Yikes. It’s been nearly two months since I made any sort of post here! Here’s a quick update on what’s been going on and there’s a little bit of astronomy in there.
Unfortunately, my astronomy project got put on hold for a bit because I had some other things to be working on. In particular, I was the event steward for this year’s Gryphon’s Fest here in B3R. This took up a lot of my time doing prep work but the event was quite wonderful as Calontir’s largest event since the beginning of COVID. The theme of the event was Calontir’s “Saints” and to help with that theme, I built six “shrines” which were effectively little libraries that we painted. This ended up eating a few weekends and several weeknights to get them ready.
Aside from Gryphon’s Fest, I also fought in crown tournament for the first time. While I didn’t get as far as I’d like, I had a really good time and put on a good show.
During this gap, there actually was a good night for doing some observing, but I was so burnt out from doing everything else that I couldn’t find the energy. Where some astronomy did get done was in putting together and teaching a new class!
The eventual goal for all my classes is to have a complete master course in period astronomy. I have an overview history class that serves as an introduction. Then I have a few classes that are pre-requisite knowledge for digging into models: To preview what any astronomical model will need to explain I have the class on the Motions of the Heavens. To start building up the astronomical vocabulary and start thinking about how to describe motion on the sphere I put together De Sphaera (On the Sphere).
This new class finishes out the pre-requisite collection teaching sexagesimal, concepts and theorems surrounding circles and triangles and how to use them to solve right triangles (i.e., the demi-degrees method) and also Menelaus’ theorem.
I taught this class 1 at the last populace meeting in October and had about 6-7 people in attendance which is more than I expected. I’m going to try to put together a handout to go with the class in the near future and then get back to actually working on the Almagest.
In the meantime, the skies and moonphase are looking excellent this weekend, so I’ve already got an outing planned. Hopefully, this winter I can get back on track.
Clear skies to everyone!