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Winter Solstice Sunrise

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glen ep ropella

Winter Solstice Sunrise

http://www.nps.gov/chcu/planyourvisit/event-details.htm?eventID=521654-452862

12/21/2012
Location: Kin Kletso | Map
Time: 7:00 AM to 7:30 AM
Fee Information: Free with Paid $8 entrance fee
Contact Name: Visitor Center Contact
Email: e-mail us Contact
Phone Number: 505-786-7014

Join Ranger Cornucopia at Kin Kletso to view a winter solstice marker.
Park gates will open at 6:00 am. Park at Pueblo del Arroyo and walk to
Kin Kletso. When the parking lot fills, visitors will park at Pueblo
Bonito.

--
glen e. p. ropella, 971-255-2847, http://tempusdictum.com

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Stephen Guerin

Re: Winter Solstice Sunrise

Thanks, Glen,

BTW, here's a nice interactive exhibit link of the Sun Dagger project at New Mexico Natural History Museum done by Alan Price:

http://www.solsticeproject.org/sundaggermodel.html

On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 10:18 AM, glen e. p. ropella <[hidden email]> wrote:

http://www.nps.gov/chcu/planyourvisit/event-details.htm?eventID=521654-452862

12/21/2012
Location: Kin Kletso | Map
Time: 7:00 AM to 7:30 AM
Fee Information: Free with Paid $8 entrance fee
Contact Name: Visitor Center Contact
Email: e-mail us Contact
Phone Number: <a href="tel:505-786-7014" value="+15057867014">505-786-7014

Join Ranger Cornucopia at Kin Kletso to view a winter solstice marker.
Park gates will open at 6:00 am. Park at Pueblo del Arroyo and walk to
Kin Kletso. When the parking lot fills, visitors will park at Pueblo
Bonito.

--
glen e. p. ropella, <a href="tel:971-255-2847" value="+19712552847">971-255-2847, http://tempusdictum.com

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Pamela McCorduck

Re: Winter Solstice Sunrise

In reply to this post by glen ep ropella

May I just say that Ranger Cornucopia led us through the park on one occasion, and he is awesome in his knowledge and enthusiasm. And well known for it.

Pamela

On Dec 20, 2012, at 10:18 AM, glen e. p. ropella wrote:

http://www.nps.gov/chcu/planyourvisit/event-details.htm?eventID=521654-452862

12/21/2012
Location: Kin Kletso | Map
Time: 7:00 AM to 7:30 AM
Fee Information: Free with Paid $8 entrance fee
Contact Name: Visitor Center Contact
Email: e-mail us Contact
Phone Number: 505-786-7014

Join Ranger Cornucopia at Kin Kletso to view a winter solstice marker.
Park gates will open at 6:00 am. Park at Pueblo del Arroyo and walk to
Kin Kletso. When the parking lot fills, visitors will park at Pueblo
Bonito.

--
glen e. p. ropella, 971-255-2847, http://tempusdictum.com

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

"Bounded Rationality," by Pamela McCorduck, the second novel in the series, Santa Fe Stories, Sunstone Press, is now available both as ink-on-paper and as an e-book.

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
― Jane Austen

Nick Thompson

Re: Winter Solstice Sunrise

In reply to this post by glen ep ropella

FWIW

My favorite seasonal marker is December 7, when the AFTERNOONS start getting longer. The MORNINGS don't start getting longer until January 4th or so. On December 21 ... the solstice .... the mornings start getting longer faster than the afternoons continue to get shorter. Since I am not a MORNING person, I celebrate December 7th as the first sign of spring.

I assume that somebody on this list can explain why this is the case. I used to watch the sun set every afternoon from the corner chair at the old Ohori's and the setting sun does this odd little dance during the month of December. If I remember correctly, the plane of the setting sun sinks steadily until December 7th, and then remains pretty much the same through December. But the sun arrives along its path later and later, thus prolonging the afternoon as December wears on. I think it has to do with the analemma..

It explains the feeling that you get shortly after Christmas that the afternoons are already a bit longer. Actually, they are by then.

Nick

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of glen e. p. ropella
Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2012 10:18 AM
To: Friam Friam
Subject: [FRIAM] Winter Solstice Sunrise

http://www.nps.gov/chcu/planyourvisit/event-details.htm?eventID=521654-452862

12/21/2012

Location: Kin Kletso | Map

Time: 7:00 AM to 7:30 AM

Fee Information: Free with Paid $8 entrance fee Contact Name: Visitor Center Contact

Email: e-mail us Contact

Phone Number: 505-786-7014

Join Ranger Cornucopia at Kin Kletso to view a winter solstice marker.

Park gates will open at 6:00 am. Park at Pueblo del Arroyo and walk to Kin Kletso. When the parking lot fills, visitors will park at Pueblo Bonito.

glen e. p. ropella, 971-255-2847, http://tempusdictum.com

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Steve Smith

Re: Winter Solstice Sunrise

Nick -

Nice thing to notice...

My wife and I live very much by the sun, but not so much by the clock, so while I have occasionally noticed artifacts of the complex relation between sun, earth axial tilt, earth orbit, I had not (until you sent this) recognized the implications so bluntly. I had always chalked these anomolies up to the "flatness" of the top of the sine wave without regard to the "tilt".

I often notice when my (active air) solar panels on my roof start and stop which I take to be a rough measure of the altitude and azimuth of the sun, based on time of day and year. It is also, unfortunately, also a function of how clear the sky is, how cold the day is, how cold the night before was, and how windy it is.   I had never factored in (intuitively or formally) the phenomena you just pointed out...

As a child, I remember being fascinated not only by the many wonderful destinations around the globe, but also the annotations such as the longitude and lattitude lines... the Analemma of course, was the most puzzling. I did not learn trigonometry until much later but did see a lissajous figure on an oscilliscope quite early, and assumed the two had something in common (Lissajous and Analemma) and guessed it was somehow the combination of the earth's orbit and tilt. I'm still puzzling a bit about the lemniscate of bernoulli which might "just" be what a lissajous becomes when working with an elliptical orbit?

Thanks for the early Christmas Present.   One of my fields of play (for pay) these days is with Planetaria which puts me in the position of wanting/needing to be more familiar with items astronomical.

For some good first person synthetic experience at your desktop, I recommend "Stellarium".   I'm working with one of the (open source) developers who is trying to make it Archaeologically accurate over millenia... currently it is only good for a fraction of that. So if you want to see the position of the stars on Jesus' birthday (or crucifixion), you might have to wait a few more months to have it be accurate!

- Steve

My favorite seasonal marker is December 7, when the AFTERNOONS start getting longer. The MORNINGS don't start getting longer until January 4th or so. On December 21 ... the solstice .... the mornings start getting longer faster than the afternoons continue to get shorter. Since I am not a MORNING person, I celebrate December 7th as the first sign of spring.

I assume that somebody on this list can explain why this is the case. I used to watch the sun set every afternoon from the corner chair at the old Ohori's and the setting sun does this odd little dance during the month of December. If I remember correctly, the plane of the setting sun sinks steadily until December 7th, and then remains pretty much the same through December. But the sun arrives along its path later and later, thus prolonging the afternoon as December wears on. I think it has to do with the analemma..

It explains the feeling that you get shortly after Christmas that the afternoons are already a bit longer. Actually, they are by then.

Nick

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of glen e. p. ropella
Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2012 10:18 AM
To: Friam Friam
Subject: [FRIAM] Winter Solstice Sunrise

http://www.nps.gov/chcu/planyourvisit/event-details.htm?eventID=521654-452862

12/21/2012

Location: Kin Kletso | Map

Time: 7:00 AM to 7:30 AM

Fee Information: Free with Paid $8 entrance fee Contact Name: Visitor Center Contact

Email: e-mail us Contact

Phone Number: 505-786-7014

Join Ranger Cornucopia at Kin Kletso to view a winter solstice marker.

Park gates will open at 6:00 am. Park at Pueblo del Arroyo and walk to Kin Kletso. When the parking lot fills, visitors will park at Pueblo Bonito.

--

glen e. p. ropella, 971-255-2847, http://tempusdictum.com

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Nick Thompson

Re: Winter Solstice Sunrise

Steve,

Given your awareness of the sky you have probably noticed something that remarkably few people have noticed. While they HAVE noticed that the sunset/rise moves N and south along the horizon in spring and fall, Few have noticed that the moon makes that same trip in a month. Wise people have attempted to explain this with me using a beachball, an orange a grape and a floodlight, but the explanation still hasn’t taken. Other wise people have tried to assure me that rotating around something is precisely the same as being rotated around, if you happen to be tilted. But I still can’t make it work.

Nick

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2012 1:19 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Winter Solstice Sunrise

My favorite seasonal marker is December 7, when the AFTERNOONS start getting longer. The MORNINGS don't start getting longer until January 4th or so. On December 21 ... the solstice .... the mornings start getting longer faster than the afternoons continue to get shorter. Since I am not a MORNING person, I celebrate December 7th as the first sign of spring.

I assume that somebody on this list can explain why this is the case. I used to watch the sun set every afternoon from the corner chair at the old Ohori's and the setting sun does this odd little dance during the month of December. If I remember correctly, the plane of the setting sun sinks steadily until December 7th, and then remains pretty much the same through December. But the sun arrives along its path later and later, thus prolonging the afternoon as December wears on. I think it has to do with the analemma..

It explains the feeling that you get shortly after Christmas that the afternoons are already a bit longer. Actually, they are by then.

Nick

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of glen e. p. ropella
Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2012 10:18 AM
To: Friam Friam
Subject: [FRIAM] Winter Solstice Sunrise

http://www.nps.gov/chcu/planyourvisit/event-details.htm?eventID=521654-452862

12/21/2012
Location: Kin Kletso | Map
Time: 7:00 AM to 7:30 AM
Fee Information: Free with Paid $8 entrance fee Contact Name: Visitor Center Contact
Email: e-mail us Contact
Phone Number: 505-786-7014

Join Ranger Cornucopia at Kin Kletso to view a winter solstice marker.
Park gates will open at 6:00 am. Park at Pueblo del Arroyo and walk to Kin Kletso. When the parking lot fills, visitors will park at Pueblo Bonito.

--
glen e. p. ropella, 971-255-2847, http://tempusdictum.com

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Steve Smith

Re: Winter Solstice Sunrise

Nick -

Part of my noticing of the sky has been from growing up at least partly under the stars (a place with little artificial light, little humidity and high altitude) with lots of motivations to be outside well into the evening, outside the normal flyways for airlines and during the early era of satellites, meaning that anything moving in the night sky was *really cool*!) and partly from a contemporary version of this (my wife and I slept outside regularly during the warmish months until the last few years). Of course, when it comes to Trivial Pursuit, I don't have a chance against my peers who grew up watching game shows and prime-time TV.

I'm appalled when I hear "white folks" ooh and aww about how much this native or that native tribe (contemporary or ancient) knew about the night sky, about the movements of the celestial bodies... *of course* you notice them if you are not in your glass/steel skyscraper watching a big screen TV! Of course, now I spend most of my life with my head stuffed into the screen of my laptop, so I guess everything I will soon know about the sky I will have to learn from Stellarium!

As to the particulars... I sorted the north-south sunrise first by holding a globe at it's relatively proper inclination to an imaginary sun and imagine the sun shining on it, considering myself at a given point on the globe (like the place I lived)... of course your Analemma, as a chart, works pretty well to suggest these things as well, right?

As for the moon, the biggest trick is realizing that *it's* orbit is in the plane of the earth's orbit around the sun (ecliptic) rather than around the rotational axis of the earth. Thus the apparent east-west motion during it's orbital period (Isomorphic to the earth around the sun). I don't know if this works any better than a beachball, an orange and a flashlight, but it worked for me.

- Steve

Steve,

Given your awareness of the sky you have probably noticed something that remarkably few people have noticed. While they HAVE noticed that the sunset/rise moves N and south along the horizon in spring and fall, Few have noticed that the moon makes that same trip in a month. Wise people have attempted to explain this with me using a beachball, an orange a grape and a floodlight, but the explanation still hasn’t taken.   Other wise people have tried to assure me that rotating around something is precisely the same as being rotated around, if you happen to be tilted. But I still can’t make it work.

Nick

From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2012 1:19 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Winter Solstice Sunrise

Nick -

Nice thing to notice...

My wife and I live very much by the sun, but not so much by the clock, so while I have occasionally noticed artifacts of the complex relation between sun, earth axial tilt, earth orbit, I had not (until you sent this) recognized the implications so bluntly. I had always chalked these anomolies up to the "flatness" of the top of the sine wave without regard to the "tilt".

I often notice when my (active air) solar panels on my roof start and stop which I take to be a rough measure of the altitude and azimuth of the sun, based on time of day and year. It is also, unfortunately, also a function of how clear the sky is, how cold the day is, how cold the night before was, and how windy it is.   I had never factored in (intuitively or formally) the phenomena you just pointed out...

As a child, I remember being fascinated not only by the many wonderful destinations around the globe, but also the annotations such as the longitude and lattitude lines... the Analemma of course, was the most puzzling. I did not learn trigonometry until much later but did see a lissajous figure on an oscilliscope quite early, and assumed the two had something in common (Lissajous and Analemma) and guessed it was somehow the combination of the earth's orbit and tilt. I'm still puzzling a bit about the lemniscate of bernoulli which might "just" be what a lissajous becomes when working with an elliptical orbit?

Thanks for the early Christmas Present.   One of my fields of play (for pay) these days is with Planetaria which puts me in the position of wanting/needing to be more familiar with items astronomical.

For some good first person synthetic experience at your desktop, I recommend "Stellarium".   I'm working with one of the (open source) developers who is trying to make it Archaeologically accurate over millenia... currently it is only good for a fraction of that. So if you want to see the position of the stars on Jesus' birthday (or crucifixion), you might have to wait a few more months to have it be accurate!

- Steve
My favorite seasonal marker is December 7, when the AFTERNOONS start getting longer. The MORNINGS don't start getting longer until January 4th or so. On December 21 ... the solstice .... the mornings start getting longer faster than the afternoons continue to get shorter. Since I am not a MORNING person, I celebrate December 7th as the first sign of spring.

I assume that somebody on this list can explain why this is the case. I used to watch the sun set every afternoon from the corner chair at the old Ohori's and the setting sun does this odd little dance during the month of December. If I remember correctly, the plane of the setting sun sinks steadily until December 7th, and then remains pretty much the same through December. But the sun arrives along its path later and later, thus prolonging the afternoon as December wears on. I think it has to do with the analemma..

It explains the feeling that you get shortly after Christmas that the afternoons are already a bit longer. Actually, they are by then.

Nick

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of glen e. p. ropella
Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2012 10:18 AM
To: Friam Friam
Subject: [FRIAM] Winter Solstice Sunrise

http://www.nps.gov/chcu/planyourvisit/event-details.htm?eventID=521654-452862

12/21/2012

Location: Kin Kletso | Map

Time: 7:00 AM to 7:30 AM

Fee Information: Free with Paid $8 entrance fee Contact Name: Visitor Center Contact

Email: e-mail us Contact

Phone Number: 505-786-7014

Join Ranger Cornucopia at Kin Kletso to view a winter solstice marker.

Park gates will open at 6:00 am. Park at Pueblo del Arroyo and walk to Kin Kletso. When the parking lot fills, visitors will park at Pueblo Bonito.

--

glen e. p. ropella, 971-255-2847, http://tempusdictum.com

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Steve Smith

Re: Winter Solstice Sunrise

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

Nick/all -

While they HAVE noticed that the sunset/rise moves N and south along the horizon in spring and fall, Few have noticed that the moon makes that same trip in a month. Wise people have attempted to explain this with me using a beachball, an orange a grape and a floodlight, but the explanation still hasn’t taken.

And WTF is this all about? Why does the moon orbit roughly in the plane of the ecliptic rather than perpendicular to the rotation of the earth?

I suppose that it is one or both of the following:?
1) The moon was not formed from the same accretion disk the earth was?
2) The moon is large and close enough to the sun for *it* to exert tidal forces?

But then it would seem that the *earth's* tidal forces (and it's oblate-spheroid shape?) might pull the moon into the plane of it's own rotation?

Hmmm... I bet someone here has already sorted all this...

- Steve

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Bruce Sherwood

Re: Winter Solstice Sunrise

Remember that the current consensus theory is that the Moon was ejected from the Earth when a Mars-sized object struck the Earth. Almost all objects in the Solar System lie in the same plane (the "ecliptic" plane), associated with the original disk-like concentration of material. There's no reason at all to expect the Moon to have an orbit in our equatorial plane.

Note that the four bright moons of Jupiter, first seen by Galileo, have orbits in the ecliptic plane.

Bruce

On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 7:28 PM, Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick/all -

While they HAVE noticed that the sunset/rise moves N and south along the horizon in spring and fall, Few have noticed that the moon makes that same trip in a month. Wise people have attempted to explain this with me using a beachball, an orange a grape and a floodlight, but the explanation still hasn’t taken.

And WTF is this all about? Why does the moon orbit roughly in the plane of the ecliptic rather than perpendicular to the rotation of the earth?

I suppose that it is one or both of the following:?
    1) The moon was not formed from the same accretion disk the earth was?
    2) The moon is large and close enough to the sun for *it* to exert tidal forces?

But then it would seem that the *earth's* tidal forces (and it's oblate-spheroid shape?) might pull the moon into the plane of it's own rotation?

Hmmm... I bet someone here has already sorted all this...

- Steve

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Steve Smith

Re: Winter Solstice Sunrise

Thanks Bruce!

I knew that such a collision was a leading theory and it fits the questions I had... I didn't realize "Theia" was presumably as large as *Mars* nor that the same theories suggest that a number of such bodies might have existed and the Earth likely experienced a *number* of such collisions!? The Bellbruno-Gott hypothesis regarding formation of Theia as an accretion body at one of the Earth-Sun Lagrange points is pretty amazing too!

The only reason I had to imagine the Moon orbit might be in the plane of our own rotation is that if it had been formed from a proto earth-moon, they would seem to share the same axis of (mutual) rotation? Even the Theia hypotheses seem to beg this point?

A Theia-Earth collision, even if Theia's angular momentum vector was aligned with the Solar System's, it's mass was order 1/10 that of Earth (well, the present Earth?) and the resulting Moon's mass is 1/10 that presumed for Theia, then by very loose rule of thumb, I want to guess that the resulting earth-moon system would be roughly aligned with the angular momentum vector of the (much) larger body... of course, the Theia hypothesis doesn't directly account for 90% of Theia's mass... or at least 90% of it was lost as ejecta from the collision or captured by the Earth-body rather than the Moon-body?

I know I'm being incredibly informal in these maunderings, perhaps a more careful analysis would offer up the answers right away. It also seems possible that a *subsequent* event (to the Theia-Earth cum Earth-Moon collision) adjusted the Earth's angular momentum vector... apparently the magnitude of the earth's rotational drift or perhaps "nutation" is not trivial.... hmmm.... time for more eggnog.

- Steve

Remember that the current consensus theory is that the Moon was ejected from the Earth when a Mars-sized object struck the Earth. Almost all objects in the Solar System lie in the same plane (the "ecliptic" plane), associated with the original disk-like concentration of material. There's no reason at all to expect the Moon to have an orbit in our equatorial plane.

Note that the four bright moons of Jupiter, first seen by Galileo, have orbits in the ecliptic plane.

Bruce

On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 7:28 PM, Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick/all -

While they HAVE noticed that the sunset/rise moves N and south along the horizon in spring and fall, Few have noticed that the moon makes that same trip in a month. Wise people have attempted to explain this with me using a beachball, an orange a grape and a floodlight, but the explanation still hasn’t taken.

And WTF is this all about? Why does the moon orbit roughly in the plane of the ecliptic rather than perpendicular to the rotation of the earth?

I suppose that it is one or both of the following:?
    1) The moon was not formed from the same accretion disk the earth was?
    2) The moon is large and close enough to the sun for *it* to exert tidal forces?

But then it would seem that the *earth's* tidal forces (and it's oblate-spheroid shape?) might pull the moon into the plane of it's own rotation?

Hmmm... I bet someone here has already sorted all this...

- Steve

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Arlo Barnes

Re: Winter Solstice Sunrise

While they HAVE noticed that the sunset/rise moves N and south along the horizon in spring and fall, Few have noticed that the moon makes that same trip in a month.

So where is our moonalemma? I guess I have a Googling/Photography project now.

outside the normal flyways for airlines and during the early era of satellites, meaning that anything moving in the night sky was *really cool*!)

Lucky, there are way too many planes where I live.

I'm appalled when I hear "white folks" ooh and aww about how much this native or that native tribe (contemporary or ancient) knew about the night sky, about the movements of the celestial bodies... *of course* you notice them if you are not in your glass/steel skyscraper watching a big screen TV!

And it helps that they (sun, moon,planets, stars),are among the flashier things of the world, only having to compete with torches and camp/bonfires (and I suppose forest fires, lightning, et cetera) instead of electric lights and LCD/other screens. Possibly flashy meant (and perhaps still does) holy, so such objects were worthy of closer scrutiny.
-Arlo James Barnes