Sky Sights November 2019

Greetings skywatchers! November is a busy month this year with two meteor showers, a transit of Mercury, and a conjunction. First, a few words about Daylight Saving Time. Unless you live in Hawaii, Puerto Rico or Arizona (except the Navajo Nation), you are aware that we turned our clocks back to Standard Time this past Sunday. Since the passage of the Uniform Time Act in 1966, most of us have lived our whole lives “springing forward” and “falling back” each year. It’s interesting to note that this biannual time change now occurs mostly without our participation.

Our smartphones, laptops, smart TVs, and smart appliances adjust themselves without any help from us. We may have to set the clock in the car, or the microwave oven clock, but even these will eventually take control of their temporal condition, leaving us to spend the day debating whether Daylight Saving Time saves energy or increases demand (or both, or neither?). Then the next morning we wake up too early or too late, feeling a little grumpy, and promptly forget about the entire matter. What started over a century ago as a way for people to make better use of daylight is now implemented and observed primarily by the clocks themselves.

This month we have an exciting daytime viewing opportunity: during the day on Veterans Day (Nov. 11th) most of the Americas will have an excellent view of the transit of Mercury. A transit occurs when we observe a smaller celestial body moving across the face of a larger one. In this case, we will be able to see little Mercury skating across the Sun over six hours, starting at 7:34 am EST/6:34 am CST.

Credit: NASA

This is an event you can safely observe at a public observatory or sky-watching party where telescopes fitted with a special filter can be safely used for observation. Some are listed below but check with your local astronomy club for the one nearest to you. Please don’t attempt to watch the transit with your naked eyes, sunglasses, or binoculars. This can cause very serious damage to your eyes. This includes special eclipse glasses. While technically you could look at the Sun with such glasses if they are well-made, you would be unable to pick out Mercury due to the difference in size: keep in mind that Mercury, as it appears from Earth, is just 1/194th the size of the Sun!

For younger skywatchers, here’s a helpful video for kids that explains the basics of the transit:

In addition to the transit, we have two meteor showers this month; first, the Taurids are known for their fireball meteors, and the first few weeks of November are the best time to look for them. The Full Moon on the 12th (13:34 UTC/8:34 am EST/7:34 am CST/6:34 am MST/5:34 am PST), also known as the Frost Moon or Beaver Moon (since beavers typically build their winter dams around this time) will give them some competition for a few nights.

A few days after the Full Moon, you can look out for the Leonids, which will peak between the 16th and the 18th. The Moon will be waning gibbous and so this year’s Leonid shower will not be especially prominent, but you may be able to catch sight of a few of them.

On Sunday the 24th, there is a conjunction of Venus and Jupiter arriving just in time for Thanksgiving. Look for the pair about an hour after sunset in the southwestern sky. They will appear very low in the sky so you’ll need a good view of the horizon. Then on Thanksgiving Day, the crescent Moon meets up with Venus and the next night with Saturn! It’s a great opportunity to use binoculars for a closer look and impress family and friends with your knowledge of the night sky. Of course, I never do this…

Good luck and see you next month!

Alex

[Note: the top image depicts the conjunction of Venus and Jupiter just after sunset on Nov. 24th. I created this image using Stellarium, an open-source planetarium program that is available at http://stellarium.org]

Here are some DC-area events planned for the transit of Mercury on Nov. 11:

Analemma Society viewing event at Turner Farm, Great Falls

Astronomical Society of Greenbelt viewing party, Greenbelt

Howard Astronomical League viewing party at Alpha Ridge Park, Marriottsville

George Mason University public viewing event at GMU Observatory, Fairfax

National Air & Space Museum Observatory viewing event, Washington DC

If the weather is nice there will likely be a viewing party somewhere near you! Use this site to find one:

NASA Night Sky Network

If inclement weather prevents outdoor viewing, you can still watch the transit online:

Slooh Internet Observatory viewing event

Virtual Telescope Project online viewing event

NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory (images made during transit)

The Speech that Led Us to the Moon

As we approach July 20th and the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon, the focus will naturally be on the astronauts and their journey. Yet we should also recall that the lunar landing may not have happened save for a brief speech on a warm September day a long time ago.

It might be surprising to Americans today, accustomed to media sound bites, “fake news,” and general unfamiliarity with the art of oratory, that a speech can persuade minds and even turn the course of history. It has the power to reshape attitudes and behaviors. A great speech, like a great book or film, makes you ponder and reflect long after you have absorbed it.

Most of the great orations of the past exist today as transcriptions, sometimes quite inaccurate in their recording. The actual words of Pericles and Mark Antony are lost to history; we hope that medieval copyists give us their essence if not their original flavor. Even in the modern era, a speech that comes to us in print may not be the one that was actually delivered. The oft-cited example of the Gettysburg Address demonstrates how the text can be misremembered or misrecorded and in most cases cannot capture the diction, cadence, and manner of the speaker.

The first voice recording we have of a president is a fragment of Benjamin Harrison speaking about the first Pan-American Congress in 1889;1 it is barely enough, but sufficient to suggest what the elocution of a late 19th-century orator sounded like. A few other early recordings of 19th-century public figures such as William Jennings Bryan and P.T. Barnum impress upon a listener how public speech in the Victorian era compares to the efforts of our contemporary practitioners, those loquacious beneficiaries of content-optional high-definition video and surround sound.

Yet it was a gradual descent into our current mediagenic morass where anyone with something to say can act the amateur journalist, policy maven, or podcaster. Although TV and video technology advanced rapidly in the 1950s, it took a while for public figures to become aware (and consequently self-aware) that they could adopt the affectations of film stars and dictators to enthrall the home audience and still give a coherent speech. Thus the film and TV appearances of public figures in the late 1950s and early 1960s have a verisimilitude that is seldom found in our century; they preserve a momentary balance of form and content before the medium engulfed the message.

My exemplar here is President Kennedy’s speech at Rice University on September 12, 1962. This is the now-famous “Moon” speech that JFK delivered before an audience of 40,000 gathered in Rice Stadium.2 The rhetorical power of his remarks still resonates today and can be compared favorably with speeches by any of his successors. For those of us too young to recall Kennedy or the Apollo missions, it’s remarkable that, through technology, we can still appreciate this 18-minute speech and the achievements that followed from it.


Notes:

1 Thomas Edison wrote in his diary that he demonstrated the first version of his recording phonograph for Rutherford Hayes at the White House in April 1878. Unfortunately, no surviving recording of the president’s voice has ever been discovered.
2 This is the original video as partially restored by NASA, and you will see about halfway through the video, the quality improves dramatically. The figure just behind the president (wearing sunglasses) is Vice President Johnson, the chair of the National Aeronautics and Space Council and the primary force behind Project Apollo. Also, note that the Venus space probe referred to by the president is Mariner 2, which in December 1962 became the first spacecraft to reach another planet.

Photo credit: Robert Knudsen. White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston

Sky Sights January 2019

Greetings skywatchers, January has two exciting events both coming up in the next week!

Lunar eclipse

On January 20th we’ll see the first lunar eclipse of 2019, and it will be at a time when you should be able to easily walk outside and see it (your local weather permitting of course). The partial eclipse begins at:

10:34 pm ET / 9:34 pm CT / 8:34 pm MT / 7:34 pm PT

Totality (when the entire lunar disc is covered by the Earth’s umbra (shadow) begins at:

11:41 pm ET / 10:41 pm CT / 9:41 MT / 8:41 pm PT

The totality portion of the eclipse will persist for just over an hour and will cause our normally white Full Moon (January’s Full Moon is also known as the Wolf Moon) to turn a deep red or orange color.

Why does a lunar eclipse have a color rather than being black like a solar eclipse? The coloring is caused by the refraction of sunlight through the Earth’s atmosphere. Usually, the Moon as illuminated by the Sun appears from Earth to be a bright white color (although the Moon is actually a dark gray which you can see in Apollo images of the lunar surface). You will see as the eclipse begins and the Moon passes deeper into our umbra, its color will become darker and redder.

Unlike a solar eclipse, you can enjoy a lunar eclipse without the need for special glasses or equipment, just be sure to dress warmly!

Total Lunar Eclipse on January 20-21 2019 — Where and When to See

Venus-Jupiter conjunction

Just over a day after the eclipse, you can observe the conjunction of Venus and Jupiter in the eastern sky just before dawn on January 22nd. You may already be accustomed to seeing Venus as the Morning Star in the pre-dawn sky, and now the giant Jupiter joins our sister planet for a little while. It will be quite a spectacle as the 3rd and 4th brightest objects in the sky come with 3 degrees of each other.

Jupiter is so large, shouldn’t it also be the brightest planet we can see? Well although Jupiter is the largest planet in the Solar System, Venus is brighter (it reflects more sunlight) and much closer to Earth.

The conjunction will occur when both planets appear in the constellation Ophiuchus (the serpent-bearer), which crosses the ecliptic (the apparent path of the Sun in the sky) between Scorpius and Sagittarius; consequently if you go out early enough be sure to look for red Antares, the brightest star in Scorpius, just to the right of the two planets.

Ultima Thule update

Data is starting to come in from the Ultima Thule flyby, you can see the latest images as they are released by APL and NASA this week at the mission site:

NASA New Horizons Mission Site

[Note: the image above depicts the southeastern sky at 5:45 am ET. The red line represents the ecliptic (the apparent path of the Sun on the celestial sphere). I created this image using Stellarium, an open-source planetarium program which is available at http://stellarium.org]

Bonus Sky News 2018

Here are a few stories I didn’t get to tell in 2018. There is a lot to read here so feel free to skip over the parts that don’t interest you.

“Earthrise”

This Christmas Eve we mark the 50th anniversary of one of the most famous photographs ever taken. “Earthrise” is an image of our planet seen from lunar orbit on Dec. 24, 1968. It was not the first image of Earth from the Moon (Lunar Orbiter 1 took that photo in August 1966), but it’s the one that has become part of our collective memory.

The photograph was circulated around the world and helped to inspire the modern environmental movement that had started to coalesce after the publication of “Silent Spring.” This now-familiar view of our world was entirely novel at the time; it is still remarkable today to see our “Spaceship Earth” carrying humanity and all of its works through the heavens. In commemoration here are some interesting resources.

NASA’s official “Earthrise” page:
https://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/history/this-week-in-nasa-history-apollo-8-captures-earthrise-dec-24-1968.html

For the 45th anniversary of “Earthrise”, NASA created a simulation of the what the Apollo 8 crew was seeing when the photo was taken:
https://youtu.be/LHbFIieK-uo

This page has additional information about “Earthrise”:
https://petapixel.com/2018/12/20/how-nasas-iconic-earthrise-photo-was-shot/

Finally, PBS will air a special episode of NOVA about Apollo 8 and “Earthrise” on Dec. 26. Please check your local listings for details:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/apollos-daring-mission/

Venus in the Morning Sky

I have received several emails this season asking about the very bright object in the eastern pre-dawn sky, and most of your guesses are correct, it is our sister planet Venus! Why is it so very bright just now? Well first of all Venus is pretty close to Earth compared to most of the other planets, so that is one reason.

The other reason is that the atmosphere of Venus is very dense and reflects most of the sun’s rays. We call the absolute brightness of an object its albedo, and Venus has an albedo of 0.7, meaning that it reflects about 70% of the sunlight that hits its atmosphere. This albedo is higher than any of the other major planets.

The Venusian atmosphere is so reflective because its clouds are primarily composed of sulfuric acid and other highly reflective compounds. Now you might say, our own Moon has no atmosphere and it’s much brighter than Venus! And this is correct; however, the Moon is brighter because it is much closer to Earth than Venus, so despite its much lower albedo (about 0.1), the Moon is always brighter than any other object in the night sky.

Anyway, please enjoy Venus as the “morning star”. throughout the week. If you thought Venus was something else like an airplane or a UFO, you are not alone. Venus is frequently misidentified, sometimes even by experienced aerial observers (including yours truly!).

Voyager 2

Voyager 2 has officially entered interstellar space as of Nov. 5. The spacecraft was launched 41 years ago and was the first (and so far only) probe to visit the ice giants Uranus and Neptune. Voyager 2 will now travel through the interstellar medium, collecting data as long as its nuclear power source lasts. Eventually, Voyager 2 will pass somewhat near the red dwarf star Ross 248 which is about 10 light-years from Earth. The spacecraft is traveling at a speed of over 38,000 mph and will take about 40,000 years to reach Ross 248, so that gives you some idea of the distance between the stars!

Voyager program site

New Horizons

You may want to check in with the New Horizons spacecraft over the New Year’s holiday, it is scheduled to fly by the trans-Neptunian object nicknamed Ultima Thule early in the morning on Jan. 1. You may recall that New Horizons encountered the dwarf planet Pluto back in July 2015. At over 1 billion miles beyond Pluto, Ultima Thule will be the most distant object ever visited by a spacecraft.

What does “Ultima Thule” mean anyway? That sounds like an odd name, but in fact, it has been used since antiquity to refer to someplace very far away, beyond any familiar locations. The term Thule was first used by Pytheas, the famous explorer of the ancient world who was the first known person to travel north of the Arctic Circle.

New Horizons program site

Happy Holidays and see you in 2019!

Sky Sights December 2018

Greetings skywatchers! The of the year is bringing some great night sky events. Let’s have a look.

Possibly the biggest meteor shower this year will be the Geminid shower which is peaking this week. We are in luck this year as the next few days of peak activity will be free of significant lunar interference; our crescent Moon has yet to reach first quarter and will set early in the evening.

The cloud cover over much of the country has been a problem this week for meteor-hunters, but keep checking your local sky as you should be able to see meteors any night through the weekend and maybe into next week. I myself saw a bright meteor streaking across the sky last night.

The Geminids are slower than most showers and are known for producing prominent fireballs (large meteors that survive to the lower atmosphere). There have been at least two fireballs sighted along the eastern seaboard in the past week.

Why are the Geminids a little different? It comes down to the source of the shower, a near-Earth asteroid known as 3200 Phaethon rather than a cometary debris trail.

The name Phaethon comes from Greek mythology: the son of Helios who drove his father’s sun-chariot too close to Earth and suffered the wrath of Zeus. We remember Phaethon today with this asteroid which passes extremely close to the Sun in its orbit, about 12 million miles, a distance inside the orbit of Mercury!

You can look anywhere in the sky to watch for meteors; this shower is called the Geminids because it appears to originate in the constellation of Gemini with its two famous stars, Castor and Pollux, or the Twins. Gemini appears in the sky just to the left of Orion and Taurus. You should be able to easily spot Orion early in the evening and you can use the star chart above to locate Gemini.

You can easily tell the Twins apart: bright Pollux is golden yellow in color and is actually much closer (34 light years) than the fainter Castor (52 light years). What you can’t see with the naked eye is that what we see as the single star Castor is really a system of six stars, grouped into three binaries (a binary consists of two stars circling a common center of mass).

The other major event this month is the arrival of Comet 46P/Wirtanen in our night sky. On the star chart, the comet will be visible just above Taurus when it is at its brightest, on Sunday night. You can use the diagram below to track its progress across the sky. If you can find a fairly dark-sky location you should be able to see the comet without optical aids, but binoculars or a telescope will definitely help.

Updates:

I have had a few people ask about where to see the live video stream of Earth from the space station, here it is:
https://youtu.be/4993sBLAzGA

The latest news about the OSIRIS-REx mission to the asteroid Bennu:
https://www.asteroidmission.org/

The current status of the Mars InSight lander:
https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/

Video of the successful Virgin Galactic VSS Unity flight on Thursday (congratulations!):
https://youtu.be/K2kf1I8yx_4

Have a happy holiday season!

Credit: Sky and Telescope

Sky Sights November 2018

Credit: IEEC/Science-Wave, Guillem Ramisa

Greetings, skywatchers! Here is what is going on in the skies this month:

This weekend the Leonid meteor shower will reach its peak. This shower is the debris trail from Comet Tempel-Tuttle and was first observed at the beginning of the tenth century. The Leonids are not normally a prominent shower compared to other showers during the year, but they have been known to produce brilliant fireballs on occasion. The shower is named for the constellation Leo, which is the radiant, or area of the sky where the meteors appear to come from. You don’t need to wait for Leo to come into view, however, as the meteors can be seen in a clear, dark sky just by looking up. Those of you who live in metropolitan areas may want to seek out a park or dark field away from street lighting for better observation. The good news is that the Moon will be setting before 2 am local time, improving the darkness of the sky.

Throughout the summer, Mars was an exciting feature in the sky and it’s still quite prominent during the fall, Look for it this month in the southern sky after dark as it continues to slowly fade from its summer brightness.

The Moon reaches third quarter today (Friday) and becomes the Frost Moon on the 23rd. You may also hear this Full Moon referred to as the Beaver Moon; at this time of the year, North American beavers will build their dams for the winter months, and the Full Moon provides them with convenient outdoor lighting!

Note also that on Friday the Full Moon will rise just a bit more than one degree from Aldebaran (Alpha Tauri). You may be familiar with this red star due to its proximity to the Pleiades (aka the Seven Sisters), the cluster of stars just to the right. Aldebaran is Arabic and roughly means “the follower” because it is located just past the Pleiades. In medieval times it was also known as Cor Tauri, “the heart of the bull”, befitting its status as the brightest star in Taurus.

You may have heard this week that a new exoplanet has been discovered orbiting Barnard’s Star, which is the second nearest star system to our own Solar System at a distance of just 5.4 light years. That is about 30 trillion miles from Earth (in the constellation Ophiuchus), but it’s just next door in our interstellar neighborhood! This “super-Earth” is over three times larger than our own world, and we don’t know much about it yet, but further observation will improve our knowledge of the planet and any other potential worlds in the system.

You might be wondering who the star is named for. E.E. Barnard did not discover the star but he was the first to observe the interesting characteristics of its proper motion in 1916 (the proper motion of a star is essentially its angular motion across the sky relative to more distant objects).

Remembering the Armistice

This past weekend we commemorated the 100th anniversary of the Armistice and the end of World War I. As I have spoken about the Great War with people of different ages and backgrounds, the main question that came up was “what was the Armistice again?” Now to be fair, the First World War doesn’t really get extensive coverage in US history textbooks, and of course, none of us have a living memory of the war. This is an interesting lacuna in our historical awareness, considering how profoundly the conflict shaped the world we live in.

The catastrophic combination of 19th-century military leadership and 20th-century weapons resulted in almost incomprehensible death and destruction. New weapons technology and mass production transformed the conduct of warfare: improved artillery, submarines, chemical weapons (tear gas, chlorine, phosgene, and mustard gas), tanks, and combat aircraft were introduced with horrifying consequences. By the end of the war, the old empires of the 1800s — Russia, Germany, Austria, and the Ottomans — had either collapsed or had suffered a diminution of power. Into the void arose the 20th-century plague of authoritarian nationalism and its extreme manifestation, fascism.

This underscores the value of history and the peril we face by continuing our long tradition of ignoring our own past. Today the patriotic pride we feel as Americans is threatened by the resurgence of nationalism. We must not fall prey to this seductive specter: patriotism is not nationalism; nationalism is not patriotism.

So much has been written about World War I and so rather than add to that corpus I will recommend some of my favorite books on the subject, should you choose to explore further:

The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman (1962)

This book hopefully is still required reading somewhere; President Kennedy was so entranced by it that he insisted that his Cabinet and aides read it and absorb its lessons on the threat of war.

The Proud Tower by Barbara Tuchman (1966)

I think it’s helpful to read this before The Guns of August since it really delves into the mindset of the fin de siécle world and how that formed the spark of war. Within this volume, you will find many unfortunate parallels with our own time.

The Origins of American Intervention in the First World War by Ross Gregory (1972)

I first read this in college, it’s really an excellent, concise examination of the factors that contributed to President Wilson’s decision.

The First World War by John Keegan (1999)

A solid volume on the course of the war and the major figures and their strategy.

Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World by Margaret MacMillan (2001)

The award-winning treatment of the Versailles peace conference and its consequences.

Amazon’s HQ2 Announcement

You may have heard about today’s announcement that half of Amazon’s HQ2 is coming to Crystal City. I have posted links to the relevant press releases and some interesting articles:

Official press information
News articles
Washington Post:
New York Times:
ARLnow (Arlington):
CNN:
Washington Business Journal (free reg.):
Analysis

Some Thoughts on Prejudice

Today is Election Day, but what I want to address is not the election but the direction we will take afterward. Reflecting upon the recent calamity in Pittsburgh, it is difficult not to feel skeptical about the future of our country. What force in our nature allows for the persistence of prejudice? Our history has portrayed all the varieties of prejudice which you will recognize: xenophobia, racism, and modern antisemitism, as well as discrimination based on sex or gender or physical condition. It is an awful heritage that underlies our collective past.

Look plainly at these: all are thoroughly irrational; they are remnants of the previous era and should have no purchase on our 21st-century minds, yet we let them abide in our time and befoul the future. Prejudice is the irrational fear of the “Other” that is here, living amongst us, threatening our traditions and our society. It is contiguous with our historic fear of loss of what is familiar to us, the loss of our community to the strange barbarians. Hannibal ad portas!.1

There should be no doubt that this fear is an illusion, our own mental construct. Fearing others for their appearance or something inherent to their identity is only fearing ourselves. This fear and hatred is a choice that we make, an irrational choice that damages our ability to co-exist with our fellow citizens next door, down the street, everywhere. It has been said many times that as Americans we are all from somewhere else. The deeper point is that yes, we all look different, but under our skins rest the same beating hearts. That person next door who seems so “alien” to you, really has the same hopes and dreams for a better life that brought so many of us here.

Racism, antisemitism, bigotry, all the forms of prejudice: they exist because we allow them to exist. Our irrational fear will continue to plague us unless we take action to reduce its corrupting influence. How can we do this?

For adult Americans, we must recognize that prejudice is not genetic but starts with us, we learned it from our families or absorbed it from our friends or our culture. To attack it, pay attention! Notice when people around you express casual racism, antisemitism or other prejudice, and try to create a new more positive response than just outrage or silence. I say this because in my experience many of these casual remarks come from ignorance rather than fear or hate. Many people just don’t know anyone in the group they are slandering, so you are giving them a chance to learn. Yes, your friends or family members may be embarrassed but don’t believe that they are incapable of changing their beliefs; it happens every day.

For young Americans, know that it is very easy to uncritically absorb casual prejudice through peers, family members, and social media. Avoid this path. Go meet those who are different in your school, in your neighborhood. Resist the fear of the Other. Learn about American history and the difficulties that every group has faced. Finally, you may find that you have among your friends or family a student of history. Seek them out! We will be happy to talk about some of the ways Americans have worked through the years to overcome differences. You have more power than any adult to stop prejudice because you are the future of America, and its new form will emerge from your design.


1This expression means “Hannibal is at the gates!” and was used by Romans in the same way we might frighten someone today by invoking the “bogeyman”: an imaginary character used to generate fear. Hannibal, of course, was real enough, but his appropriation as a fear-inducing stereotype long outlived the threat he posed to the Roman Republic.

Sky Sights Mid-February 2018

Greetings skywatchers! We don’t have any eclipses or major meteor showers this month (and of course no Full Moon), but thanks to this week’s New Moon, the skies will be particularly dark over the holiday weekend. Also today I’ll talk a little about some calendrical oddities concerning Washington’s Birthday and our shortest month.

 A New Moon Uncovers Many Stars

But first, what can we see in the sky? Well to begin, the New Moon occurred on Thursday at 4:04 pm EST (9:04 pm UTC). The several days around the New Moon are generally known as “Dark of the Moon” (not “Dark Side of the Moon” which is not even a correct astronomical term, but that’s another story). Because of the absence of moonlight, this weekend will be great for night sky observing.

You should be able to go out any night after midnight this month and see Jupiter and Mars traveling in the sky together. If you go out before dawn you’ll see Saturn in the eastern sky. Venus is becoming our Evening Star again and will be gradually rising higher in the west after sunset this month.

You may have heard of the Summer Triangle, that grouping of three bright stars (Vega, Deneb, and Altair) that dominate the summer sky in the Northern Hemisphere. This is an example of an asterism, which is an informal but easily identifiable collection of stars, sometimes within an official constellation and sometimes spanning several constellations. We can look for the Winter Triangle asterism this month which showcases the three bright stars of Betelgeuse (in Orion the Hunter), Procyon (in Canis Minor, the Smaller Dog), and Sirius (in Canis Major, the Larger Dog). To find the Winter Triangle it’s easiest to look for Sirius first, the brightest star in the sky.

Washington’s Birthday or Presidents’ Day?

Now let’s come back to Earth and our calendar. Washington’s Birthday is our holiday long weekend this month. As I pointed out last month, George Washington was actually born on Feb. 11, 1732, according to the Julian calendar in use at the time, but in the Gregorian calendar we use today his birthday became Feb. 22, and for many years this was the date celebrated as the holiday known as Washington’s Birthday.

Abraham Lincoln was born on Feb. 12, 1809 (long after we switched calendars), but his birthday was never commemorated as a federal holiday (it is, however, a state holiday in several states). Washington’s Birthday itself only became an official federal holiday in 1879 when it was decided to use Feb. 22 as the official date.

In 1971 the Uniform Monday Holiday Act determined that five holidays (Washington’s Birthday, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, and Veterans Day) would no longer be fixed dates but instead would occur on “designated” Mondays in order to create a series of three-day weekends. It should come as no surprise that the retail and travel industries were big proponents of this legislation!

Although Veterans Day was returned to a fixed date in 1974, the other three-day weekends have become permanent additions to our calendar. Oddly, the dates that Washington’s Birthday can fall upon under the law are between Feb. 15 and Feb. 21, which excludes both Washington’s and Lincoln’s actual birthdays!

Starting in the early 1980s the term Presidents’ Day (or President’s Day) was adopted by many states due to the proximity of both birthdays to the holiday (and to the benefit of retailers who can promote week-long sales). Other states continue to use Washington’s Birthday or some variation. Here in Virginia, the official designation is George Washington Day in honor of our most famous citizen.

Why is February so short?

Why is February the shortest month? Well, the original 10–month Roman calendar was changed (supposedly by Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome) to align with the 12 lunar cycles of the year, resulting in a 355-day calendar. In the original calendar, March was the first month of the year (signifying the end of winter and the start of the farming season), so January and February were added as the last months of the year. Roman superstition held that even numbers were unlucky, so all the months were either 29 or 31 days long. Unfortunately, that added up to more than 355 days, so the last month, February, ended up with 28 days.

Since a 355-day calendar does not accord with the seasons, gradually it fell behind and periodically an extra intercalary month was added; this, however, was not done regularly and by the 1st century BC there was an urgent need for calendrical reform. In 46 BC Julius Caesar introduced what became known as the Julian calendar, which made February the second month of the year but retained its length of 28 days. Every four years February gains one day due to the requirements of our current Gregorian leap year system, but that is still another story. Have a nice weekend!