Caoimhín's Content

This video is a bit like a bridge between January and February. It deals with some things coming up in Irish, that the English languages videos won’t get to for another few weeks. You get an advanced look at those details as well if you are reading this. Furthermore, at one point in the video I digress into a discussion on Irish. It’s hard to translate something like that, a meta-discussion of the language, so I will break it down a little differently here compared to the video.

Firstly, we have a look at the sky in late January, just a week or so ahead of us. We continue to see Saturn and Jupiter, and near the end of the month the Moon is approaching its fullest. We can still see the constellation of Orion rising nice and early in the evening. Once we reach the Full Moon at the end of January, we take a closer look to see that it’s 99.9% full as it rises. Unfortunately, this is on the “wrong” side of its peak for us here in Ireland. Rather than increasing to 100%, as the Moon rises it decreases in fullness, from 99.9% to 99.8% and so on. Once the Moon passes it’s peak, that’s it, it will continue to wane until the New Moon.

This change is pretty much imperceptible. A difference of a fraction of a percent won’t be visible to our eyes, for now it suffices to say that the Moon will be full for us at the end of January and again at the end of February. The fullness of the Moon isn’t the only factor in it’s apparent size and brightness. The Moon orbits the Earth in an ellipse rather than a circle, so At certain times it is closer, at others it is further away. This change in distance doesn’t line up with the phases of the Moon. Some Full Moons are close, others are further, and the same for any other phase of the Moon. The Moon can be at it’s furthest or closest, apogee or perigee respectively, at any phase.

If we see a full Moon at its closest when it’s full we call it a Supermoon or Super-Moon, and this is usually the one that gets attention. If the Moon is at its furthest when it’s full, than we call it a Micromoon, or Micro-Moon, but this doesn’t get as much press. Part of the reason could be how subtle the difference is. The Moon only appears about 14% bigger at perigee compared to apogee. It appears about 30% brighter at its closest, but with clouds and light pollution, this isn’t as easy to see as it sounds.In terms of distance, it is 50,000km, which certainly sounds big enough, nobody wants to walk 50,000km. In this context however, when we’re talking about a shift from roughly 350,000km to 400,000km away from us, 50,000km of a difference isn’t really that much. It certainly has an effect on the appearance of the Moon, but it also isn’t particularly drastic or noticeable.

You’ll be able to see for yourself at the end of February, when the Full Moon is in fact a Micromoon, so you can go take a look and see for yourself.

As we move forward, we see that Venus is still with us in the morning. Venus will be with us in the morning into February, but not the whole way through. About halfway through February Venus will become quite difficult to observe, until its orbit brings it too close to the Sun for us to observe. Of course, as it continues in its path around the Sun, it will come around and pop back up in the evening. Speaking of the evening, in the evening sky Saturn is already becoming more difficult to observe, and as we move through February it will disappear from our evening sky altogether. Saturn moves quite slowly, but thankfully our orbit will bring us around the Sun until Saturn reappears in the morning, so we won’t have to wait too long to see it again.

Saturn in English is an inanimate object, it’s a planet so we say “it” rather than he or she or they. It is named after a god, the Roman god of time, agriculture and a bunch of other things, so it would be he as the god. In Irish, like French and Spanish and many other languages, a word meaning “he” or “she” is the only option, there is no “it”. These languages are said to have grammatical gender, a way of breaking up nouns into groups or classes. If you divide them up by whether they are animate or inanimate, or whether you can eat them or not or any other distinction, it’s usually called noun class.

This does cause the issue where you have to pick the right word for inanimate objects, using a feminine or masculine article for a chair or table. Of course, chairs are not male or female, but in some languages they, and all other objects, are still assigned a grammatical gender, and you need to learn it. Speaking about a planet, an inanimate object, named after a male god, I assume that in Irish, Saturn is masculine. You can here in the video that I say “é” or “í”, pronounced like “(h)ay/(h)ey” and “ee” respectively. If you know the International phonetic alphabet, an close mid front vowel and high front vowel respectively, where in English I say “it”. “é” is masculine, “í” is feminine.

That’s not the only tricky thing about Irish. In English, some plurals are different, for example one goose, many geese, one shoe, many shoes, one child, many children. Some are more common than others. If you have one wug, and add another, do you have two wugs, two wig or two wugren? Most people say wugs, and the Wug Test is a real way to check the most common way to form a plural. It’s similar in Irish. one person is “duine” but many ar “daoine”, one dog is a “madra” but many are “madraí”, one planet is “pláinéad”, many are “pláinéid”. I often say “pláinéadaí” by accident, almost like saying “gooses” or “mouses” in English instead of “geese” and “mice”. You can hear me make mistakes like this in my videos, the same way I mix up “did” and “done” in English, along with other occasional mistakes.

Taking a look at the evening sky from the countryside, it remains mostly familiar things in familiar places. Uranus is still there, albeit invisible to the naked eye. The Pleiades and the Hyades with Aldebaran are still up with Taurus. We may lose Saturn, but all of those things, along with Jupiter, remain in the early evening sky. Being in the countryside, Saturn would be visible for a little longer, the light of the sunset alone won’t block it out as quickly as that same light with added help from light pollution. This is also true in the morning, especially for already faint objects such as Mercury and even Mars. Even Venus is effected, looking much smaller and fainter in the city as it pushes closer to the Sun.

Looking for early morning planets in February, especially as we get later in the month, we can see the Milky Way. Just before sunrise, around 6 o’clock, we can see it stretching across the sky. It is the center of the Milky Way that we can see here at this time of the year, and you can tell thanks to the constellation Scorpius. Scorpius is one of the constellations just next to the center of the Milky Way, itself recognizable by the bright red star Antares. It isn’t exactly the center, but still close enough to see the difference in colour and thickness,

Turning around to the north to look at the the Plough or Big Dipper, along with the North Star. If we observe this asterism at the same time each night over several nights, here moving through January into February, we can see the position change. Taking the early part of the night, about half 8, we first see the Plough below and to the right of the North Star as we look north. As we move forward, day by day at the same time, we can see the plough slowly rising up as the Earth has turned just a little less, relative to the stars, each day. As we roll around the Sun, we need to turn just a little less to bring the Sun back to the same point in the sky. This leads to a difference in days depending on if you reckon by the position of the Sun, a solar day which we use, or if you reckon by the stars and the actual number of degrees the planet rotates, or sidereal day, which is sometimes used in astronomy.

That’s what’s covered in this Irish language show. Here, you don’t really need to worry about the language difference, spell check is just that (significant) bit more difficult if you are typing in Irish. If you do like the shows in Irish, well in March I should have more Irish shows up, up till now I’ve put maybe one up every month, I’ll be trying to but up one for the two fortnights, or maybe one each week, if I am able. However, the next video will again be in English, so I do hope you’ll return to see it.