The fiasco part of the weekend derived primarily from the lack of communication at the site. Unless you have a satellite phone there is absolutely no communication at the site (smoke signals would not work either with the confusion caused by the smoke arising from the fires to the west.)

SunTree was made aware of four separate groups of campers who went to the site with plans to participate in the camping weekend, but in most cases there were no coincident crossing of paths among these campers. I extend apologies to and any who were inconvenienced by the situation. The first campers stayed only one night (Friday), during which they were very uncomfortable due to the direction of the wind. It carried the smoke from the western fires across the campsite making breathing most uncomfortable. They considered ceasing breathing, but then decided that was not an option. They left the following morning prior to the arrival of the second shift who had no problems with the smoke on Saturday night.

If you look at our calendar for September, you will notice that we are, once again planning a camping trip to the same location.  I am asking that all who are considering the possibility of participating in that event to leave their name and phone number on the answering machine at the SunTree telephone number. We will establish a calling tree so that you may be notified of any changes in the event plans. If you have a cellular phone, you might also call the SunTree number from your turn-off of I-25 to check on any late condition changes.  It will be posted on channel 6 of the answering machine (call the number, wait for the answering machine pickup, instead of entering “1” after the initial greeting, enter “6” for the latest information). Once again apologies are offered for any problems endured by would-be participants.

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If you are taking your evening walk this month after the sun is down long enough for the desert temperatures do their daily conversion from “torrid” to “chilly”, you can see that Venus is doing her part to brightening the evening sky, though she is still very low to the horizon. That is her right next to the Moon on 7 August.

Two days later the Moon takes up a partnership with Jupiter in the west. Late in the month, Jupiter and Venus move into an intimate conversation.  They are extremely close in the final day of the month.

Mars, in its continuing effort to attract attention doubles its brightness during the month of August. Toward the end of the month Mars will be rising around 10:30 PM and will reach a magnitude of –1 (remember that magnitude is like a golf score, the lower the number the better [brighter]). That is not nearly as bright as he was when he performed his near-Earth approach back in 2003, but he is still very bright this month and should get brighter next month also. Mars will tread its way across the night sky and can still be seen in the southwest just before sunrise. If you have an optical enhancing devise such as a telescope or even binoculars, you might be able to see the south pole of Mars this month, though it is summer in the southern hemisphere of Mars right now and the polar ice cap is rather small (maybe they are also suffering from global warming due to overuse of flying saucers and light sabers).

Now for the month’s astronomical headline: It Is Time, Once Again for the Perseids!

The year's best meteor shower, the Perseids, will be wonderful on the nights of 11 - 12 August, especially after midnight.

One of the great things about the Perseid Meteor Shower is not that it is normally a spectacular shower with lots of bright fireworks including streaks across the sky, dashes across the sky, explosions in the upper atmosphere, but that it actually lasts for a couple of days one either side of its peak hour. We here in America’s Desertland will not be able to see it at the peak hour since that will be in the middle of the day, 11 August, and the Earth’s personal star is way too bright in any August mid-day to allow us to see any meteors. You can see the peak if you want to travel to Turkey or one of its neighbors, but it might be better if you stay right where you are because we have planned a “secondary peak” just for the readers of this newsletter. It is suggested that you might want to get out your lounge chair, a cup of hot chocolate and a couple of blankets and be in a dark place (preferably outdoors) around 3 in the morning on 12 August (but you said that the peak was on 11 August). I can do this in my own back yard since there are no streetlights anywhere near my house and the sky is not light polluted as much as it is in the valley. The radiant (remember, that is the point in the sky from which the meteors appear to come from) will be high in the northeast.

Now, if you are wondering how we planned an “extra” peak, here it is. Of course, I have to repeat what I have said in the past about predicting the performance of meteor showers. You can get the advise of every expert in the world and still not have any idea of what will happen this year. Four years ago, we had a prediction of a “ho-hum” performance of the normally bland Leonid meteor shower, yet it turned out to be the most spectacular one that many people have ever seen. Now back to the discussion of the second peak. The matter that was efficiently distributed along its road during the orbit of Comet Swift-Tuttle is what causes our Perseid Meteor Shower each August when Spaceship Earth navigates through the middle of the remains of the tail. You may remember that when Comet Swift-Tuttle drove through the solar system back in 1479, it made a tight corner around the Sun and that resulted in a streamer shed that was a little separate from the main Comet tail. Those of you who are not old enough to remember that will just have to take my word for it. One of the major meteor shower experts has calculated that around 3 AM Mountain Daylight Time on the morning of 12 August, Earth will pass through the remains of that streamer thus giving us a secondary peak in the meteor activity.

If this does not indeed happen, then look back in this newsletter next month to see what sort of excuse that I come up with to explain away all of the verbiage.