A stronger case for identifying Borgil as Mars?

[Erkenbrand10]

Hi! As you know, in the following passage from The Lord of the Rings (Book 1, Chapter 3), some celestial bodies are mentioned:

Away high in the East swung Remmirath, the Netted Stars, and slowly above the mists red Borgil rose, glowing like a jewel of fire. Then by some shift of airs all the mist was drawn away like a veil, and there leaned up, as he climbed over the rim of the world, the Swordsman of the Sky, Menelvagor with his shining belt.

Remmirath and Menelvagor can be easily identified as the Pleaiades and Orion, respectively, but the identity of red Borgil does not seem that clear. Although the most likely candidates are Aldebaran and, to a lesser extent, Betelgeuse, Mars has a stronger case than I previously thought. These are two reasons why it is often disregarded:

1. Elsewhere (Morgoth's Ring), the name for Mars is given as Carnil/Karnil.

2. Mars rarely appears rising in the Eastern sky between the Pleiades and Orion at midnight, as opposed to Aldebaran, always there as part of the Taurus constellation, and Betelgeuse, always there as part of Orion.

Now, Borgil means "red star" in Sindarin, while Carnil/Karnil also means "red star", albeit in Quenya. So that argument could easily be turned around and be used in favour of Mars, not against it (same name, different languages). As to the second point, it is true that Mars does not usually appear in a "Borgil position". However, and I am not sure if this has been noted before, in mid-late September 1943 Mars was exactly where you would expect Borgil to be, and there is a chance that Tolkien wrote this passage around that time. For instance, in early 1944 (letter 69) he wrote to Christopher that he was revising the descriptions of the Moon throughout the book: "I found my Moons in the crucial days between Frodo's flight and the present situation (arrival at Minas Morghul) to be doing impossible things. [...] Rewriting bits of back chapters took all afternoon!". This passage originally featured the moon, not stars, so maybe it was amended to stars around this time. This is how this passage read in the first version of the manuscript (per The Return of the Shadow):

Out of the mists away eastward a pale gold light went up. The yellow moon rose; springing swiftly out of the shadow, and then climbing round and slow into the sky.

In the third version, the Full Moon was changed to a New Moon to make the Moon phases more consistent throughout the book:

Above the mists away in the East the thin silver rind of the New Moon appeared, and rising swift and clear out of the shadow it swung gleaming in the sky.

Despite this amendment of the Moon phase, Christopher notes that "it is an odd and uncharacteristic aberration that my father envisaged a New Moon rising late at night in the East". Probably due to this, Tolkien later replaced the Moon by stars, which is what got published in The Fellowship of the Ring. I could not find a date for this revision, but if indeed it happened in the context of those Moon revisions cited in letter 69, he must have intended for the stars to be as accurate as possible, so as not to just swap one astronomical "aberration" for another. And, in the nearest observation of that region of the night sky at that date and time (mid-late September 1943), Mars was indeed between the Pleiades (Remmirath) and Orion (Menelvagor). The following image shows the midnight sky on the 14th of September 1943 as seen from Oxford (I used this date instead of the 24th of September cited in the appendices as the day the hobbits and the elves camped together because this Shire calendar date corresponds to around the 14th of September in our Gregorian calendar. The general picture would not change that much in those 10 days anyways, the main difference being that all bodies would be a bit higher in the sky):



If one were to assign the title of "red star" to a body "gleaming like a jewel of fire" in this context, I think it would be difficult to not be referring to Mars. But, of course, Tolkien may not have noted the sky that particular September, or he may have used an almanac of a totally different year, where there would be no trace of Mars. But it is a fun theory nonetheless! Do you think it is plausible?

I have also made this video recreating the scene to help visualise the movement of the stars that night:

[Erkenbrand10]

In the chapter "The Ring Goes South" there is another reference to a red star:

"But low in the South one star shone red. Frodo could see it from his window, deep in the heavens, burning like a watchful eye that glared above the trees on the brink of the valley."

This scene takes place right after a full moon in early November (or late October), and in those weeks both Betelgeuse and Aldebaran can be seen from Oxford around midnight due South, and in 1943 Mars was there too, so I think there is a good chance this red star is Borgil too.

The funny thing is that, while reading that passage and musing about Borgil, I looked South out of my window and there they were, the three main alternatives for Borgil (Aldebaran, Betelgeuse and Mars) all neatly lined up and looking down on me! If you are in the Northern hemisphere and want to check them out too, today and during the next month or so they will be clearly visible and almost lined up right after sunset up high due South and setting due West as the night advances. It's not common to see Mars in such a position, so now it's a good opportunity to compare the three Borgil possibilities with the naked eye!

[Harper_of_Gondolin]

If Mars happens to be in that sector of the sky at that time, it will be at/near its brightest apparent magnitude and, so, will be noticeably brighter than Aldebaran (and Betelgeuse), particularly through a haze of mist.

Sorry: all I am doing is begging the question; there's no independent means of establishing the position in the sky that Mars is supposed to occupy at this time (for the astronomically-ingenuous, the stars occupy positions in relation to each other, while the planets orbit our sun independently: the position of Mars in the sky, relative to stars, depends on where it is in its own orbit, juxtaposed to the position of the Earth within its own orbit, in relation to the stars).

So, is there any way of confirming that Mars should, indeed, be there?

HoG

[Altair6]

So, is there any way of confirming that Mars should, indeed, be there?

HoG

An Ephemeris - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephemeris.

The position of stars, planets and satellites with known orbits can be calculated. Even for past dates. You can just look stuff like this up in an Ephemeris or use a computer program like Stellarium - https://stellarium.org/

[auximenes]

I have also made this video recreating the scene to help visualise the movement of the stars that night:

Very interesting.

[Wolfhelm]

An Ephemeris - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephemeris.

The position of stars, planets and satellites with known orbits can be calculated. Even for past dates. You can just look stuff like this up in an Ephemeris or use a computer program like Stellarium - https://stellarium.org/

They certainly can for a time and place on planet Earth, unfortunately though we have no way of lining up timelines between Earth and Middle-earth

[Erkenbrand10]

So, is there any way of confirming that Mars should, indeed, be there?

Mars was certainly where Borgil should be (in the Taurus region) in late 1943 and early 1944, and there is a good chance that Tolkien wrote this passage around that time. So IF this passage was indeed written around this time and IF Tolkien used a direct observation to describe this passage, I think it would be difficult to overlook Mars as the prime candidate for Borgil. So I guess it all depends on how how big you consider those ifs to be.

[Harper_of_Gondolin]

They certainly can for a time and place on planet Earth, unfortunately though we have no way of lining up timelines between Earth and Middle-earth

This is precisely what I meant to say and, perhaps, didn't.

It is so very tempting to make a leap of faith and surmise that we have augured a moment of the creator's writing process. It is also so very likely true: "Hmmmm. Not sure how I want to write this; say, what?, I'll just pop outside, look at the sky, and transcribe what I see; who'll care; who'll notice; who'll have anything to say about it 80 years from now? ..."

I will provide the service of dropping the Lore-Troll Banhammer on Carnil/Karnil: Morgoth's Ring is NOT LoTR; Tolkien demonstrated that he would amend anything/everything to commute with LoTR (particularly, rewriting sections of the previously-published The Hobbit); if Borgil in LoTR is Mars, then whenever he returned to edit Morgoth's Ring for publication, Carnil -> Borgil.

I have compiled something-like a million questions I would have liked to ask a man who passed away when I was five years old; here's a million and one; and we've lost Christopher, now, also.

Earth, like Middle-earth, fades.

HoG

[Harper_of_Gondolin]

A laugh: I sometimes log-in only to mount a horse and take a midnight ride from Thorin's Hall to Rivendell; I actually once shared this on a real-world date (and that was total pwnage, BION).

Devs, if I don't see a red star in Taurus, expect a ticket.

HoG