What a year it’s been.
2019 has seen a great deal of progress in this project and many other aspects of my SCA life, so I wanted to take a bit of time to recap as there’s some things I don’t think have yet made it into the blog.
The most obvious things to discuss are the progress in the Almagest and with observing.
At the end of 2018, I was 11.27% the way through the Almagest. This year is only slightly higher with 11.70% being completed this year for a total of 22.97%1. This is despite the massive five month gap I had in progress while I was stuck trying to understand the material for this post2. Given such a length of time was lost to being unproductive and I have had a full time job this entire year3, I’m very pleased with my progress.
It’s hard to say whether or not I feel like the difficulty has changed. Certainly, since hitting the beginning of book III, the style of math has changed. Books I and II were almost all spherical geometry, which is always challenging because it’s not one we deal in on an everyday basis. But while books III and IV have been more standard geometry, the complexity introduced by adding motion has made this feel more difficult.
Progress in the Almagest also led to my second entry in a serious Arts & Science competition: Queen’s Prize in February4. This time, I expanded on Ptolemy calculation of rising signs from book II. There, rising signs were only calculated for discreet latitudes. To expand this out further, I replicated the calculations in Microsoft Excel in order to produce a calculator which produced a rising time table for any latitude and also wrote a paper explaining how it was done, and how to use it. However, a math paper isn’t for everyone, so while it was good for my own edification, it wasn’t something that drew all that much attention.
Observing this year actually went pretty well. Looking at 2019, I count 9 posts here about it. It’s lower than I’d have liked, but given that Padraig, my main assistance, moved across the country early in the year, it’s not bad. What was especially important, however, was that Padraig had really pioneered how to use the quadrant well and was able to teach me before moving. Combined with several excellent nights for observing, the star catalogue has really started to fill out.
This led to another Arts & Science entry that I never wrote a post about. That was the Kingdom Arts & Sciences. There I actually entered in the championship. This was mostly due to being informed there weren’t enough entries in the championship5, so I entered mostly just to fill out the field. Specifically, I entered a 1 year retrospective of the data collected with the quadrant.
It’s hard to see in the thumbnail, but this was the data as of mid-July. The blue dots represent the positions I’ve calculated while the orange represent the true positions. This was printed on a blueprint printer so laying it out covered most of the table. On it, I drew in the lines for several prominent constellations:
Here’s a blow up of Orion and Taurus for example.
This entry went over quite well. The judges had very little to say and it ultimately received a perfect score6.
Aside from Arts & Sciences competitions, I’ve been trying to make sure this work is shown to others in some other ways. In particular, I have spent quite a bit of time thinking about how to take what I’ve learned and start teaching classes of it. I’d already taught a few classes in 2018 at Crucible at the Crossroads. The first was largely a super quick overview of the entire history of astronomy without getting into details and the second was a basic observational astronomy class which didn’t go well as I was hoping for clear skies which didn’t cooperate.
Thinking about things this year though, I’ve been really wanting to teach classes digging into the details of the Almagest, in many respects, taking these blog posts and turning them into classes. However, I recognize there’s several challenges to this. While there is a fair amount of interest in the subject, anything beyond the most basic scratching the surface immediately becomes mathematical. In addition, the whole field is filled with large amounts of technical jargon which must be parsed. This means that before diving into the Almagest in classes, I’ll need to lay down some prerequisite classes. While I haven’t taught them yet, I’ve already scheduled to teach a class in a few weeks at our weekly meetings on the motions of the heavens. I’ve already done the outline and a fair amount of work on putting this class together and in it, I’ll be looking at all the subtle motions of how things in the sky move which will basically amount to a list that any model of the solar system must account for.
From there, I’ll be teaching a class on the math of the Almagest without getting into any details. I have again written an outline for this, but haven’t started putting the slides together,
However, to support both of these, I purchased a digital projector and projector screen that I can take to events so I can have effective visuals for this complicated topic. Specifically, I will be using the projector along with Stellarium to do a digital tour of the night sky for the first of those classes. This will prevent any issues with the weather as well as allow us to travel back and forth in time to see how things play out over the long term.
I’ve already used this projector for one class that I developed this year: Christianity and Astronomy. I first demo’d this at one of our local meetings before getting the projector and while I think it went over quite well, the one comment I had was that it was a lot of names and dates that got muddled. While I’ll maintain that these weren’t particularly important to the overall theme7, I can understand how not following the flow may blur the premise. As such, I reworked the talk, including more information and putting together a powerpoint which I then taught at Kris Kinder this year. It was unfortunately early in the morning so many people that said they were interested weren’t able to attend, but I still feel like it went very well. I’m not perfectly happy with it quite yet which is why I haven’t shared it here, but I’m also not sure when I’ll return to it as the other classes mentioned above will be the primary focus of my attention.
Unrelated to the astronomy project, this has also been a busy year in other SCA respects. While I stepped down early this year from being the Baronial herald, I was being given the honor of being Calontir’s White Hawk Herald which is the voice herald for Their Royal Majesties during the reign of Anton IV and Yseult. Their reign ends in a couple weeks, but being herald has kept me extremely busy the past 6 months.
I also attended 3 major wars: Gulf, Lilies, and Pennsic. For Gulf, I’d tried constructing a travel base for the quadrant, consisting of a large cement forming tube in a bucket filled with cement which would replace the gigantic wooden construct. The thought was to dig a small hole and bury the bucket a foot or so to ensure it was stable. While there’s no reason this wouldn’t have worked, it made it all the way to Mississippi and then never used, partially because the sky was cloudy almost every night. There was a brief gap in the clouds where I ran to my vehicle to try to get the quadrant, but by the time I got there, the sky was nearly covered again, and I was not sober enough to care anyway.
The fighting there was extremely fun and several of the battles will be long remembered, thanks in part to Calontir adopting a new tactic this war. Whereas previously Calontir has been known for fighting with massive scutums in our shieldwall, this year, we adopted slightly smaller oval shields which are far more mobile. The effect was absolutely devastating in many battles as we were still well protected but much more maneuverable. It didn’t hurt that I believe we also fielded either the largest army, or the largest army outside of the hosting kingdoms. I seem to recall that Calontir had over 100 heavy fighters throughout the war. Ultimately, I fought every battle with very few breaks.
Gulf was especially memorable this year for another reason. For longer that I can imagine, Calontir has always marched to the field in song. To orchestrate this, the songs have typically been led by Master Andrixos Seljukroctonis (Drix). However, Drix is preparing to retire to Florida in the next few years and has been handing off many of his responsibilities around Calontir to others8. Among them is the responsibility of leading the army at war, which he passed on to me with no warning. While in no way an official position, it is still one of the most meaningful honors I could receive. Similarly, a few months later at St. George and the Dragon/Bardic Bedlam, I was given a Swan9.
Lilies War this year was the best it’s ever been. Typically this war is nigh unbearable due to heat, but somehow this year the highs were only in the 70’s. I managed to bring the entire quadrant there and even got in a few good nights of observing.
I made no attempt to bring the quadrant to Pennsic, but had a wonderful war, managing to fight the full duration of every armored battle.
I was the autocrat for two events: Winter Court10 and Gryphon’s fest. Winter Court was a nice small event and a good introduction to running events especially doing it with Yseult, who had just done Crucible a few months before and made sure we got things done correctly that I wouldn’t have known about otherwise.
Gryphon’s Fest was a much more involved process, particularly because, as White Hawk herald, I knew I needed to make things as easy on myself as possible. While I ran this with Quiteria, there was still a lot of work that would be done. This event is traditionally held at Puddleford11, but requires upkeep that history has shown is nearly impossible to get people to assist with and I knew I wouldn’t have time for. As such, we decided to find an entirely new location. After scouting several, we settled on Broemmelsiek park12.
The theme was Robin Hood style banditry and I had some interesting fighting events centered around it. In one, everyone started out as a level 1 bandit armed only with a dagger out to extort people crossing a bridge, but by winning coin from opponents, they could purchase better weapons. Another involved escorting treasure back through a forest path while besieged by bandits.
The chest weighed a good 70+ pounds because, unbeknownst to those protecting it, it was actually filled with treasure! It was full of cold sodas and ciders which was especially nice given the high temperature and humidity.
One other honor I received this year was being made a member of the Order of Three Rivers. This is the highest award given by the barony and is based on service13.
Overall, this has easily been my busiest year in the SCA. I think come 2020 I’ll still keep my overall amount of time high, but I’d like to work more on astronomy and classes and less on some other things.
One big goal I’ll have for the new year is quadrant 2.0. In the past year and a half, I’ve really noticed some limitations on the quadrant, particularly, that due to the wide base, there’s about a 15º section of sky in all directions from the zenith that’s impossible to sight. Producing a new base would help with this. However, I’d also like to try a different style of quadrant wherein the quadrant arc itself is fixed and it’s an alidade that slides along it that one sights along. In addition, I’d like to add a nonius scale. However, the quadrant 1.0 is still going strong, so the next version may not happen for a while yet.
Here’s hoping that your new year is eventful in all the best ways!
- If I wanted to really be nice to myself, I could say I’m slightly beyond that as I have another page written up in a blog post that isn’t published yet.
- You may notice there was one post a few days before that one pertaining to the Almagest, but this was a case of splitting a post that was getting far too long.
- Whereas in 2018 I was unemployed for almost the entire year.
- Back in 2018, I’d entered the quadrant.
- Entry in the championship requires three entries, all in different categories. If done well, this can be different aspects of a single project, but that usually requires much more planning. As such, most people only enter a single entry which means they are not eligible for the championships, but still get to have a round of talking with the judges.
- My other entries were a basic hand sewn linen shirt with a blackwork collar which scored surprisingly well given it was entirely geometric and it was judged at the advanced level, and a pair of songs I wrote for singing at post revels. Given the songs were not in any way period, they did not score well, but I wasn’t intending them to. As stated above, I entered to fill out the field. Not to win.
- The conclusion I draw is that, contrary to the popular myth that Christianity came in and killed astronomy, there was still plenty of interest, even amongst members of the Church. The only times we see Christianity taking a stance against astronomy it is specifically against its use for divination, i.e. astrology, until after period.
- He has long been a member of the committee for Calontir’s royal pavilion which he stepped down from this year, and also wakes Calontir at wars with a horn which we simultaneously love and hate.
- Calontir’s AoA level award for Art (Calontir splits AoA and GoA level A&S awards).
- Normally this would have been in December of 2018, but due to scheduling conflicts, we hosted in in January 2019.
- A property owned by Wayne of the Heights.
- Which is part of the same park I do most of my observing at.
- Technically this award is divided into silver, for service to the barony, and gold, for service to the kingdom. But this distinction seems to have fallen by the wayside in recent years.