Toxteth is a central part of Liverpool. Though I lived in nearby Manchester for several years I wasn’t aware of Toxteth till I was writing, for my Venus book, about “Jeremiah Horrocks… the most poignant of the young geniuses in this story.” He was born about 1618 at Toxteth Park, a rural area on which urban Toxteth grew up about two centuries later.
Jeremiah was a poor lad who taught himself science and made a calculation better than Kepler’s, finding that there would be a transit in November 1639. He had to support himself as a curate, and on the transit day, a Sunday, he had to dash between church services to his darkened room, in which he had set up this meticulously prepared sheet –
– so that through a pinhole he could project on it the huge circle of the Sun and the dot of Venus crossing it. (He must have had to keep moving the whole rig to keep up with the moving Sun.) Thus he became the first to actually observe a transit; and he came close to using it to find the whole scale of the solar system, which became the great goal of astronomy and the reason for transit voyages, culminating in Cook’s to the southern Pacific.
Jeremiah did other astronomical work but died at Toxteth in 1641, aged about 22 – his exact birthday isn’t known. “Many of his papers were destroyed by carelessness and the English civil war that broke out in 1642.”
Home planet department
Toxteth is now “one of the most economically deprived neighbourhoods in the UK,” inhabited mainly by “BAME” – black, Asian, or minority ethnic people. These suffer disproportionately high rates of infection by the coronavirus, and doctors are worried that they are also more vulnerable to disinformation that makes them reluctant to accept vaccination. So the doctors set up a pop-up vaccination center, where among the first to be vaccinated were the imam and muezzin of the Toxteth mosque.
Linguistic note: the article says that the imam was vaccinated “along with the man who does the azaan, the call to prayer.” Yes, Arabic adhân is the call to prayer, but I think everyone knows “muezzin,” mu’adhdhin, the man who delivers the call. Does the Toxteth muezzin actually call (“God is greatest… Prayer is better than sleep…”) from the top of the minaret? Alas, in modern Muslim cities the call is merely broadcast from competing loudspeakers at monster volume – a lamentable (to me) departure from a beautiful tradition.
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This weblog maintains its right to be about astronomy or anything under the sun.
“‘Prayer is better than sleep…'” I believe it. Have also discovered relaxed astronomical observing to be a proportional sleep substitute. Anecdotally, I observed, in my own situation, that for every 2-3 hours of telescopic observing I could get by with one hour or so less sleep. For example, following a 5 hour observing session, instead of needing 8 hours to function well the following day I may require only 6 hours of sleep to wake refreshed. Conversely, I discovered that spending evening time in front of a screen — TV or computer — increased the amount of needed sleep, leading to over sleeping. Thought that maybe the optical overload from bright interior lighting and staring at a brightly illuminated screen, compared with the darkness of a domed observatory, may have had something to do with the apparent effect on sleep.
The visual version of the loudspeakered call to prayer may be the recent development (in my area) of electronic signs in front of church buildings. A Lutheran church near me, on an otherwise dark country road, has had a particularly egregious sign installed. I’m not sure if they can’t figure out how to tone it down for nighttime, or if they *like* the fact that the thing is easily visible two to three miles away [shudder], and wipes out your night vision as you drive by even if you’re careful not to look at it. What I can say is that they don’t seem to hold many events after nightfall.
(Note: I originally typed “devilopment” and considered leaving it that way….)
Light pollution and sound pollution from over DEVILopment!
You’ll be lucky to get them to tone it down as churches seem to have something against the night sky and love floodlighting their temples of superstition.they will also drone on about helping the poor whilst handing money over to the power companies to destroy the night 🌃sky.here,in England, in 2000 they raked in a fortune from gambling,a thing called the National Lottery,to floodlight loads of churches for the millennium.of course not to single them out as when I was in Amman, Jordan about a year ago one mosque was so floodlit you could read a book by it! further east in Thailand I see pictures of floodlit temples,etc.so much for the glory of God being within!years back when I worked for the railways an American girl came down the station quite late and wanted to go to Stonehenge,”but”, replied I,”it’ll be dark when you get there”….”ooh isn’t it floodlit?”she said.falling to the floor I cried,”noooooo don’t give them any ideas!”!
L.P. is not limited to Christianity, Laura. See here: https://www.storyblocks.com/video/stock/move-the-camera-to-a-beautifully-lit-mosque-at-night-along-the-alley-b3gkhc8irfjctgrj7p
Sign companies go from church to church trying to sell their bright wonders and unfortunately some churches bite.
Still,there’s only only one religion that, in addition to spreading its L.P., also disturbs the peace of believers and non-believers by bellowing through loudspeakers like a wavering horn shrilling down at them from the minaret tops.
Correct mosques are lit up like nobody’s business and as the stone work is white even more of it gets reflected back into the night sky.although I don’t recall seeing any on my rather limited trips to south east Asia,only Malaysia and Singapore,I have seen pictures of floodlit temples run by Buddhists and Hindus too.in England we have a sinister organization called the Church Lighting Commission which is run by the Church of England and this organization seeks money from lotteries and other generators of poverty to floodlight churches basically to give the already wealthy power companies more money to destroy the views of the stars.it’s high time laws where brought in to ban architectural lighting up of buildings.i always find it strange that we are told not to leave our TV’s on standby to help save the environment yet how much electricity does a TV on standby use compared with a floodlit building?a floodlit church probably uses more electrical energy in a night than a TV on standby does over 5 years?!
An interesting sideline to Jeremiah Horrocks. He was educated at Emmanuel College-1632, which was the only college at the time that was educating people of his faith( Puritan).Fast forward to 1636 and we have John Harvard founding the oldest University in America.Harvard’s founding was for the purpose of producing clergy for the Puritan faith.John Harvard in honor of Emmanuel College back in England, named Harvard, Emmanuel College, but when his(John Harvard) library was given to the school, Emmanuel College, it was renamed in his honor.Harvard University.
A wonderful moment of my life was sitting at the top of the mountain where Jesus was transfigured before three of this disciples, hearing the Gospel reading about it, while in a Jewish nation, while the Muslim Call to Prayer echoed thorough the valley below us.
It,Toxteth,is an inner suburb of Liverpool ajoining the city centre.i use to have a girlfriend who lived in Aigburth which ajoined Toxteth to the west and have walked through it many times.it has a tree lined avenue with a garden down the middle which rather reminded me of Commonwealth Avenue in Boston.there’s a rock cut arch/short tunnel in the grounds of the huge ugly brooding Anglican cathedral and a wooden Stonehenge in Princess Park of interest.i have had a number of interesting astronomical views from Liverpool’s Sefton Park,sadly Bortle 8!, the full lunar eclipse about 5 years ago,various sighting of Mercury in the dusk and if I remember longer ago a conjunction between Jupiter, Venus and Mars.keep you wits about you mind if you venture there as it has a reputation for being rough and I once encountered stone throwing kids,they missed but the stones where large and vicious!