Taurus between Frodo's day and our own, despite only 20,000 years or so separating our Age from the Third Age. THAT must be the cataclysm that destroys the remains of Gondor and Arnor.

This is fun! Anyone out there up for myth-making?

This is definitely a Nuzgul with your name on it!

[ithilwen.livejournal.com]

(backs up VERY slowly, while keeping a wary eye on the Nuzgul...) No. Oh, no. I don't do myth-making. Angst, yes. Crazy Feanorians, yes. Fairy-tale adaptations and mutated 20th century history fics, yes. But not myth-making. THIS Nuzgul, Altariel, is all yours.

Re:

[altariel.livejournal.com]

No way! I'm already intending to rewrite the Akallabeth - that'll be enough for one lifetime!

Hm, wonder who can we set this nibbler on...?

[ithilwen.livejournal.com]

Toss it out on HA, or throw it in the Hutch at HASA. Just keep it away from me, please! Maedhros won't forgive me if I start working on anything but his (now long-interrupted) Alqualonde story at this point.