essay about celestial bodies

Celestial Bodies

You might have come across the word heavenly body in your science textbook sometime or the other. Have you ever wondered what are heavenly bodies? Celestial bodies or heavenly bodies are objects in space such as the sun, moon, planets, and stars. They form a part of the vast universe we live in and are usually very far from us. The glorious night sky is dotted with such objects and when we observe them using a telescope, they reveal fascinating worlds of their own.

Hence, we can define heavenly bodies as,

A planet, moon, star or other natural objects in the space

In this article, let us discuss various heavenly body names and their meaning.

Classification of Celestial Bodies

Stars are giant balls of hot gases that can produce their own light. Stars give out energy by converting Hydrogen gas into Helium in their cores. Stars are gigantic in size and have an immense gravitational attraction . The sun is a medium-sized star that gives us energy and makes life possible on earth.

Planets are large (almost) spherical objects that revolve around the sun. Planets move in fixed orbits around the sun. There are 8 planets in our solar system. Planets may be made of rocks, metals and gases like hydrogen, nitrogen and methane. The earth is also a planet and is the only known place in the universe which supports life. Planets that revolve around other stars are called exoplanets.

Satellites are objects that revolve around planets. They form the essential part of the celestial bodies. These may be of natural origin or sent by humans. The moon is a natural satellite of the earth and revolves around it because it is bound by the Earth’s gravitational pull. Man has also placed artificial or man-made satellites around the earth and other planets to study them and for communication purposes.

These are small chunks of ice and rock that come from the outer edge of the solar system. When its orbit brings it closer to the sun, the ice on them vaporizes, creating a beautiful tail behind them.

These are small irregularly shaped rocks made up of metal or minerals that orbit the sun. Most of them are found between Mars and Jupiter in an area known as the asteroid belt.

Meteors and meteorites

These are objects from space that enter our atmosphere as they are pulled by the earth’s gravity. Meteors usually are small and burn up in the atmosphere as they enter the earth. This creates streaks in the sky as though a star has fallen. They are commonly called shooting stars. If a meteor is large enough it can reach the ground and create a crater. Such objects are called meteorites.

Galaxies are large groups of stars held together by gravity. The sun and the solar system are a part of a galaxy known as the Milky Way. Other galaxies are usually so far away that they look like stars in the night sky. The Andromeda galaxy and the Large Magellanic Cloud are galaxies that can be seen with the naked eye on a clear night.

The next time you go out to wonder at the night sky, try to identify these objects. If you can get a star chart, use it to find the different celestial objects mentioned in the night sky.

Frequently Asked Questions – FAQs

What do we mean by celestial bodies, how many types of celestial bodies are present, where are most of the asteroids found, what are comets, which galaxy are we a part of, what is the one major difference between planets and stars.

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Astronomically certain events on earth,seem to synchronise with certain celestial event.for example,the annual flooding of the nile follows closely the appearance of sirius,the tides ebbed & flows in phase with the moon,the change of the seasons follows closely the movement of the sun.

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• Celestial Bodies

By the definition, a celestial body is a natural object outside of the Earth’s atmosphere. For examples, Moon, Sun, and the other planets of our solar system. But, actually, these are very partial examples. The Kuiper belt is holding many celestial bodies. Any asteroid in our space is the celestial body. This article will give the necessary details about the celestial bodies in a simple manner.

Introduction to Celestial Bodies

Celestial bodies are also termed as heavenly bodies. These are the objects in our space like sun, moon, planets, and many stars. These are forming a part of the vast universe in which we are living. The glorious night sky is having dotted appearance with such objects. When anyone observes them using the telescope, these are looking very fascinating. As these are so far away, we cannot see all of them using our naked eye. Thus we need the telescopes to study them.

Our universe is containing an amazing collection of celestial objects or astronomical objects. Though most of the observable cosmos is composed of the empty space. Still, this cold, dark void which is sparsely populated by the number of astronomical objects. These are ranging from the common to the bizarre. These are the stuff which is filled with the empty space of the universe.

We all are familiar with the stars, planets, and moons. But besides these, many celestial objects, are lying with an amazing collection of other sights. These are colourful nebulae, delicate star clusters as well as the massive galaxies. Pulsars and quasars are further adding to this mystery. Also, the black holes swallow up every bit of the matter which comes too close. This search is on to identify the mysterious, invisible objects termed as dark matter.

Classification of the Celestial Bodies

Stars are the giant balls of the hot gases which can produce their own light. They give out the energy by converting Hydrogen gas into Helium in their own cores. Stars are very gigantic in their size and are having an immense gravitational attraction. Our sun is a medium-sized star giving us energy and making our life possible on earth.

These are those large spherical objects which are revolving around the sun. Planets are in motion in the fixed orbits around the sun. There are eight planets in our solar system. Planets may be made up of rocks, metals and gases such as hydrogen, nitrogen and methane. Our earth is also a planet and is the only known place in our universe having a life. Those Planets which are revolving around other stars are exoplanets.

Satellites:

Satellites are those objects which are revolving around planets. These are forming the essential part of many celestial bodies. These may be natural or maybe a human-made. The moon is our natural satellite. It is revolving around it because it is bound by the Earth’s gravitational pull. Human has also placed artificial or man-made satellites around the earth and other planets. This is for doing study and for communication purposes.

These are the small chunks of ice and rock which come from the outer edge of the solar system. While the closeness of these with the sun, their ice on them vaporizes, and hence creating the beautiful tail behind them.

These are the small and irregularly shaped rocks made up of metal or minerals having orbit around the sun. Mostly these are found between Mars and Jupiter in the area known as the asteroid belt.

Meteors and Meteorites:

These objects are from the space that enters our atmosphere due to the gravitational pull of our Earth. Meteors are usually small and burn up objects in the atmosphere as they enter the earth. It creates the streaks in the sky as though a star has fallen. These are commonly called shooting stars. If a meteor is large enough it can reach up to the surface of the earth and create the crater. These are termed as meteorites.

Galaxies are meant for the large groups of stars, holding together through gravity. The sun and the solar system is the part of our galaxy, which is popular as the Milky Way. Other galaxies are usually so far away that these are looking like stars in the night sky. The Andromeda galaxy and the Large Magellanic Clouds are the galaxies which can be seen with the naked eye on a clear night.

Explanation of Planetary Geology

In recent years, scientists have also begun to investigate the geology of our planets. They are also studying other celestial bodies which are making up our solar system. Planetary geology is referring to the study of the solid matter which is constituting the celestial bodies like planets, moons, asteroids, and comets. This geological study focuses on the materials which are making up these celestial bodies.

Planetary geology is the field of investigations for the planets. This includes the study of all celestial bodies like planets, moons, asteroids, and comets. A planet is the large celestial body having revolution around the star. A moon is also a type of celestial body that revolves around a planet. Our planet, Earth is having only one moon. But other planets are having multiple moons.

Planets and moons are the larger celestial bodies available in our solar system. Comets are the small celestial bodies constituted of small rock fragments. Most comets orbit the sun and take many years to complete the journey. There are also some comets which are having their journeys taking 3 million years.

When a comet getting closer to the sun, then it begins to evaporate, which releases a stream of molecules behind the comets. Asteroids are the small celestial bodies orbiting around the sun. These are mainly having rock and metallic components. If asteroids collide among themselves, then they can be thrown off their normal orbits and travel in any direction. This results in an asteroid colliding with another celestial body, most frequently planets.

FAQs about Celestial Bodies

Q.1. Is our Earth a celestial body?

Solution: Our Earth was not considered as the planet. But rather it was considered as the central object around which all the other celestial objects orbiting. It is different from the terrestrial planets like Mercury, Venus, Mars etc.

Q.2. What are the seven main heavenly bodies?

Solution: Mainly seven celestial bodies are adopted the heavenly bodies. These are as follows:

Q.3. Explain the celestial sphere.

Solution: Celestial bodies are keeping the relative balance due to gravitation and movement. Due to their appearance, all celestial bodies are like equidistant. Also, their relationship with observers is similar to the relationship between a point on a sphere and the centre of a sphere. This imaging sphere centred at the observer having any random radius is the celestial sphere.

Q.4. Explain the Polar star.

Solution: The pole star is a brightly visible star. It is approximately aligned with the axis of rotation of the earth. Therefore, it is having an apparent position close to one of the celestial poles. Also, it lies approximately directly overhead when viewed from the Earth’s the North Pole or the South Pole. This is the reason due to which it always remains in the same position in the Sky. We can easily locate it with the help of the Saptarishi.

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Everything you wanted to know about stars

These luminous balls of gas helped ancient explorers navigate the seas and now help modern-day scientists navigate the universe.

Gently singing Twinkle, twinkle, little star may lull a baby to sleep, but beyond the confines of Earth’s atmosphere, the words aren’t exactly accurate. A correct, albeit less soothing, rendition might be: Emit, emit, gigantic ball of gas .

Stars are huge celestial bodies made mostly of hydrogen and helium that produce light and heat from the churning nuclear forges inside their cores. Aside from our sun, the dots of light we see in the sky are all light-years from Earth. They are the building blocks of galaxies, of which there are billions in the universe. It’s impossible to know how many stars exist, but astronomers estimate that in our Milky Way galaxy alone, there are about 300 billion .

A star is born

The life cycle of a star spans billions of years. As a general rule, the more massive the star, the shorter its life span.

Birth takes place inside hydrogen-based dust clouds called nebulae . Over the course of thousands of years, gravity causes pockets of dense matter inside the nebula to collapse under their own weight. One of these contracting masses of gas, known as a protostar, represents a star’s nascent phase. Because the dust in the nebulae obscures them, protostars can be difficult for astronomers to detect.

As a protostar gets smaller, it spins faster because of the conservation of angular momentum—the same principle that causes a spinning ice skater to accelerate when she pulls in her arms. Increasing pressure creates rising temperatures, and during this time, a star enters what is known as the relatively brief T Tauri phase.

Millions of years later, when the core temperature climbs to about 27 million degrees Fahrenheit (15 million degrees Celsius), nuclear fusion begins, igniting the core and setting off the next—and longest—stage of a star’s life, known as its main sequence.

Most of the stars in our galaxy, including the sun, are categorized as main sequence stars. They exist in a stable state of nuclear fusion, converting hydrogen to helium and radiating x-rays. This process emits an enormous amount of energy, keeping the star hot and shining brightly.

All that glitters

Some stars shine more brightly than others. Their brightness is a factor of how much energy they put out–known as luminosity –and how far away from Earth they are. Color can also vary from star to star because their temperatures are not all the same. Hot stars appear white or blue, whereas cooler stars appear to have orange or red hues.

By plotting these and other variables on a graph called the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, astronomers can classify stars into groups. Along with main sequence and white dwarf stars, other groups include dwarfs, giants, and supergiants. Supergiants may have radii a thousand times larger than that of our own sun.

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Stars spend 90 percent of their lives in their main sequence phase. Now around 4.6 billion years old, Earth’s sun is considered an average-size yellow dwarf star, and astronomers predict it will remain in its main sequence stage for several billion more years.

As stars move toward the ends of their lives, much of their hydrogen has been converted to helium. Helium sinks to the star's core and raises the star's temperature—causing its outer shell of hot gases to expand. These large, swelling stars are known as red giants. But there are different ways a star’s life can end, and its fate depends on how massive the star is.

The red giant phase is actually a prelude to a star shedding its outer layers and becoming a small, dense body called a white dwarf . White dwarfs cool for billions of years. Some, if they exist as part of a binary star system , may gather excess matter from their companion stars until their surfaces explode, triggering a bright nova. Eventually all white dwarfs go dark and cease producing energy. At this point, which scientists have yet to observe, they become known as black dwarfs.

Massive stars eschew this evolutionary path and instead go out with a bang—detonating as supernovae . While they may appear to be swelling red giants on the outside, their cores are actually contracting, eventually becoming so dense that they collapse, causing the star to explode. These catastrophic bursts leave behind a small core that may become a neutron star or even, if the remnant is massive enough, a black hole .

Because certain supernovae have a predictable pattern of destruction and resulting luminosity, astronomers are able to use them as “standard candles,” or astronomical measuring tools, to help them measure distances in the universe and calculate its rate of expansion.

See stunning photos of nebulae

Depending on cloud cover and where you’re standing, you may see countless stars blanketing the sky above you, or none at all. In cities and other densely populated areas, light pollution makes it nearly impossible to stargaze. By contrast, some parts of the world are so dark that looking up reveals the night sky in all its rich celestial glory.

Ancient cultures looked to the sky for all sorts of reasons. By identifying different configurations of stars—known as constellations—and tracking their movements, they could follow the seasons for farming as well as chart courses across the seas. There are dozens of constellations . Many are named for mythical figures, such as Cassiopeia and Orion the Hunter. Others are named for the animals they resemble, such as Ursa Minor (Little Bear) and Canus Major (Big Dog).

Today astronomers use constellations as guideposts for naming newly discovered stars. Constellations also continue to serve as navigational tools. In the Southern Hemisphere, for example, the famous Southern Cross constellation is used as a point of orientation. Meanwhile people in the north may rely on Polaris, or the North Star, for direction. Polaris is part of the well-known constellation Ursa Minor, which includes the famous star pattern known as the Little Dipper.

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Celestial bodies

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Celestial bodies are natural objects located outside Earth’s atmosphere , including stars, planets, moons, asteroids, comets, and meteoroids. These objects are significant in the study of astronomy as they make up the universe and provide insight into the formation, structure, and evolution of cosmic phenomena. Celestial bodies vary greatly in size, composition, and distance from Earth, playing key roles in the dynamics of space and influencing various cosmic events and processes.

What are Celestial bodies?

Celestial bodies are natural objects located outside Earth’s atmosphere. These include planets, stars, moons, asteroids, comets, meteors, and galaxies. Each type of celestial body has unique characteristics and behaviors. For example, stars are massive, luminous spheres of plasma, while planets are large objects that orbit stars.

Celestial bodies Examples in the Solar System

Celestial bodies are natural objects located outside Earth’s atmosphere. The Solar System, our local cosmic neighborhood, contains various celestial bodies, each with unique characteristics and importance. Below are examples of different types of celestial bodies within our Solar System:

• Mercury: The closest planet to the Sun, known for its extreme temperature variations.
• Venus: Similar in size to Earth but with a toxic atmosphere and surface temperatures hot enough to melt lead.
• Earth: The only known planet to support life, with a diverse climate and surface.
• Mars: Known as the Red Planet, with the largest volcano and canyon in the Solar System.
• Jupiter: The largest planet, famous for its Great Red Spot and many moons.
• Saturn: Known for its stunning ring system made of ice and rock.
• Uranus: An ice giant with a unique sideways rotation.
• Neptune: The farthest planet from the Sun, with strong winds and dark storms.
• The Moon: Earth’s only natural satellite, affecting tides and visible phases.
• Titan: Saturn’s largest moon, with a thick atmosphere and methane lakes.
• Europa: One of Jupiter’s moons, believed to have a subsurface ocean.
• Ganymede: The largest moon in the Solar System, orbiting Jupiter.

3. Asteroids and Meteoroids

• Asteroids: Small rocky bodies, mainly found in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
• Ceres: The largest asteroid, also classified as a dwarf planet.
• Meteoroids: Small particles from comets or asteroids that enter Earth’s atmosphere.
• Halley’s Comet: A famous comet visible from Earth every 76 years, with a bright tail.It is a periodic comet, meaning it has a predictable orbit and returns to the inner Solar System approximately every 76 years. Here are some key details about Halley’s Comet

5. Dwarf Planets

• Pluto: Once considered the ninth planet, now classified as a dwarf planet.
• Eris: Similar in size to Pluto, located in the scattered disc region.
• Haumea: Known for its elongated shape and fast rotation.
• Makemake: Another distant dwarf planet in the Kuiper Belt.
• The Sun: The central star of our Solar System, providing heat and light essential for life on Earth.
• Variable Stars: Stars that vary in brightness, like Cepheid variables , which are important for measuring cosmic distances.

7. Galaxies

• The Milky Way: Our galaxy, a vast collection of stars, planets, and other celestial bodies.
• Andromeda Galaxy : The closest spiral galaxy to the Milky Way and expected to collide with it in about 4.5 billion years.

8. Black Holes

• Sagittarius A* : A supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way.
• Cygnus X-1 : One of the first discovered black holes and among the strongest X-ray sources observed from Earth.

9. Notable Phenomena

• Eclipse: Occurs when one celestial body moves into the shadow of another, like a solar eclipse or lunar eclipse .
• Advanced Sunrise and Delayed Sunset: Phenomena caused by the Earth’s atmosphere refracting sunlight.
• The Escape Velocity of Earth: The speed needed to break free from Earth’s gravitational pull.

10. Special Concepts

• Chandrasekhar Limit: The maximum mass of a stable white dwarf star.
• Hubble’s Law: Describes the expansion of the universe and the relationship between a galaxy’s distance and its velocity.
• Luminosity: The intrinsic brightness of a celestial object.
• The Dark Side of the Moon: The hemisphere of the Moon that is always facing away from Earth.

11. Oort Cloud

Hypothetical Cloud of Icy Bodies . The Oort Cloud is a theoretical cloud of icy objects that is believed to surround the Solar System at a vast distance, potentially up to 100,000 AU (astronomical units) from the Sun. It is considered a source of long-period comets, which have orbits lasting thousands of years.

12. Kuiper Belt

Region of Icy Bodies The Kuiper Belt is a region of the Solar System beyond the orbit of Neptune, extending from about 30 to 55 AU from the Sun. It is populated with a variety of icy bodies, including dwarf planets like Pluto, Haumea, and Makemake. The Kuiper Belt is significant for understanding the formation and evolution of the Solar System, as it contains remnants from its early history.

Classification of Celestial Bodies

Celestial bodies are naturally occurring physical entities found in the universe. They come in various forms and sizes, each possessing unique characteristics. The classification of celestial bodies helps astronomers understand their formation, structure, and behavior.

Stars are luminous spheres of plasma held together by gravity, generating light and heat through nuclear fusion reactions in their cores. They form the basic building blocks of galaxies and vary in size, temperature, and brightness. Our Sun is a medium-sized star, essential for life on Earth, while other well-known stars include Betelgeuse and Rigel.

Planets are large celestial bodies that orbit stars. They do not emit their own light but reflect the light of their star. The eight recognized planets in our Solar System are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Each planet has unique features, such as Earth’s ability to support life or Jupiter’s Great Red Spot.

Satellites , or moons, are natural objects that orbit planets. They vary significantly in size, composition, and number. Earth’s Moon is the most familiar satellite, influencing phenomena like tides and eclipses. Other planets, such as Jupiter and Saturn, have multiple moons, with some, like Ganymede and Titan, being larger than Mercury.

Comets are icy bodies that travel around the Sun in highly elliptical orbits. When they approach the Sun, the heat causes their ice to vaporize, forming a glowing coma and often a tail that can stretch for millions of kilometers. Famous comets include Halley’s Comet, visible from Earth approximately every 76 years, and Comet Hale-Bopp.

Asteroids are small, rocky objects that orbit the Sun, primarily located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. They are remnants from the early Solar System that never formed into planets. Examples of notable asteroids include Ceres, the largest in the asteroid belt, and Vesta.

Meteors and Meteorites

Meteors are meteoroids that enter Earth’s atmosphere and vaporize, creating a streak of light commonly known as a shooting star. Meteorites are meteoroids that survive their journey through the atmosphere and land on Earth’s surface. These celestial fragments can vary from tiny grains to large masses, providing valuable scientific information about the early Solar System.

Galaxies are vast systems containing billions of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas, dust, and dark matter, all bound together by gravity. The Milky Way is our home galaxy, hosting our Solar System and billions of other stars. Other notable galaxies include Andromeda, the closest spiral galaxy to the Milky Way, and the Large Magellanic Cloud.

Uses of Celestial bodies

• Celestial bodies like stars, planets, moons, comets, and asteroids are essential for advancing our understanding of the universe. Studying these bodies helps us learn about the formation and evolution of the solar system, the mechanisms of nuclear fusion, and the fundamental laws of physics.
• Stars and other celestial bodies have historically been used for navigation and timekeeping. Sailors and explorers have relied on stars to determine their position at sea, and many ancient cultures developed calendars based on the movements of celestial bodies.
• Asteroids and moons may contain valuable resources such as metals, minerals, and water. These resources could be mined in the future to support space missions and even potential human colonization of other planets and moons.
• The study of planets, moons, and comets aids in the search for extraterrestrial life. Missions targeting celestial bodies like Mars, Europa, and Enceladus aim to discover whether conditions exist or once existed to support life.
• Observing and studying celestial bodies fosters public interest and engagement in science. Events like meteor showers, eclipses, and comet appearances captivate the public, while educational programs use these phenomena to teach astronomy and inspire future generations of scientists.

FAQ’s

How are stars formed.

Stars form from collapsing clouds of gas and dust in space, undergoing nuclear fusion to emit light and heat.

What is a planet?

A planet is a celestial body orbiting a star, large enough to be rounded by its gravity and clear its orbit of debris.

What defines a moon?

A moon is a natural satellite that orbits a planet or dwarf planet, varying in size and composition.

How do asteroids differ from comets?

Asteroids are rocky objects, mostly in the asteroid belt, while comets are icy bodies that develop tails when near the sun.

What is a dwarf planet?

A dwarf planet orbits the sun and is spherical but hasn’t cleared its orbit of other debris, unlike a planet.

What are meteoroids, meteors, and meteorites?

Meteoroids are space rocks, meteors are meteoroids burning in Earth’s atmosphere, and meteorites are fragments that reach the ground.

What is the largest planet in our solar system?

Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system, with a mass more than twice that of all other planets combined.

How do black holes form?

Black holes form from the collapse of massive stars after a supernova, creating a region with gravity so strong that not even light can escape.

How does the moon affect Earth?

The moon affects Earth through its gravitational pull, causing ocean tides and stabilizing the planet’s axial tilt.

What is a galaxy?

A galaxy is a massive system of stars, stellar remnants, gas, dust, and dark matter bound together by gravity.

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• Celestial Bodies

What are Celestial Bodies and Classification of Celestial Bodies

Celestial bodies are intriguing. They are some of the most interesting things that you will ever get to study. The Earth is the birthplace of the human race. We are a species capable of great things. But one of the most important questions that any person can ask is that are we the only ones here? Are we the only people who are capable of all of these things, or is it more complicated than that? The answer to this question of finding life on another planet has been something that scientists have been spending their entire lives to find for years now. 

Celestial Bodies 

So what exactly are celestial bodies? Why should we even study them in the first place? Why is there a need for us to find out if we are the only ones here or not? All of these questions will be answered in this article. We will be taking a deeper look into the space that surrounds our planet Earth and we will try to understand everything in detail about the celestial bodies surrounding it. 

Have you ever tried watching the night sky with a telescope? If yes, then you may know some of these celestial bodies that we are going to be discussing in the article. However, if you have not seen the night sky through a telescope, then try to list down the things that you would see on a normal evening from your house. Try this activity and find out how many celestial bodies you can name!

A celestial object is a naturally happening phenomenon that occurs in the observable universe. In astronomy, the words object and body are often used interchangeably. On the other hand, a celestial body is a solo, strongly bound, adjoining entity, while the celestial object is a complex, less cohesively bound structure, which may consist of multiple bodies or even other objects with substructures. Celestial bodies or heavenly groups are objects in space such as the Sun, planets, Moon, and stars. 

They form a part of the massive universe we live in and are typically very far from us. The magnificent night sky is dotted with such objects and when we see them using a telescope, they expose fascinating worlds of their own. Because they are so far away, we cannot see all of them with the naked eye and we depend upon telescopes to study them. The word celestial body is as wide as the entire universe, for both known and unknown. By definition, a celestial body is any natural object outside of the Earth’s atmosphere. Simple examples are the Moon, Sun, and the other planets of our solar system. But those are very partial examples. The Kuiper belt holds many celestial bodies. Any asteroid in space is a celestial body.

(Image will be uploaded soon)

Classification of Celestial Bodies.

Meteor and meteorites.

A star is a form of a celestial object made up of a shining spheroid of plasma held together by its own gravity. The nearest star to the Earth is the Sun. Several other stars are visible to the naked eye from the Earth during the night time, looking at a multitude of fixed luminous points in the sky due to their enormous distance from the Earth. Historically, the most noticeable stars were grouped into constellations and asterisms, the brightest of which gained proper tags. Astronomers have drawn together star catalogues that identify the known stars and deliver standardised stellar designations. However, it is estimated that there are over 300 sextillions (3×10 23 ) stars in the Universe, including all-stars outside our galaxy (the Milky Way), which are invisible to the naked eye from the Earth.

A star's life starts with the gravitational collapse of a gaseous nebula of material composed mostly of hydrogen, along with helium and small amounts of heavier elements. When the lunar core is sufficiently thick, hydrogen becomes gradually converted into helium through nuclear fusion, liberating energy in the process. The rest of the interior of the star transfers energy away from the core through a mixture of the radiative and convective heat transfer process. The interior pressure prevents it from collapsing further under its own gravity. A star with a mass bigger than 0.4 times the Sun's mass will expand to become a red hulk when the hydrogen fuel in its core is exhausted.    

A planet is a body that revolves around a star that is enormous enough to be spherical by its own magnitude, is not big enough to cause thermonuclear fusion, and has cleared its neighbouring region of planetesimals.

The word planet is an ancient word that ties to history, astrology, science, mythology, and religion. Five planets in the Solar System are seen with our naked eye. These were observed by many early cultures as celestial, or as emissaries of idols. As logical knowledge advanced, human awareness of the planets changed, incorporating several dissimilar objects. In our solar system, we have eight planets; they are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

Planets are mostly divided into two main types: big low-density giant planets, and smaller stony terrestrials. There are eight planets in the Solar System. In order of rising distance from the Sun, they are Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, then the four giant planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Six of the planets are circled by one or more natural satellites.

Numerous thousands of planets around other stars ("extrasolar planets" or "exoplanets") have been shown in the Milky Way. As of 5 Feb 2019, 3,956 known extrasolar planets in 2,973 planetary systems (plus 654 multiple planetary systems), going in size from just above the size of the Moon to gas goliaths about twice as large as Jupiter, have been discovered, out of which more than 100 planets are of the same size as the Earth, nine of which are at the same comparative distance from their star as the Earth from the Sun, i.e. in the circumstellar habitable area.

It is a natural celestial object with a recognized orbit around a planet of the Solar System, some as small as a kilometer across. In the Solar System, there are six terrestrial satellite systems covering 185 known natural satellites. Four IAU-Mentioned dwarf planets are also known to have natural satellites: Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris. As of September 2018, there are 334 other small planets known to have moons.

The Earth-Moon structure is unique in that the ratio of the mass of the Moon to the frame of the Earth is much greater than that of any other natural-satellite–planet proportion in the Solar System (although there are minor-planet systems with even greater ratios, notably the Pluto–Charon system).    

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A comet is an icy object which is present in a Solar System object that, when travelling close to the Sun, warms and starts to emit gases, a practice known as outgassing. This creates a visible atmosphere or coma, and sometimes also a tail. These occurrences are due to the effects of solar radiation and the solar wind acting upon the core of the comet. Comet cores range from a few hundred metres to tens of kilometres across and are made up of loose collections of ice, dust, and small rocky particles. The coma can be up to 15 times the Earth's diameter, while the tail may give one astronomical unit. If satisfactorily bright, a comet may be seen from the Earth without the help of a telescope and may subtend an arc of 30° (60 Moons) through the sky. Comets have been seen and recorded since ancient times by many cultures.

Comets are distinguished from asteroid-ds by the existence of an extended, gravitationally unbound atmosphere nearby their central core. This atmosphere has parts named as the coma which is surrounded by its nuclei (the central part immediately surrounding the core) and the tail (a usually linear section consisting of dust or gas is blown emitting out from the coma by the Sun's RAYS pressure or out streaming solar air plasma). However, dead comets that have passed close to the Sun several times and have lost nearly all of their volatile ices and dust may come to resemble minor asteroids. Asteroids are assumed to have a different origin than comets, having formed around Jupiter orbit rather than in the outer Solar System. The discovery of main-belt comets and lively centaur minor planets has a fuzzy distinction between asteroids and comets. In the first period of the 21st century, there was the discovery of some minor bodies with long-period comet orbits, but features of inner solar system asteroids were called Manx comets.

Asteroids are small planets, especially of the inside Solar System. Big asteroids are also called planetoids. These expressions have historically been applied to any astronomical body orbiting the Sun that did not look like a planet-like disc and was not seen to have characteristics of a lively comet such as a tail. As small planets in the outer Solar System were discovered, they were naturally found to have volatile-rich tops like comets. As a result, they were frequently famed from objects found in the main asteroid belt.. The word "asteroid" refers to the small planets of the inner Solar System.

There are zillions of asteroids, many assumed to be the crushed leftovers of planetesimals, bodies within the young Sun's solar nebula that never grew big enough to become planets. The massive majority of known asteroids orbit within the key asteroid belt located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter or are co-orbital with Jupiter (the Jupiter Trojans). However, several other orbital families exist with significant populations, including the near-Earth objects. Single asteroids are categorised by their typical spectra, with the majority falling into three key groups: C-type, M-type, and S-type. These were termed after and are usually identified with carbon-rich, metallic, and silicate (stony) configurations, respectively. The sizes of asteroids vary greatly; the largest, Ceres, is almost 1,000 km (625 mi) across.

Asteroids are separated from comets and meteoroids. In the case of comets, the difference is one of composition: while asteroids are mainly made of minerals and rock, comets are mainly composed of dust and ice. Furthermore, asteroids are formed closer to the Sun, preventing the progress of cometary ice. The difference between asteroids and meteoroids is mainly in size: meteoroids have a radius of one metre or less, whereas asteroids have a radius greater than one metre. Finally, meteoroids can be made of either cometary or asteroidal materials.

A meteor is also known as a shooting star, and the path of meteor is visible and glowing meteoroids glowing meteoroid, comet, or asteroid through the Earth's atmosphere, after being heated to burning by collisions with air molecules in the upper atmosphere, making a streak of light via its quick motion and sometimes also by flaking glowing material in it. Although a meteor may seem like a few thousand feet from the Earth, meteors naturally occur in the mesosphere at altitudes from 76 to 100 km (250,000 to 330,000 ft). The root word meteor comes from the Greek meteōros, which says “tall in the air".

Billions of meteors enter the Earth's atmosphere daily. Most meteoroids that cause meteors are about the size of a particle of sand, i.e., they are usually millimetre-sized or even smaller. Meteoroid sizes can be measured from their mass and density which, in turn, can be expected from the observed meteor trajectory in the higher atmosphere. Meteors showers is a natural phenomenon and it can occur in showers, which begins when the Earth travels through a tributary of debris left by a comet, or as "random" or meteors, not associated with a specific stream of space debris. Several specific meteors have been seen, largely by members of the public and others largely by accident, but with enough information that orbits of the meteoroids producing the meteors have been measured. The atmospheric speeds of meteors result from the movement of the Earth around the Sun at about 30 km/s (68,000 mph), the orbital speeds of meteoroids, and the gravity well of the Earth.

A galaxy is a gravitational system of stars, interstellar gas, stellar fragments,  dust, and dark matter. The word galaxy is originated from the Greek word galaxies (γαλαξίας), literally meaning "milky", a reference to the Milky Way. Galaxies are in size from small with just a few hundred million (\[10^{8}\]) stars to colossi with one hundred trillion (\[10^{14}\]) stars, each orbiting its galaxy's centre of mass.

Galaxies are characterised according to their visual morphology as oval, spiral, or irregular. Many galaxies are believed to have supermassive black holes at their cores. The Milky Way's central black hole, known as Sagittarius A*, has a weight of four million times greater than the Sun. Since April 2016, GN-z11 is the oldest and best reserved observed galaxy with a comoving distance of 32 billion light-years from the Earth and observed as it existed just 400 million years after the Big Bang.

The space between galaxies is filled with an unsubstantiated gas (the intergalactic medium) having an average mass of less than one atom per cubic metre. Most galaxies are gravitationally systematised into groups, clusters, and superclusters. The Milky Way is part of the Local Group, which is ruled by it and the Andromeda Galaxy and is part of the Virgo Supercluster. At the biggest scale, these associations are mostly arranged into sheets and filaments surrounded by immense spaces. The biggest structure of galaxies yet to be recognized is a cluster of superclusters that has been termed Laniakea, which holds the Virgo supercluster.

We hope that the article was helpful for you to understand what celestial bodies are and why exactly they are important. The space around us is very interesting and it takes a good amount of curiosity to figure out what are the basic differences between these objects and what makes them so unique.

FAQs on Celestial Bodies

1. Is there life on the Moon?

So far, we have not found traces of life on the moon. There are a lot of things that we need to study as a species and there are a lot of mysteries that need to be solved in order to answer questions like these. The natural satellite of the Earth, the Moon, has been a major topic of conversation for a variety of reasons but unfortunately, we do not have any solid proof that can help us know if there is life on the Moon or not.

2. Why are celestial bodies important to study?

Celestial bodies surround our planet. They are everywhere. Their study can be a great way for us to know what the universe has in store for us. When it comes to finding answers from the universe, the number of questions is unending. By studying celestial objects, we become more of what we are and understand what is our purpose on this floating rock that we call our home.

NCERT Study Material

Astronomy: Everything you need to know

Astronomy was born out of humankind's ancient fascination with the star-studded sky.

Astronomy FAQs

• History: The beginnings
• History of astronomy: The telescope
• History of astronomy: Modern era

Types of astronomy

• Astronomy across the spectrum
• Problem with astronomy
• Astronomy versus astrology

Jobs in astronomy

Additional resources, bibliography.

Astronomy is one of the oldest scientific disciplines that has evolved from the humble beginnings of counting stars and charting constellations with the naked eye to the impressive showcase of humankind's technological capabilities that we see today. 

Despite the progress astronomy has made over millennia, astronomers are still working hard to understand the nature of the universe and humankind's place in it. That question has only gotten more complex as our understanding of the universe grew with our expanding technical capabilities. 

As the depths of the sky opened in front of our increasingly sophisticated telescopes, and sensitive detectors enabled us to spot the weirdest types of signals, the star-studded sky that our ancestors gazed at turned into a zoo of mind-boggling objects including black holes , white dwarfs , neutron stars and supernovas . 

Related: Famous astronomers: How these scientists shaped astronomy

At the same time, the two-dimensional constellations that inspired the imagination of early sky-watchers were reduced to an optical illusion, behind which the swirling of galaxies hurtling through spacetime reveals a story that began with the Big Bang some 13.8 billion years ago. 

Here is how the story of astronomy and our understanding of the universe evolved. 

What is astronomy?

Astronomy uses mathematics, physics and chemistry to study celestial objects and phenomena. 

What are the four types of astronomy?

Astronomy cannot be divided solely into four types. It is a broad discipline encompassing many subfields including observational astronomy, theoretical astronomy, planetary science, astrophysics, cosmology and astrobiology.

What do you study in astronomy?

Those who study astronomy explore the structure and origin of the universe including the stars, planets, galaxies and black holes that reside in it. Astronomers aim to answer fundamental questions about our universe through theory and observation. 

What's the difference between astrology and astronomy?

Astrology is widely considered to be a pseudoscience that attempts to explain how the position and motion of celestial objects such as planets affect people and events on Earth. Astronomy is the scientific study of the universe using mathematics, physics, and chemistry.

History of astronomy: The beginnings

Most of today's citizens of planet Earth live surrounded by the inescapable glow of modern urban lighting and can hardly imagine the awe-inspiring presence of the pristine star-studded sky that illuminated the nights for ancient tribes and early civilizations. We can guess how drawn our ancestors were to that overwhelming sight from the role that sky-watching played in their lives.  

Ancient monuments, such as the 5,000 years old Stonehenge in the U.K., were built to reflect the journey of the sun in the sky, which helped keep track of time and organize life in an age that solely depended on seasons. Art pieces depicting the moon and stars were discovered dating back several thousand years, such as the "world's oldest star map," the bronze-age Nebra disk .

Ancient Assyro-Babylonians around 1,000 B.C. systematically observed and recorded periodical motions of celestial bodies, according to the European Space Agency (ESA), and similar records exist also from early China. In fact, according to the University of Oregon, astronomy can be considered the first science as it's the one for which the oldest written records exist.

Ancient Greeks elevated sky-watching to a new level. Aristarchus of Samos made the first (highly inaccurate) attempt to calculate the distance of Earth to the sun and moon, and Hipparchus sometimes considered the father of empirical astronomy, cataloged the positions of over 800 stars using just the naked eye. He also developed the brightness scale that is still in use today, according to ESA. 

History of astronomy: The arrival of the telescope

During the Middle Ages, the science of astronomy continued to advance in Asia and the Islamic world. Islamic scholars kept building on the knowledge of the Ancient Greeks, expanding the catalog introduced by Hipparchus. They also developed new tools for measuring the positions of objects in the sky such as the quadrant and the sextant, according to ESA .

The first true breakthrough in humankind's exploration of the universe, however, arrived with the invention of the telescope in the 17th century . Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei was an early adopter and developer of the technology, which enabled him to make major strides in the understanding of our solar system . 

Called "the father of modern science" by no other than the great Albert Einstein , Galileo was able to sketch the surface of the moon , discover the main moons of Jupiter , find sunspots on the sun, and much more, thanks to the telescope.

The invention of the telescope supercharged astronomy. Despite the objections of the Catholic Church, the notion that Earth wasn't the center of the universe but orbited the sun together with other planets and their moons could no longer be denied. 

Astronomy at that time played a key role in helping seafarers and travelers navigate the globe, and so, first, government-funded observatories, the Paris Observatory and the Royal Greenwich Observatory were established in 1667 and 1675 respectively with the goal of building more accurate stellar maps. 

In the 18th century, astronomers for the first time managed to calculate the distance of a nearby star, adding a third dimension to stellar catalogs. 

The advent of photography in the 19th century simplified the charting of the night sky and the stellar position catalogs quickly grew from a few thousand to tens of thousands of stars, according to ESA . The first photographs of the moon and sun were published in the 1840s followed by the images of the first star, Vega, about a decade later.

The discovery of spectroscopy , a discipline analyzing the ability of matter to split light into different wavelengths depending on its chemical composition, opened new and completely unexpected avenues of astronomical research in the second half of the 19th century. With spectroscopy, astronomers could study the chemical composition of celestial objects, first of those nearby, such as the moon and the sun, and later the more distant ones, including other stars and even galaxies. Suddenly, astronomy was not only about where things were located in the universe but also about what they were made of.

History of astronomy: The boom of the modern era

Hand in hand with the overall rocket-speed technological progress that the world has witnessed since the beginning of the 20th century grew the ability of astronomers to see farther and analyze more precisely.

In the early 20th century, fast improvements in telescope technologies led astronomers for the first time to question whether the Milky Way was synonymous with the universe or only one of many starry universes scattered in space. American astronomer Edwin Hubble solved this question in the 1920s when he managed first to distinguish individual stars in the Andromeda nebula, today known as the Andromeda galaxy , and eventually calculate their distances from Earth. These stars were so much farther away than anything else in our galaxy that Hubble concluded that Andromeda is its own Milky Way. A new, much deeper universe suddenly unfolded in front of astronomers' eyes. 

Other "nebulas" were soon confirmed as galaxies. Within a decade, astronomers realized that these nebulas were speeding away from Earth the faster the farther away they were, according to Science News . This discovery led to the idea that the universe was expanding probably from the time of a giant explosion that had created it in the most distant past. The Big Bang theory was born.

The Second World War sped up technological progress even further, ushering in the era of spaceflight and exploration of the universe from space. What only a few decades prior would have been the stuff of science fiction was quickly becoming reality. 

In 1957, the U.S.S.R launched the first-ever satellite, Sputnik . From then on, more and more complex scientific instruments would be installed on satellites and the picture of the orbital environment around Earth would start to emerge. In 1962, NASA's Mariner 2 became the first spacecraft to visit another planet, Venus , and in 1964, the first radio astronomy satellite, the U.K.'s Ariel 2 , made it into orbit.

The space race of the 1960s culminated with the successful moon landings of the Apollo program . Scientists on Earth could, for the first time, hold in their hands' pristine pieces of rock from another celestial body. The U.S.S.R celebrated its own successes with the lunar rover Lunokhod , which analyzed 25 lunar soil samples with its onboard instruments. 

In 1968, NASA launched the Orbiting Astronomical Observatory 2 , nicknamed Stargazer, the first attempt to study the wider universe from space, according to USA. Today . Only a year later, plans for the Hubble Space Telescope started to shape up, although it would take more than two decades to get the grand telescope off the ground.

Since then, dozens of probes have been sent to study bodies in the solar system including planets, comets , moons and asteroids . Space telescopes, together with ever more powerful ground-based telescopes have revealed the star-studded sky in detail that the ancient tribesmen would never be able to even imagine. 

The James Webb Space Telescope , launched on Christmas Day 2021, represents the pinnacle of this eternal endeavor that started thousands of years ago and grew from humble beginnings. Yet, the more astronomers see, the more questions are arising and the answers to the grand questions of the nature of the universe and our place in it remain elusive. 

In the past century or so, astronomy has been broadly split into two camps — observational astronomy (using telescopes and cameras to collect data about the night sky) and theoretical astronomy (using that data to analyze, model and theorize about how objects and phenomena work). 

They complement each other, yet within these two broad categories, modern astronomy includes many subsets, from astrometry to exoplanetology, that intrinsically overlap yet help explain the many things astronomers do. Here's what they all mean: 

• Astrometry: This ancient branch of astronomy concerns precise calculations of the motions of the sun, the moon and the planets. It includes predictions of solar and lunar eclipses and meteor showers. It also includes exoplanetology, a relatively new and very exciting field that concerns itself with the discovery and characterization of planets outside of the solar system. 
• Planetary astronomy: How did the solar system come to be? This is the central question penetrating planetary astronomy, which focuses on the formation, evolution and death of planets, moons and other objects in the solar system, it also includes planetary geology.  
• Astrophysics : Astrophysicists apply the laws and theories of physics to astronomical observations. It's an attempt to understand the mechanism behind how the universe was created and how it has and will evolve.
• Astrochemistry: Astrochemists study the composition and reactions of atoms, molecules and ions in space. 
• Astrobiology: This emerging and, for now, largely theoretical field of astronomy is the study of life beyond Earth . 
• Stellar astronomy: The study of the life cycle and structure of the sun and the stars, stellar astronomy concerns the classification of stars, and populations of stars. 
• Galactic astronomy: astronomers study our galaxy, the Milky Way , while extragalactic astronomers peer outside of it to determine how these groups of stars form, change and die. 
• Cosmology: Although it's sometimes used to mean astronomy, strictly speaking, cosmology refers to the science of the origin and nature of the universe. The key concept in cosmology is the Big Bang Theory , the most widely accepted explanation of how the universe began. Cosmology also includes purely theoretical subjects including string theory, dark matter and dark energy , and the notion of multiple universes.

What are optical, infrared and radio astronomy?

All astronomy is the study of different wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum, which comprises radio, microwave, infrared, visible, ultraviolet, X-ray and gamma rays. To get the full picture of what's out there astronomers need to study various wavelengths of light. 

Optical astronomy is the study of celestial objects using telescopes that observe visible light. Infrared light can be detected outside of the Earth's atmosphere , so by space-based observatories like the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope. Radio astronomy is the study of the sky in radio frequencies; radio telescopes detect and amplify radio waves from space.

The problem with astronomy

However they observe the universe, astronomers only ever get a snapshot of the planets, stars and galaxies they study. So although there are dozens of different branches of astronomy, in practice many of them must overlap for an astronomer to get as full a picture as possible of objects that exist for millions to billions of years. 

We're on the cusp of some tremendously exciting new technology that looks set to revolutionize astronomy. In addition to the James Webb Space Telescope a range of ground-breaking Earth-based telescopes is set to come online within this decade including the Vera Rubin Observatory all-sky survey, the Extremely Large Telescope and the Square Kilometre Array , the world's largest radio telescope.

Astronomers are about to see deeper into space to observe regions and objects never seen before. 

The difference between astronomy and astrology

Astronomy and astrology have grown from the same roots. Ancient civilizations and early tribesmen believed that the sky held power over their lives and that by observing the motions of celestial bodies, one could learn about the future. 

The close bond between the two disciplines survived millennia. During the renaissance period, astronomers were frequently hired as personal advisers to monarchs to advise on decisions based on the positions of stars and planets, according to Astronomica .

But as the scientific method grew in strength over the subsequent centuries, astronomy and astrology have grown apart. While astronomy has become the domain of no-nonsense data-driven observations and verifiable predictions relying on the most cutting-edge technology, astrology was reduced to the realm of new-age superstition where considerably less educated future predictors use glass crystals and simplistic star charts to predict the path of a person's life. 

In fact, astronomers point out, that due to the irregularity of Earth's orbit, the position of the sun within the zodiac signs, which form the backbone of western astrology and which were identified centuries ago, no longer matches the actual position of the sun . So while you may have been told you were born in Taurus, you actually could have been born in Aries.

If star-gazing is your calling and you think of making it your life's path, you can find some useful insights about what it takes to be an astronomer on the website of the International Astronomical Union . The Royal Astronomical Society also has many useful resources in its Careers section.

If you are already further down the path and looking for a suitable opening based on your qualifications, the American Astronomical Society lists all kinds of openings all over the world on its jobs register site.

If you wonder how much you'd earn in an astronomy-related career, the SciJournal lists ten highest paying astronomy jobs .

Read this detailed three-part series by the European Space Agency about the history of astrometry from the earliest times, to the emergence of telescopes to modern space-based observations . This ScienceNews feature tells the story of the major leaps in astronomers' understanding of the universe in the first half of the 20th century. This article by the Royal Society provides a detailed overview of the evolution of astronomy in the post-war era . To learn more about the early days of the telescope and the role of Galileo Galileo in shaping modern astronomy, check this article by the Library of Congress .

European Space Agency, A history of astrometry - Part I - Mapping the sky from ancient to modern times, September 1, 2019         https://sci.esa.int/web/gaia/-/53196-the-oldest-sky-maps

European Space Agency, A history of astrometry - Part II - Telescopes ignites the race to measure stellar distances, September 1, 2019   https://sci.esa.int/web/gaia/-/53197-seeing-and-measuring-farther

European Space Agency, A history of astrometry - Part III - Astrometry moves to space: The mapmakers guide to the galaxy             https://sci.esa.int/web/gaia/-/53198-astrometry-in-space

The Royal Society, A brief history of astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology 1945-2000, June 9, 2022                                           https://royalsociety.org/blog/2022/06/brief-history-of-astronomy-astrophysics-and-cosmology-1945-2000/

ScienceNews, In 20th century, astronomers opened their minds to gazillions of galaxies, February 2, 2017                    https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/context/20th-century-astronomers-opened-their-minds-gazillions-galaxies

Library of Congress, Galileo and the Telescope, https://www.loc.gov/collections/finding-our-place-in-the-cosmos-with-carl-sagan/articles-and-essays/modeling-the-cosmos/galileo-and-the-telescope

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Tereza is a London-based science and technology journalist, aspiring fiction writer and amateur gymnast. Originally from Prague, the Czech Republic, she spent the first seven years of her career working as a reporter, script-writer and presenter for various TV programmes of the Czech Public Service Television. She later took a career break to pursue further education and added a Master's in Science from the International Space University, France, to her Bachelor's in Journalism and Master's in Cultural Anthropology from Prague's Charles University. She worked as a reporter at the Engineering and Technology magazine, freelanced for a range of publications including Live Science, Space.com, Professional Engineering, Via Satellite and Space News and served as a maternity cover science editor at the European Space Agency.

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Essays on the Motion of Celestial Bodies

• © 2001
• V. V. Beletsky 0

Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics, Russian Academy of Sciences (KIAM RAS), Moscow, Russia

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Celestial mechanics: from the errant stars to guidance of spacecrafts

Celestial Mechanics

Two Philosophical Contributions to Modern Physics

• Celestial mechanics
• Pontryagin-Type
• astrophysics
• mathematics

Table of contents (12 chapters)

Front matter, on the unperturbed and perturbed motion of a satellite, with a digression on asymptotic methods of nonlinear mechanics.

V. V. Beletsky

On the Rebirth of an Old Problem, or what Happens if two Masses are Placed at a Purely Imaginary Distance from one Another

Yet another reincarnation of an old problem, motion of the worlds, the restricted three-body problem, flight to the moon, and galactic evolution, they are waltzing in orbits, in a spiral to space, the full force of the sun blows in the sails, the gravity flyer, interplanetary flights: low thrusts for high goals, relative motion of orbiting bodies, cosmic pinwheel, back matter, authors and affiliations, bibliographic information.

Book Title : Essays on the Motion of Celestial Bodies

Authors : V. V. Beletsky

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-0348-8360-3

Publisher : Birkhäuser Basel

eBook Packages : Springer Book Archive

Copyright Information : Springer Basel AG 2001

Hardcover ISBN : 978-3-7643-5866-2 Published: 01 August 2001

Softcover ISBN : 978-3-0348-9533-0 Published: 16 September 2012

eBook ISBN : 978-3-0348-8360-3 Published: 06 December 2012

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : XVIII, 372

Additional Information : Originial Russion edition published by Nauka, Moscow

Topics : Aerospace Technology and Astronautics , Astrophysics and Astroparticles , Space Sciences (including Extraterrestrial Physics, Space Exploration and Astronautics) , Theoretical, Mathematical and Computational Physics

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Comet 13P/Olbers streaks across July sky: How skywatchers can view

The night sky has a visiting comet flaunting its faint tail for stargazers this summer.

The comet 13P/Olbers will make its closest approach to Earth later this month, according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory .

The comet orbits the sun every 25,400 days. That's about every 70 years – 69.54 to be exact. It was last be seen from Earth in 1956.

13P/Olbers will travel as close as 0.48 AU (astronomical unit) from Earth, according to Space Reference . NASA says an astronomical unit is 93 million miles , so even just a half AU is long distance away.

Where to look for the 13P/Olbers comet in July

Predicting when and if a comet will become brighter as it passes by Earth is challenging. Viewers in the Northern Hemisphere have the best chance of seeing the comet.

The comet will hang low in the northwest sky, but it won't visible to the naked eye. It's best viewed about two hours after sunset with binoculars or small telescopes, according to Universe Today .

Unable to view our graphics? Click here to see them.

Your observation window also depends on the weather and the brightness of nearby city lights. The comet should be visible from Saturday to July 21, according to In-the-Sky.org .

When was the 13P/Olbers comet first seen

The comet was first viewed on March 6, 1815, by German astronomer Heinrich Olbers – the comet's namesake. Later, astronomers Carl Gauss and Friedrich Bessel estimated the orbit to be just under 74 years, which is about five years shorter than the current number.

How to decipher the comet's 13P/Olbers name

◾ The number 13 means the comet Olbers was the 13th comet to be recognized as periodic.

◾ The letter P means the comet is periodic, or it orbits the sun in less than 200 years.

◾ Olbers is for Heinrich Olbers , the name of the astronomer who discovered the comet.

More: Look up! A comet fragment shoots across the sky illuminating in shades of blue.

Comet 13P/Olbers orbit near Earth

The 13P/Olbers comet will be at its closest approach to Earth on July 20.

Because the comet is relatively close to Earth, it's classified as a "near-Earth asteroid" by NASA. However, it's not considered to be dangerous.

CONTRIBUTING Jim Sergent/USA TODAY

SOURCE NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, TheSkyLive.com, StarWalk.space and USA TODAY research

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Humans Could Learn a Lot From Anxious Cows

We love to focus on personality types, attachment styles, and diagnoses. but we’re part of a herd too..

I like to talk to my therapy clients about anxious cows. Among a group of peacefully grazing cows, the mere whiff of a nervous herd member can get the other cows all stirred up. Ears perked and tails twitching, they’ll seek out a familiar cow friend, maybe one who seems a little more chill, and the pair will start licking each other’s heads, reducing heart rates with a nice, juicy tongue massage.

We are not so different from cows. We all have ways of stirring each other up and calming each other down. One member of a team at work worries about a deadline, and suddenly you’re all a little on edge (then headed for a soothing happy hour drink). Your partner is upset about a neighbor’s noisy renovation project, and before you know it, you are too.

I find that telling my clients about cows—or elephants, or even bugs—can help. I live and work on Capitol Hill in Washington, where you’ll find The Body Keeps the Score in every lending library, but I’ve never seen a copy of Frans de Waal’s Chimpanzee Politics . Maybe that book should be ubiquitous. In my experience, when you let the animal world loose into the therapy room, people relax a little. They begin to see how a dreaded trip home or conflict at the office is a brilliant opportunity to observe anxiety among a group of animals—to metaphorically pull out a naturalist’s notebook and record patterns.

Much of the therapy world is disconnected from the natural world. We are focused on personality types, attachment styles, and diagnoses backed by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (diagnoses we would never give a cow because they are just … all cows). But our emphasis on human uniqueness, while well intentioned, has backfired into a pattern of labeling a lot of adaptation as dysfunction. We turn to treatments that focus on the individual, instead of looking at how our behaviors are part of a group dynamic. We have become less concerned with our place in the grand story of life.

Humans are not unknowable unicorns. We are products of evolution. Our behavior is influenced by the processes that govern the natural world. Our families and communities are natural systems trying their best to survive and thrive. When I was writing my latest book, True to You , it was important to me to use examples from nature to help people think about human relationships. Because we can learn something about ourselves when we study other natural systems, whether it’s a prairie dog town, a termite mound, or a troop of mushrooms.

When a client shamed herself for getting too competitive with her colleagues, I suggested she read about elephant hierarchies at the watering hole. When a manager wondered why he couldn’t seem to inspire some of his team members, I pointed out that 25 percent of ants in a colony barely work at all. Maybe the answer to why you or your child is handling a situation in a particular way isn’t buried deep in a stack of psychology research or in a therapist’s TikTok dance. Maybe it’s that you are creatures trying your best to survive out there—just like every other creature on this planet.

I bring the natural world into the therapy room not to excuse behaviors but to help my clients get curious about how they, and the people in their herd, end up acting the way they do. When people see behaviors as adaptive, rather than dysfunctional, they have a better chance of shifting out of self-blame. They also stop trying to change others. Instead, they get interested in how the patterns play out, and in how they can change their part in the automatic functioning of the group. They start asking themselves, How can I learn to regulate my own anxiety when there’s not another person around to metaphorically lick my head? and How can I avoid letting my fellow cows stir me up so much?

Because that is what makes humans unique: the ability to step outside what’s automatic and activate our own best thinking. The capacity to not always have to go along with the group. To calmly speak into your phone, “Well, Mom, I think about that a little differently.”

Of course, learning to operate differently takes a lot of observation. We can learn something about how to observe our fellow humans (and ourselves) from researchers who study the natural world. Here are some books that I frequently recommend to my therapy clients.

If you’re overwhelmed by conflict and drama in your relationships, there’s no better book than de Waal’s Chimpanzee Politics . After you’ve met a 30-year-old chimp who acts like a child to get sympathy, and a female who tricks two warring males into grooming each other, you’ll never experience Thanksgiving with your family the same way again.

If you’re trying to build community or want to feel more connected to existing friends, Caitlin O’Connell’s Wild Rituals will have you stealing ideas from the elephant families she has studied for decades. When I learned that zebras greet each other with playful nips, it made me consider how my friendships might benefit from an elaborate handshake or a ridiculous curtsy.

I learned about the anxious cow-licking from Ashley Ward’s The Social Lives of Animals , a great read for those who tend to be too hard on themselves and need a comforting laugh. You’ll learn that cockroaches who live isolated childhoods often struggle to find love, and how locusts will chew the ass off the locust in front of them to keep the swarm moving in the same direction. (I’ll let you decide the area of your life in which this metaphor is most useful.)

If you’re lying awake at night worried about the future of America, Thomas Seeley’s Honeybee Democracy will teach you how honeybees wiggle their tiny bee butts to make important decisions about the future of the hive. Who doesn’t love a story with a dance-off?

No book can replace the value of getting out in nature. Even 10 minutes outside can be enough to reduce some stress and improve your mood. Feeling connected to the natural world also keeps us mindful of the global challenges we face and the part we can play in evolving ourselves out of these messes. So get outside. Notice which way a sunflower turns or what starts a squabble among the neighborhood birds. Head to the farm and watch the anxiety ebb and flow.

I like to ask my therapy clients, “What will keep you curious about your own functioning?” Although curiosity isn’t unique to humans, it is certainly our superpower. Getting interested in life in all forms, allowing ourselves to be delighted, inspired, and a little convicted, is a strategy I’d encourage you to try. Chances are you’ll teach your therapist something in return.

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Florida prosecutors knew Epstein raped teenage girls 2 years before cutting deal, transcript shows

FILE - This photo provided by the New York State Sex Offender Registry shows Jeffrey Epstein, March 28, 2017. On Monday, July 1, 2024, Florida Circuit Judge Luis Delgado released the transcripts of a 2006 grand jury investigation that looked into sex trafficking and rape allegations made against Epstein. (New York State Sex Offender Registry via AP, File)

FILE - Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at the Palm Beach Police Department, Feb. 29, 2024, in Palm Beach, Fla., just before signing a bill to release the transcripts of a 2006 grand jury investigation that looked into sex trafficking and rape allegations made against Jeffrey Epstein. On Monday, July 1, 2024, Florida Circuit Judge Luis Delgado released the grand jury transcripts. (Damon Higgins/The Palm Beach Post via AP, File)

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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Florida prosecutors knew the late millionaire and financier Jeffrey Epstein sexually assaulted teenage girls two years before they cut a plea deal that has long been criticized as too lenient and a missed opportunity to imprison him a decade earlier, according to transcripts released Monday.

The 2006 grand jury investigation was the first of many by law enforcement over the past two decades into Epstein’s rape and sex trafficking of teenagers — and how his ties to the rich and the powerful seem to have allowed him to avoid prison or a serious jail term for over a decade.

The investigations uncovered Epstein’s close ties to former President Bill Clinton and Britain’s Prince Andrew , as well as his once friendly relationship with former President Donald Trump and numerous others of wealth and influence who have denied doing anything criminal or improper and not been charged.

Circuit Judge Luis Delgado’s release of approximately 150 pages Monday came as a surprise, since there was scheduled hearing next week over unsealing the graphic testimony. Gov. Ron DeSantis had signed a bill in February allowing the release on Monday or any time thereafter that Delgado ordered. Florida grand jury transcripts are usually kept secret forever, but the bill created an exemption for cases like Epstein’s.

The transcripts show that the grand jury heard testimony that Epstein, who was then in his 40s, had raped teenage girls as young as 14 at his Palm Beach mansion, often paying them so he could commit statutory rape or assault. The teenagers testified and told detectives they were also paid cash or rented cars if they found him more girls.

“The details in the record will be outrageous to decent people,” Delgado wrote in his order. “The testimony taken by the Grand Jury concerns activity ranging from grossly unacceptable to rape — all of the conduct at issue is sexually deviant, disgusting, and criminal.”

In 2008, Epstein cut a deal with South Florida federal prosecutors that allowed him to escape more severe federal charges and instead plead guilty to state charges of procuring a person under 18 for prostitution and solicitation of prostitution. He was sentenced to 1.5 years in the Palm Beach County jail system, during which he was allowed to go to his office almost daily as part of a work-release program, followed by a year of house arrest. He was required to register as a sex offender.

Criticism of the deal resulted in the 2019 resignation of Trump’s labor secretary, Alex Acosta, who was the U.S. attorney for South Florida in 2008 and signed off on the deal. A 2020 Justice Department investigation concluded that Acosta used “poor judgment” in his handling of the Epstein prosecution, but it didn’t rise to the level of professional misconduct.

The chief prosecutor in the Epstein case, former Palm Beach County State Attorney Barry Krischer, did not immediately respond Monday to an email and a voicemail seeking comment about the transcripts’ release.

Current Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg, who was not involved in the investigation, said in a statement he is glad the records have been released. He said he has not yet read the transcripts, so could not comment on whether Krischer should have pursued a tougher prosecution of Epstein.

Brad Edwards, an attorney for many of the victims, said in a statement that the transcripts show that Krischer’s office “took the case to the Grand Jury with an agenda — to return minimal, if any, criminal charges against Jeffrey Epstein.”

“A fraction of the evidence was presented, in a misleading way, and the Office portrayed the victims as criminals,” he said. “It is so sad, the number of victims Epstein was able to abuse because the State carried water for him when they had a chance to put him away.”

Epstein’s estate is paying $155 million in restitution to more than 125 victims.

According to the transcripts, Palm Beach Police Detective Joe Recarey testified in July 2006 that the initial investigation began when a woman reported in March 2005 that her stepdaughter who was in high school at the time said she received $300 in exchange for “sexual activity with a man in Palm Beach,” Recarey testified.

Another teenager, whose name was redacted in the transcript, told detectives that she was 17 years old when she was approached by a friend who said she could make $200 by providing a massage at Epstein’s home.

At the house, when Epstein tried touching her, she told him she was uncomfortable. He then told her that he would pay her $200 if she brought “girls” to the house. “And he told her, ‘The younger, the better,’” Recarey said.

Over time she brought six friends to Epstein’s house, including a 14-year-old, and likened herself to Hollywood Madame Heidi Fleiss in October 2005 interviews, Recarey recounted.

When she brought over a 23-year-old friend, Epstein told her that the friend was too old.

“The more you did, the more money you made,” the detective said the teen told him. “She explained that there was going to be a massage or some possible touching, and you would have to provide the massage either topless or naked.”

Another teen testified she visited Epstein’s house hundreds of times in the early 2000s, starting when she was 16. She testified that Epstein paid her $200 each time she gave him a massage while naked, rented her a car and gave her $1,000 the time he raped her.

A 2005 police search of Epstein’s mansion found evidence supporting the girls’ testimony. Also, Epstein’s houseman told detectives that the teenagers who came to the mansion were “very young. Too young to be a masseuse.”

Epstein in 2018 was charged with federal sex trafficking crimes in New York — where he also had a mansion that was a scene of abuse — after the Miami Herald published a series of articles that renewed public attention on the case, including interviews with some victims who had been pursuing civil lawsuits against him. Epstein was 66 when he killed himself in a New York City jail cell in August 2019, federal officials say.

Delgado in his order wrote that the transcripts show why Epstein was “the most infamous pedophile in American history.”

“For almost 20 years, the story of how Jeffrey Epstein victimized some of Palm Beach County’s most vulnerable has been the subject of much anger and has at times diminished the public’s perception of the criminal justice system,” Delgado wrote.

Associated Press reporters Mike Schneider in Orlando, Florida, Curt Anderson in St. Petersburg, Florida, and Stephany Matat in West Palm Beach, Florida, Kim Chandler in Montgomery, Alabama, and Sudhin Thanawala in Atlanta contributed to this report.

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Celestial bodies is so much more than a love story—it’s a story of light.

Celestial Bodies is one of the most important literary works you’ll ever read and the must-read book of the year. It is gorgeous, nuanced, and full of healing. 

It’s a story of courage, chosen family, and how love—in all aspects—can help us heal and grow. It is a testament to the humanity in our lives, the joys of love, friendship, and laughter, as well as the challenges of trauma and life-changing events. 

Leavy writes light in every corner.

I love these characters, the joy that radiates from them, and the incredibly important and timely themes that Leavy weaves in seemingly effortlessly. She is a master at writing the human condition; every reader will find bits of themselves in this collection. 

It had my whole heart. I could not put it down, and it has stayed with me. I come away feeling richer for having read it, more thoughtful about kindness and relationships, and happy to be in this world again. 

Read this—you’ll be SO glad you did. Highly recommended!

We had a chance to chat with Patricia about this stunning collection. Here’s what she said… 

Please tell us about your new book, Celestial Bodies: The Tess Lee and Jack Miller Novels. At the core it’s a love story. It’s a series of six novels that follow the epic romance of Tess Lee and Jack Miller: Shooting Stars , Twinkle , Constellations , Supernova , North Star, and Stardust. An exploration of the power of love, each novel focuses on love at the intersection of another topic: healing, doubt, intimacy, trust, commitment, and faith. 

While external threats occur in each book, this is ultimately a story about internal threats—the audio playing in our own heads. Tess is a world-famous novelist. Her inspirational books explore people’s innermost struggles and the human need to believe that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Despite her extraordinary success, she’s been unable to find happiness in her personal life. Jack is a federal agent who specializes in counterterrorism. After spending decades immersed in a violent world, a residue remains. He’s dedicated everything to his job, leaving nothing for himself. 

The night Tess and Jack meet, their connection is palpable. She examines the scars on his body and says, “I’ve never seen anyone whose outsides match my insides.” The two embark on a beautiful love story that asks the questions: What happens when people truly see each other? Can unconditional love change the way we see ourselves? Their friends are along for the ride: Omar, Tess’s sarcastic best friend who calls her Butterfly; Joe, Jack’s friend from the Bureau who understands the sacrifices he’s made; and Bobby and Gina, Jack’s younger friends who never fail to lighten the mood. Along the way, others join their journey: the female president of the United States, with whom Tess bakes cookies and talks politics; the Millers, Jack’s childhood family; and many others. Ultimately, it’s about learning to balance darkness and light in our lives, so that we may live in full color.

What inspired you to write this book? It all started with Shooting Stars , the first book in the collection. Honestly, I hadn’t planned to write it but suddenly it came to me in a burst. I wrote the entire first draft in only 10 days, not the many months or years it had taken me in the past. I fell so completely in love with the characters that I wanted to spend more time with them, so more books followed. 

To me, the series is about love. I really wanted to explore love in its many forms and textures—coziness, joy, pain, humor, comfort, intimacy, compassion. Beyond that, I wanted to look at love and healing. Few people escape this life without pain, even if it’s not the intense forms of trauma and grief these characters have experienced, and I doubt any of us don’t know people who have suffered great losses. How can we love and care for one another? What does that look like in day-to-day life? How can we honor each other by truly seeing one another? How does being seen change how we see ourselves? These questions inspired me. 

Relationships are central to the narrative—both romantic and friendship. What does this collection teach us about our intimate relationships? Tess and Jack’s story is very much about relationships—with lovers, with friends, with chosen family, and most of all with themselves. To me, all the different relationships in this series are aspirational—what we should all want our relationships to be like. The characters model incredible grace with how they treat one another, whether it’s through their shared uproarious laughter, painful tears, or heartfelt compassion. 

I hope the novels show what quality relationships might look like and feel like. Love is a verb. It’s an action. It’s not something we have for one another, it’s something we do. I hope this collection shows what love looks like in action. The closeness the characters share is beautiful and something that ultimately raises them up. This is something we can all strive for. 

The cover art and illustrations inside the book are gorgeous. Please tell us about them. Thank you! It’s absolutely my favorite cover of any of my books. I always had a vision for the cover, but no way to execute it. I got lucky and Mindi Rhoades , a colleague and wonderful artist, offered to collaborate. She was able to fully realize my vision and make it even better. The cover is loaded with stars, many black and white, to illustrate the theme of balancing darkness and light. As you go higher on the cover, there are some colorful stars and sparkly gold and silver stars too, showing how when we do balance light and darkness in our lives, we can learn to live in full color and accept that to stardust we shall return. I just love it. 

Mindi also created a black and white illustration for each of the 6 novels. Together, they are an installation that mirrors the journey of the books. The process was a wonderful collaboration. We had many Zoom meetings to discuss my ideas and Mindi created countless drawings, merging my ideas with hers. To me, having all 6 books in this collection with original artwork completes the project. I also hope readers see I wanted to give them something special that they can not only read once but save and flip through whenever they need an escape to Tess and Jack’s world. I’m deeply grateful to Mindi for helping me. 

What did you personally get from this series? I’ve never learned more from my characters, nor loved them more. There’s a reason I wrote six books about them, and honestly, I could easily have written more. Letting them go was enormously difficult. There’s so much love and joy that lives on the pages, and when I was writing it and when I reread it now, those feelings live inside of me. It’s like being wrapped in the warmest embrace. I find these books enormously comforting, despite the ups and downs the characters go through. They’ve taught me many things about the way we should treat one another, what love looks like and feels like, how to use our voice in this world, and much more. 

Above all, Tess taught me to breathe. Just breathe. 

What’s next for you? Celestial Bodies has been such a labor of love that I want to do all I can to help readers learn about it. So, I have a virtual book tour planned this summer. I also have a new nonfiction book coming out called Re/Invention: Methods of Social Fiction , which is about how scholars can write fiction. My next novel, Hollyweird , a celebrity romance about the search for magic or “gold dust” in our lives, comes out April 4, 2023 with She Writes Press.

More information: Patricia Leavy, Ph.D., is an independent sociologist and best-selling author. She has published more than 40 books, earning critical and commercial success in both nonfiction and fiction and her work has been translated into numerous languages. Patricia has received over 40 book honors. Recently, Celestial Bodies won the Firebird Book Award 2022 for Romance. Patricia has received career awards from New England Sociological Association, the American Creativity Association, the American Educational Research Association, the National Art Education Association, and the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry. In 2018, she was honored by the National Women’s Hall of Fame and the State University of New York-New Paltz established the “Patricia Leavy Award for Art and Social Justice.” 

Website: www.patricialeavy.com  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WomenWhoWrite/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/patricialeavy 

Buy Celestial Bodies on Amazon

Preorder Re/Invention: Methods of Social Fiction from Guilford Press

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Essays on the Motion of Celestial Bodies

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Beletsky, , V., Author, and Lutze, , F., Reviewer (November 26, 2003). " Essays on the Motion of Celestial Bodies ." ASME. Appl. Mech. Rev . November 2003; 56(6): B79–B80. https://doi.org/10.1115/1.1623753

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11R6. Essays on the Motion of Celestial Bodies. - VV Beletsky (Keldysh Inst of Appl Math, Russian Acad of Sci, Miusskaja Sq 4, Moscow, 125047, Russia) . Birkhauser Verlag AG, Basel, Switzerland. 2001. 372 pp. ISBN 3-7643-5866-1. $169.00.

Reviewed by FH Lutze (Dept of Aerospace and Ocean Eng, VPI, Blacksburg VA 24061-0203).

These “Essays” are the second edition of a publication that first appeared in Russia in 1972.

The first edition was reprinted in four different languages, the last one appearing in French in 1986. Since that time, a considerable amount of material has been added to the work, leading to a second edition that appeared in 1999. The English version was published in 2001 and is the subject of this review. Readers who have worked in the area of celestial mechanics and artificial satellite motion will be quite familiar with the name VV Beletsky and the quality of the work that he has produced. His classic work on the “Motion of an Artificial Satellite About its Center of Mass” (NASA-TT-F-429, TT-67-51366, 1967) and with EM Levine the work “Dynamics of Space Tether Systems” (Advances in the Astronautical Sciences, Vol 83, 1993) are indicative of the thoroughness and delightful writing style that is characteristic of his work. The essay in this volume are written in a more informal manner and convey the joy and passion that the author has for his work.

As stated by the author in the preface, the one major feature in common for the problems discussed is that they are all interesting. The problems discussed range from fun problems to important ones, and from old well-known problems to new problems of current interest. In each case, care and preciseness associated with this author prevails. However, do not be misled into thinking that these essays are just derivations of old and new results. On the contrary, these essays present results with little derivation, relying on references to provide the details. It allows the reader, under the tutelage of a seasoned dynamicist, to step back and look at the problem from various viewpoints, without getting lost in the details. One of the objectives of these essays as stated in the preface is to “help its readers become aware, even to a small extent, of how astonishing and rich in events and phenomena the mechanics of space flight is.” It is this reviewer’s opinion that this goal is met.

It will be impossible to give each essay its justice. The titles of each essay sound quite routine and do not reflect the complete story of what is presented. Here we will look at a few of the essays to try and give the flavor of this book. Each essay starts with a quote. The quote for the first essay is “Dear Fagot, show us something simple for the start.” M Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita . The title of the first essay is “On the Unperturbed and Perturbed Motion of a Satellite, with a Digression on Asymptotic Methods of Nonlinear Mechanics.” It essentially covers the material in a first-level graduate astrodynamics course. One of the first points that is made is that we are “lucky” that we only have a single star system rather than a multiple star system where integrating the equations of motion might not be so easy! The second essay, “On the Rebirth of an Old Problem, or what Happens if two Masses are Placed at a Purely Imaginary Distance from one Another,” starts with the quote “… and the more he looked at the bell-rope, the more he felt that he had seen something like it, somewhere else, sometime before.” AA Milne, The World of Pooh . The essay deals with the problem of the motion of a particle about two fixed Newtonian centers. He writes the equations of motion, expands them, and compares the resulting terms with those of a nonspherical earth that were presented in essay one. He then proceeds to introduce several ways to attack the problem and adds much insight from experience.

The third essay is titled “Yet Another Reincarnation of an Old Problem” and discusses the solution to the problem of motion in an inverse square gravitational field with an additional constant force in a constant direction. Some of the results presented are very unexpected. The fourth essay, “The Motion of the Worlds,” discusses resonances in the solar system and its stability. In this essay a conjecture by AM Molchanov is presented that says, “Oscillating systems that have reached evolutionary maturity are unavoidably resonant, and their structure is given by a set of integers.” There is also an interesting section that indicates that if the moon had a high inclination, say 90°, it would have fallen into the Earth. The fifth essay deals with the three-body problem, patched conics and galaxy models. The sixth essay is the longest and is titled “They are Waltzing in Orbits.” This essay is the longest and reflects a lot of the work done by Beletsky on the motion satellites about their mass centers. Included are Moon-Earth, Mercury-Sun motions in 1:1 and 3:2 rotational resonances, respectively. In addition there is further discussion on stability and magnetic torques acting on satellites. The seventh essay, “A Spiral to Space,” deals with low thrust problems and spiral escape from the earth. The eighth essay is “The Full Force of the Sun Blows in the Sails,” and looks at the solar sailing problem, comparing some analytical results with AC Clark’s science fiction story, “The Wind From the Sun.” The ninth essay, “The Gravity Flyer,” is one of the more “off the wall” essays. Because a finite-size spaceship’s center of gravity is not located in the same orbit as it would be if all the mass were concentrated at one point, energy can be pumped into the orbit by pulsing the spaceship from a point to its full deployment and back again with the appropriate period. By so doing, you can eventually escape the attracting body. Of interest here is a full reporting of comments on this idea by various scientists, some of which indicated Beletsky’s ideas were “… based simply on ignorance… .” The tenth essay, “Interplanetary Flights: Low Thrusts for High Goals,” considered low-thrust interplanetary orbits for which optimization of the thrust direction takes an important role. The eleventh essay, “Relative Motion of Orbiting Bodies,” deals with a problem that is of current interest with regard to formation flying. In addition he looks at a version of the problem of two satellites attached with a tether. Also included is an analysis of a particle cloud. The final essay is “Cosmic Pinwheel.” It discusses and explains the motion of the Proton satellites that had solar panels fixed like a pinwheel about the axis of the satellite. This caused the satellite to spin up or spin down, causing unusual attitude behavior that was observed first, and then explained by applying basic physics.

Essay on the Motion of Celestial Bodies is extremely well written, although there are a few problems in the translation, they do not interfere with the spirit of the author. The technical figures are excellent and in addition there are several cartoon like figures in each essay reflecting the basic idea of the essay. It would help a lot if the reader has a solid background in space mechanics, although the author claims it is not necessary. The beauty of the book and the treatment of the subject would be missed by a general reader. This is not a textbook; nor is it a reference book, it is just a fun book to read that will give the reader new ways to think about old problems and some new ideas for attacking more recent problems of interest. Each essay has its own set of references and the book has a complete list of referenced authors with the page(s) on which they are referenced. Many of the references are from the Russian literature, so it provides a good review of work done in that country in the 1960s and 1970s. I would strongly recommend this book, as an addition to one’s library, although I think the price will discourage most people ($170) from purchasing it.

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JOURNAL OF BODIES, SEXUALITIES, AND MASCULINITIES Call for Papers: Global Debates around Circumcision and Anti-Circumcision

JOURNAL OF BODIES, SEXUALITIES, AND MASCULINITIES  Call for Papers: Global Debates around Circumcision and Anti-Circumcision 

This Special Issue of JBSM is guest edited by:  Atilla Barutçu, Zonguldak Bülent Ecevit University, Türkiye  Lauren Sardi, Quinnipiac University, CT, USA  Jonathan A. Allan, Brandon University, MB, Canada 

Journal of Bodies, Sexualities, and Masculinities is seeking contributions for a special issue on circumcision and anti-circumcision around the globe. Debates surrounding circumcision have historically been located within the Anglo-American world, especially among the existing scholarship on the subject. This Call for Papers seeks to expand the scope of analysis to sites and contexts that have not been the forefront of debate. Recent scholarship has drawn attention to circumcision practices in Japan, for instance, as well as growing opposition to circumcision in Israel, Turkey, and Ghana. This research has contributed to the analysis of a global phenomenon of circumcision that cuts across time, space, and sociohistorical context. As “universal” as circumcision may seem, even conservative estimates admit that 70% of foreskins remain intact. This Special Issue takes a “global” approach to the questions of the foreskin, circumcision, anti-circumcision, and foreskin restoration; pushing to analyze what these questions tell us about local and regional masculinities. 

We welcome contributions that consider interdisciplinary methods and approaches that expand the critical analysis of circumcision. We are particularly interested in papers that address: 

» Imperialism  » Colonialism and Postcolonialism  » Decolonization  » Nation and Nationalism  » Biomedical Colonialism and the Biomedical Industry  » Secularization and Religiosity  » Anti-Religiosity and Circumcision Debates  » Spirituality and Kinship  » Ethics and Morality  » Child Rights and/or Human Rights  » Aesthetics and Beauty  » Sexuality and Eroticism  » Considerations across gender identities, including trans, non-binary, and intersex identities  » Local and regional masculinities  » Memoirs, Testimonials, and Autoethnographies  » Race, Ethnicity, and Indigeneity  » Government and Politics   » Public Health, Policies, and Regulation 

Submission Information  Abstracts (250-300 words) will be accepted until September 1, 2024. If a full paper is already written, full paper submissions will be accepted. Decisions will be made shortly after receiving the abstract. Contact: [email protected]   

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Celestial Bodies

44 pages • 1 hour read

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Abdallah, the son of a date merchant and sometime slave trader, is one of the novel’s most important figures, even if he is often sidelined by the stories of others. As someone who has tried his whole life to step out from his father’s shadow, who has struggled with his own legitimate businesses, and knows the complicated and difficult nature of parenthood firsthand, he embodies many of the novel’s themes.

Added to this, Abdallah is the only character in the book to provide a first-person narrative perspective . Abdallah narrates several chapters as he takes a long-haul flight to Frankfurt. Drifting in and out of sleep, plagued by memories and regrets, he finds himself recounting events from his life. These memories are not in a chronological order: they are stream of consciousness , revealing Abdallah’s own objective perspective on the events of the past.

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An Omani Novel Exposes Marriage and Its Miseries

As societies change shape, novels change form. Because the novel is such a deeply mimetic and attentive host, it begins to sound like its guests. A hierarchical society that placed faith in marriage reproduced itself in stable novels that end securely in imagined marriage, gently offstage. But a society in which women were chafing at the limits of domestic harness reproduced itself in turbulent novels that begin with an inquiry into such marriages rather than ending with the promise of them. The novel of adultery, which dominates the second half of the European nineteenth century, might also be called the novel of unhappy marriage, its formal restlessness driven by the trapped restlessness of its heroines. That tragic adulterer Effi Briest, sparkling, young, and unhappily married to a dashing older aristocrat, wags a minatory finger, from late-nineteenth-century Prussia, back at Elizabeth Bennet, sparkling, young, and on the verge of her ideal marriage in early-nineteenth-century England, as if to say, “It’s much harder than you think it will be.”

The form’s remarkable adaptability is on brilliant display in “ Celestial Bodies ” (Catapult), a searching work of fiction by Jokha Alharthi, an Omani writer and academic; the English translation, by Marilyn Booth, won this year’s International Booker Prize. “Celestial Bodies” tells the subtle and quietly anguished story of several unhappy marriages. Though not a novel about female adultery—the narrated infidelities are all male—it shares with the genre an intense preoccupation with its female characters’ unhappy marital experience. The inequitable rules and expectations of a traditionally patriarchal Islamic society—the novel is largely set in an Omani village—bend this novel’s focus back onto the sort of marital misery that once animated the European literary tradition.

Yet one of the book’s signal triumphs is that Alharthi has constructed her own novelistic form to suit her specific mimetic requirements. Oman, a small, prosperous, oil-rich world trader, has been in a state of rapid transition since the nineteen-seventies. Ancient assumptions and modern ambitions coexist, not always harmoniously. Alharthi, who has a Ph.D. in classical Arabic literature from the University of Edinburgh and teaches at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman’s capital, Muscat, represents the fulfillment of some of those modern ambitions. She gives each chapter, in loose rotation, to the voice of a single character, and so makes contemporary female interiority crucial to her book while accommodating a variety of very different world views. The novel’s formal setup seems, at first, to establish a patriarch as the privileged star of a constellation of female celestial bodies: Abdallah speaks to us in the first person; the other characters (almost all women) are voiced in the third person. But Abdallah is desperately insecure about his masculinity, preoccupied with proving himself to the ghost of his tyrannical, recently deceased father. At the same time, the third-person narration devoted to the female characters is so flexible and sensitively alert that you often forget it’s not in the first person. So Abdallah’s formal priority turns out to be palely ex officio, while the women blaze like necessary suns.

“Celestial Bodies,” a slender novel alive with many tales, encompasses several generations, but at its heart is the story of three sisters who are disillusioned by marriage: Mayya, Asma, and Khawla. Mayya marries Abdallah, the son of a wealthy merchant; Asma marries Khalid, a self-obsessed artist for whom the ideal wife is someone who will fall “into the orbit he had marked out, who would always be there but would also always stay just outside, yet without wanting to create her own celestial sphere, her own orbit”; and Khawla, after many years of loyal patience, marries Nasir, her childhood sweetheart, whose idea of marriage involves spending most of his time in Canada with a girlfriend, returning every two years to impregnate his wife. (Nasir would turn up in Oman with fancy clothes for the children, Khawla reflects, “but never in the right sizes because he didn’t even know how old they were.”)

Tellingly, the novel begins with a woman thinking, and then with the enforced suppression of that thought. Mayya is at her Singer sewing machine, dreaming of a love unrequited. She has fallen for a young man named Ali, who has just come back from London, where he was studying. Mayya longs for the chance to catch even a glimpse of him. But her mother’s peremptory announcement shreds the dream: she tells her daughter that Abdallah has asked to marry her. The union will be advantageous. So that’s that. Mayya thinks that Allah must be punishing her for her secret desires. She marries Abdallah dutifully, lovelessly, and then she secretly punishes the world by naming her first child London (a choice that scandalizes traditionalists), for the man she actually wanted to marry.

Asma eventually makes her peace with her narcissistic husband, but only by becoming “her own constellation, independent and whole, a sphere unto itself.” That sphere is maternal: she devotes herself to the fourteen children she bears. Khawla’s marriage ends in divorce; she opens a beauty parlor in Muscat. Mayya stays married to Abdallah, but, like Asma, she retreats into an isolated and grimly defended maternity: she sleeps a great deal, and bitterly relishes the liberty of silence. When Abdallah asks her if she loves him—he has always been besotted with her—she laughs in his face. Abdallah recalls that Mayya didn’t laugh on her wedding day; she “didn’t even smile.” A generation later, their daughter London, a physician in Muscat, also divorces her husband, Ahmad, a poet who dedicates every new poem “to a new girl,” and beats his wife.

The novel moves back and forth between the generations very flexibly, often in the course of a single page or even paragraph, owing to Alharthi’s deft management of time shifts. I like to imagine Alharthi, as a graduate student in Edinburgh, encountering what Muriel Spark did with flash-forwards in her great Edinburgh novel about the often unhappy lives of girls and women, “ The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie .” Each novel’s relation to time resembles a handful of unequal threads. In “Celestial Bodies,” the shortest ones represent the period that opens the book and continues through it—the new marriages of Mayya, Asma, and Khawla, a passage of only a few years, in the early nineteen-eighties. Other threads are longer, because the novel’s individual stories are narrated from the present day. Abdallah tells us his story right now: he is Mayya’s disappointed middle-aged husband. It is natural for him to slip something like this into one of his monologues, about London’s marriage: “He divorced her. We paid him the dowry and so my daughter got herself out of that marriage. . . . London, I said to her, Today you are free. You are a successful physician and you have your freedom.” But he also reaches far back into his childhood—his memories return repeatedly to a brutal punishment meted out to him by his father, when he was suspended head first over a well. Mayya’s chapters tend to start out with her as a young mother, but they will also suddenly leap ahead in time: “Twenty-three years later when she would smash her daughter’s mobile phone to bits in anger before slapping her across the face. . . .”

Here’s how two pages of this novel roam along various lifelines. In the chapter entitled “Motherhood,” we begin, conventionally enough, in Mayya’s youth. She is the new mother of London: “Just before dawn, Mayya was sitting up on her bedding, the nursing baby in her lap. Her newborn daughter had finally stopped wailing and dropped off to sleep.” A page later, Alharthi is using her very close third-person narration to inhabit Mayya’s most depressed reflections: “Mayya considered silence to be the greatest of human acts, the sum of perfection. When you were utterly quiet and still you were likeliest to hear accurately what others were saying. . . . If she said nothing, then nothing could cause her pain. Most of the time, she had nothing to say.” And then the next paragraphs do this:

Once this child of hers was much older, after Salim and Muhammad had arrived in the world as well, Mayya made another discovery: sleep. Sleep! She would sleep and sleep, and as long as she stayed asleep nothing could harm her. . . . Entering the realm of sleep meant coming into a place of no responsibilities where she felt nothing, and the things she had anxiously needed to hold on to while awake fell away. The repeated nervous twitches of Muhammad’s hands; the sounds of mortal combat and tinny shouts of victory in the video game; London’s white coat, so big it accentuated her extreme thinness. . . . Sleep was her only paradise. It was her ultimate weapon against the pounding anxiety of her existence. Now, sitting up on her bedding, Mayya heard the muezzin’s voice. She found it comforting in the dawn silence.

In just a few sentences, we have travelled forward, to take in two later children and London’s adult work (that reference to her white coat), but then we return to the young mother sitting on her bed with a newborn daughter. Within all the chapters, the stories float like this, lightly tethered to what the French call récit —the moment in which the story is being told, the narrative present. The result is a beautifully wavering, always mobile set of temporalities, the way starlight seems to flicker when we gaze at distant and nearer celestial bodies. But the procedure is more radical than Muriel Spark’s, because the tether itself is moving: it is not clear what or where the continuing “present” of the novel really is—Mayya as the new mother of London, or London as an adult physician?

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Faulkner used rotating narrators in “ As I Lay Dying ,” but his first-person monologues, in contrast to Alharthi’s third-person monologues, commit the novel to a tight temporal focus—the story of a death, a short journey, a burial. “Celestial Bodies,” written from within a largely poetic tradition by a woman who is a scholar of classical Arabic poetry, seems to break free of narration as it is commonly understood in Western fictional literature. The leaps and swerves seem closer to poetry or fable or song than to the novel as such.

Still, these poetic movements serve decidedly novelistic ends. Alharthi’s perspectivism, a cycle of distinct and often isolated voices, naturally enacts the ways in which, even within a generation, people can hold very different levels of comprehension and knowledge. At one moment, London dismissively asks her mother, “What do you really know about love? . . . From the very first day you opened your eyes on life, you never saw anyone, until you saw my father. How old were you when they married you to him?” It’s the inevitable clash of older and younger generations, older and newer ideas of marriage. Because the novel began with the intimate revelation of Mayya’s secret yearning, though, we understand both the poignancy and the partiality of London’s comprehension. The question gets turned back on London by the novel’s form: What does London really know about love?

Moreover, we learn of this exchange only through Abdallah, who tells us, “She thought I was out of the house at the time but I was there and I heard these things.” As a frustrated husband, he is interested only in the fact that his wife laughs in reply and says nothing; it seems like a verdict on their marriage. But, like London, he lacks our access to his wife’s soul. So the same question arises: What does Abdallah really know about love? Three characters—father, mother, and daughter—each interpret the daughter’s original query differently.

A novel loosely holding together distinct histories and temporalities effectively dramatizes a society that is a congeries of ancient and new, old lore and tradition bumping up against thoroughly modern ambitions and expertise. For example, Asma is known as the bookish sister, the one who wants an education. Compared with her mother, or with Mayya and Khawla, she is indeed learned. But compared with London, her niece, her learning is scriptural, almost archaic, the product of a girl’s traditional confinement. Asma urges her mother to make a concoction for Mayya recommended in a book called “Fruit for the Wayfarer,” and backs up her contention that dates are good for nursing mothers by citing a moment in the Quran when “Our Lady Maryam shook the palm tree and the dates fell down on her.” Later in the book, London asks her father why people say that her grandmother died bewitched. That’s how they explain any inexplicable death, Abdallah replies. London thinks she can come up with a more scientific answer. To her, the symptoms sound like poisoning.

In this always shifting book, society’s unfinished transitions are never far from sight, briefly glimpsed when a curtain of narrative blows loose. Most of these characters move their familial homes from their rural birthplace to the capital. One character denounces “those horrid new-fangled heretical air-conditioners” that start appearing in the nineteen-eighties. Abdallah, trying to remember his mother, who died young, wishes that cameras had reached his small home town before she died. When he was a boy, he recalls, he was the son of only the second car owner in the whole town. The father of the young woman who will grow up to be a physician remembers how his own father—in a rare moment of tenderness—would heal his headaches, placing his hand on the boy’s head, and repeating words from the Quran: “To Him belongs everything that rests quietly, in the night as by day.”

Patriarchy’s violent edges also slice at these narratives. At one moment, Ahmad, London’s husband, promises her that she will be the wife of the greatest poet in Oman; at another, he whines, “I didn’t mean to hit you. I was just angry. . . . I don’t want to lose you, and anyway, you are my property, my London. You are my victory and my inspiration.” In a stroke, eight decades or more of family history—and, more significant, several generations of female journeying—are buried in the oldest rubble.

There’s plenty of rubble around. We gradually learn that Abdallah’s father, the wealthy Merchant Sulayman, made his fortune not from selling dates, his daily work, but from the slave trade. One of the liveliest characters in the novel is the most ambiguous in status, a woman named Zarifa, a slave who became Sulayman’s mistress and who largely raised Abdallah, after his mother’s early death. Born to a woman owned by the local sheikh, Zarifa was sold to Merchant Sulayman at the age of sixteen. Forceful, large, illiterate, an inveterate quoter of proverbs and traditional wisdom, she can come and go as she pleases among higher-born women, protected by Sulayman’s favor. Unlike the other characters, whose reflections move back and forth across generations, Zarifa knows little about her past, and doesn’t much choose to learn more. Alharthi tells us that Zarifa’s forebears were kidnapped from Kenya, via Zanzibar, by pirates in the late nineteenth century, when wealthy Omanis were craftily evading the pact that the Sultan had made with the British to outlaw the slave trade. But she shares with the more privileged women her own struggles with modernity. Her son, Sanjar, upbraids her for living in the servile past: “Open your eyes. The world has changed. . . . While everybody’s gotten educated and gotten jobs, you’ve stayed exactly where you always were, the slave of Merchant Sulayman. . . . We are free, and everyone is his own master, and no one owns anyone else. I am free and I can travel wherever and whenever I like.” He makes good on his promise, and, when grown up and with children of his own, he leaves Oman for Kuwait. Zarifa travels there to get him to change his mind but returns empty-handed, denouncing “the viper whom her son had married.”

There’s a paradoxical combination, here, of mobility and stasis. As in more conventional multigenerational sagas, one sees historical progress measured in freedoms won, prejudices softened, traditions modified. As a largely rural society is urbanized, as people begin to travel not just within the country but internationally, as women are better educated, so the younger generations can seize previously unimaginable opportunities: Sanjar moves to Kuwait; London becomes a doctor; Abdallah spends a good deal of his life flying from one place to another. Curiously, despite the greater freedoms afforded the men, they seem more immobilized, trapped, clutched by the hand of the past. Nasir spends half his married life in Canada, but his treatment of his wife appears little different from the rights invoked by London’s husband, Ahmad (“you are my property”). It seems a deliberate irony on Alharthi’s part that Abdallah, the only male character granted his own chapters, delivers many of his monologues from a plane. While he rushes forward across the globe, his thoughts revert helplessly to his cruel father, to old patriarchal punishments and curses, to his impacted masculinity and his emotional imprisonment as a husband. One effect of devoting so much space to intensely realized female interiority is to render the women vividly dynamic and mobile—restless, yearning, ambitious—even when reactionary or just maternally sedentary.

The form speaks eloquently. Indeed, the great pleasure of reading “Celestial Bodies” is witnessing a novel argue, through the achieved perfection of its form, for a kind of inquiry that only the novel can really conduct. The ability to move freely through time, the privileged access to the wounded privacies of many characters, the striking diversity of human beings across a relatively narrow canvas, the shock waves as one generation heaves, like tectonic plates, against another, the secrets and lapses and repressions, at once intimate and historical, the power, indeed, of an investigation that is always political and always intimate—here is the novel being supremely itself, proving itself up to the job by changing not its terms of employment but the shape of the task. ♦

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Celestial Bodies Summary & Study Guide

Celestial Bodies Summary & Study Guide Description

The following version of this book was used to create this study guide: Alharthi, Jokha. Celestial Bodies. Inverness: Sandstone Press, 2019.

The novel is set in the country of Oman. The narrative proceeds in a nonlinear fashion and examines three generations of people living in Oman. In 1970, Oman abolishes slavery, making it one of the last countries in the world to do so. Sulayman is a merchant in the town of al-Awafi, and he has made much money by buying and selling slaves. After abolition, many of his slaves depart form his estate. Some slaves remain, such as Zarifa, a woman whom he owned as a slave for years. The novel implies that Zarifa may be in love with Sulayman, and the novel also implies that Zarifa may have killed Sulayman’s wife with poison.

Sulayman’s son, Abdallah, is glad that slavery has been abolished. Abdallah attends business school and becomes a businessman in Oman’s capital city of Muscat. Abdallah eventually marries a young woman named Mayya. Mayya is unhappy because she did not choose to marry. Following custom, Mayya’s father arranged the marriage, and Abdallah had no say in the matter. As a form of rebellion, when Mayya gives birth to their first child—a daughter—Mayya names the daughter London. They then have a son whom they name Salim, and a son whom they name Muhammad. Muhammad is autistic, which greatly pains Abdallah.

Mayya’s father is named Azzan, and her mother is named Salima. Salima’s brother died fighting as a soldier in the Omani Civil War. One day, not long after Mayya’s wedding, Azzan falls in love with a Bedouin woman named Najiya, and they begin a secret affair. Mayya is the oldest of three sisters. The middle sister is named Asma, and the youngest sister is named Khawla. Asma loves to read. When Azzan arranges a marriage for her, she accepts. She marries a professional artist named Khalid. Although Khalid allows her to do things such as attend classes, he is generally controlling and self-centered. Khawla wishes to marry her cousin, Nasir, who left Oman to attend university in Canada. Nasir said that he would return soon and marry Khawla. However, he did not return until more than five years later, and when he married Khawla, he only did it in order to secure more funds so that he could return to Canada. He returned to Oman and Khawla ten years later. They had several children together, but Khawla eventually divorced him.

Mayya and Abdallah’s daughter, London, grows up to be a doctor. She marries a man, but she divorces him after he becomes abusive. Despite knowing that the divorce was necessary, she feels a sense of shame and failure due to the stigma placed on divorce in Oman’s culture. Salim grows up to be lazy and unsuccessful, and Abdallah is quite disappointed in him. The end of the novel implies that Abdallah may have murdered his autistic son Muhammad, although the novel presents this plot point in ambiguous terms.

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By Beejay Silcox

• Oct. 21, 2019

CELESTIAL BODIES

By Jokha Alharthi

Abdallah ibn Sulayman is lucky. Born into “easy times, times of plenty,” he’s the son of a prosperous Omani merchant and married to a woman he adores. Yet he experiences his good fortune anxiously. The source of his father’s wealth haunts him; more than one lonely death weighs on his heart; and when he asks his wife, Mayya, if she loves him, she laughs “loud enough to shatter every wall in the new house.” On a flight from Muscat to Frankfurt, Abdallah is plagued by soul-rattling dreams. “Praise be to God who has blessed humankind with the ability to forget!” he declares on waking. In her novel “Celestial Bodies,” the Omani author Jokha Alharthi inhabits this liminal space between memory and forgetting: the dark tension between the stories we tell and the stories we know.

Originally entitled “Sayyidat al-Qamr” (“Ladies of the Moon”), the novel circles between Abdallah’s fitful, high-altitude dozing and the equally restless history of his ancestral home, the fictional desert village of al-Awafi. Now little more than an oasis of nostalgia (“What there is in al-Awafi that isn’t in Muscat is the graveyard”), it was once a hub for the slave trade, a practice that was not outlawed in Oman until 1970, as the gulf nation’s oil wealth radically transformed its political might, economic infrastructure and social hierarchies.

“Celestial Bodies” is the second of Alharthi’s three novels, but it’s a book of firsts: the first novel by an Omani woman to be translated into English and the first novel in Arabic to be awarded the Man Booker International Prize (which Alharthi shared with her translator, the Oxford academic Marilyn Booth). Spanning several generations, from the final decades of the 19th century to the early years of the new millennium, it also marks an innovative reimagining of the family saga. Alharthi avoids the languid ease of chronology in favor of dozens of taut character studies, often no more than a page or two: despotic slave owners and the captive women who raise their children; kleptomaniacs and gossips; assured Bedouin businesswomen; violent poets; arms dealers; superstitious mothers and aunts who are so tall they’re “like a skeletal minaret.” These vignettes are sharp-eyed, sharp-edged and carefully deployed in a multigenerational jigsaw that’s as evasive as it is evocative. “The style is a metaphor for the subject,” explained the historian Bettany Hughes, who headed the Booker judging panel, “subtly resisting clichés of race, slavery and gender.”

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Celestial Bodies: The inspiration behind Omani author Jokha Alharthi's Man Booker-winning novel

The writer hopes ‘celestial bodies’ will not be the last omani novel to be translated into english.

Jokha Alharthi and translator Marilyn Booth won the Man Booker International Prize for Celestial Bodies. Man Booker Prize

Jokha Alharthi is a woman of many firsts. On May 21, she became the first author from the Arabian Gulf to win the prestigious Man Booker International Prize, and she was the first Omani author ever to have her novel, Celestial Bodies , translated from Arabic into English.

So how did Alharthi arrive at this groundbreaking position? Through a simple longing for home.

Rewind about 10 years ago. Alharthi was in Edinburgh, working on her doctorate in classical Arabic poetry. She also had an idea for a novel that explored the lives and relationships of three sisters in a changing Oman could be explored.

We’re delighted to announce our #MBI2019 winner is Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi, translated by Marilyn Booth and published by Sandstone Press. Read more here: https://t.co/rWHBRXwDOy pic.twitter.com/SfJr2Yg98u — The Booker Prizes (@TheBookerPrizes) May 21, 2019

"The plots and characters were partially in my mind," she says. "But the actual starting point for Celestial Bodies was that I was feeling a little homesick. So I indulged in writing about these people back in Oman."

What winning the Man Booker Prize means for Alharthi

Alharthi could not have predicted at the time that the book she wrote would win the prestigious Man Booker International Prize, not least because the award did not exist in its current format, with a book in English translation now awarded the £50,000 (Dh237,160) prize every year.

Alharthi was up against five other authors who wrote novels in French, Spanish, German and Polish.

Winning the prize will be life-changing for the Omani author, and not simply because of the cash prize she will share with translator Marilyn Booth.

Polish author Olga Tokarczuk won last year (she is shortlisted again this year for  Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead ) and sales of her book, Flights , increased by 692 per cent.

Alharthi's triumph this year, could also lead to a rise in  the popularity of Arabic and Gulf literature . 

"I am happy that people will read  Celestial Bodies  but  I also hope readers will wish to read other Arabic literature, and other authors from the Gulf ," she says.

“It’s definitely an opportunity for Omani literature to be read and appreciated by a wider audience."

The first steps towards making Celestial Bodies more widely known were taken when  independent Scottish publisher Sandstone Press took on  the English translation a few years ago . Booth took on the project after  receiving a translation grant from the Anglo Omani Society.

"We are incredibly proud of our part in bringing this talented novelist to the attention of Europe and the world," says Sandstone's m anaging d irector, Robert Davidson. "This is a fine novel that makes real a history and a people and their possible futures."

Alharthi says it feels strange to be talking once more about a novel she wrote so long ago.

"Every writer changes over time , so I could not have written it in exactly the same way today," she says. "But I remain proud of the novel  and its new international life." 

Telling Oman's history through her novel

It's tempting to consider how the three sisters in  Celestial Bodies , Mayya, Asthma and Khawla, might be faring in 2019.

“That’s a wonderful thought,” Alharthi says. “I hope the three sisters are happy now, but I would have to give this much more thought.

"In the novel, they all fare very differently in love and demonstrate an independence of spirit, complexity and strength, which I believe is true of women in Oman now.”

The family histories explained in Celestial Bodies can be treated as an explanation of how Oman has changed. Book-lovers in the West who might be tempted to open the novel after seeing it win the Man Booker International Prize might not have been aware that slavery was only abolished in Oman in 1970.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Sandstone Press (@sandstonepress)

"In Oman, at least, some readers were pleased that a taboo subject  such as slavery was explored in the novel," Alharthi says. "But other readers would have preferred me not to write about it , because by writing about it the subject is acknowledged, and one ha s to face history.

"It is very important to me to try to give voice to as many experiences as possible in my writing, and it’s why fiction can be so important, because it allows readers to experience history through a good story.

"Sometimes history is making itself felt in the novel through alliances ; Abdallah is the son of a successful merchant and, theoretically at least, a good prospective husband for Mayya.

"But Abdallah is raised by Zarifa, who is a freed slave who remains in the merchant's house  and behav es as a free woman. These connections need not be overtly made by the reader, or immediately made, but the weight of history in the present is very important throughout the book."

What if the story took place in 2019?

Abdallah is a fascinating character in  Celestial Bodies . He is   the only first-person narrator in the book and, as Alharthi  says, he is also a sad voice in the story.

H e shifts between the memories of his past and changes  that take place  in the present, sometimes in the space of a paragraph , which makes for an intriguing  and densely structured novel. 

"One moment he is a boy being punished by being suspended from palm rope in a well , the next his daughter is asking him to buy her a BMW," Alharthi says. "The pace of change in Oman is starkly presented through him."

When Abdallah tries to be a modern man and talk about love and feelings, he is mocked for using " TV show words ".

As much as  Celestial Bodies  stridently offers compelling female characters, there is also some sympathy for the lot of a 21st century man in Oman.  

“Sometimes it is hard to escape a past or make a new start, even when love holds out the possibility of a new future,” Alharthi says.

“Abdallah is mocked for expressing his feelings. Feelings are not pragmatic, after all. Love is hard-won in the novel, unless love chooses you.

"Qamar, for example, is an undaunted female character who decides who she will love. But others will be unhappy in love, or will not necessarily find love.”

This brings us right back to how these vivid characters might be faring had the story taken place in 2019. A sequel is not on the cards , although Alharthi jokes that she makes it "a rule not to discuss new work until it is finished".

But Celestial Bodies is such a compelling novel that these characters live on beyond the final pages of the book.

For now, Alharthi says she hopes that her newfound profile as a writer might mean that her 2016 novel, Bitter Orange , is fully translated into Englis h.  An excerpt, also translated by Booth, is already available to read online at Words Without Borders.

The story also heavily features Oman, which is important for Alharthi’s publishers who believe she is the first Omani author to have her work translated into English.

“Literature is the best expression of experience,” she says.

Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi is out now  

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