A What Happened in July?

We had one and a half events in July and both were a lot of fun.

 The Fourth of July in La Luz Canyon

The first event was on the Fourth of July in the beautiful La Luz Canyon home of some most active members.

In past postings we have included a description of their home and the wonderful site where it is situated. There are mountain vistas in all directions from the house with the west view of the Tularosa Basin with its White Sands with the San Andreas Mountains on the horizon. The home has decks to allow the participants move to avoid (in hot weather) the sun, or to track the warming sun in not so hot days. At the altitude of the home, uncomfortably hot days are a rarity.

This was, as most SunTree events a potluck meal with wonderful conversation. In this case, I think that each of the participants brought plenty of pre-meal snacks followed by enough food to serve eight people. Multiply that by the number present and you will discover that most of us were waddling around at the end of the day.

The fireworks for the event were furnished by the celestial events planner starting with a spectacular sunset over the San Andreas Mountains followed by about two bazzilion stars at night with no ground light pollution to attenuate them.

A Major Tsunami Hits Arizona with Reports of Property Damage

The half event was at Mira Vista RESORT in Marana, AZ the weekend following the Fourth of July event. Mira Vista RESORT scheduled a Saturday event to participate in a publicity effort to get into the Guinness Book of World Records. I am calling this a “half event” since I did not send any information on this out soon enough to get a lot of the SunTree gang to interrupt their plans and get to Arizona in time.

The Mira Vista RESORT was filled to the gills with participants and it seemed that there were a lot of first timers visiting the Resort. I hope that some of those decide that it is such a nice place to visit that they want to go on and join Mira Vista. I also hope that if any of the first-timers there who happen to have driven interstate 10 from New Mexico might have become inspired to join one of the New Mexico clubs sometime soon. SunTree would certainly welcome them as, I am sure would Road Runner Naturists.

I heard one lady complaining after the planned world record event that she wanted to know who to complain to about the damage to her personal property. She was sitting in one of the lounge chairs next to the pool when the time came for the “skinny-dip” event. She got into the pool with the other approximately 160 close friends to participate. When the event was over and she went back to her chair, she found that her tote bag which had been sitting on the ground next to her chair was sitting in a large puddle and was totally soaked. Her camera (why did she have that?), some books, her towels, some food (why didn’t she plan on eating at Mira Vista’s fine restaurant?) and a newspaper were all soaked. She wanted to complain to someone about the damage. I said nothing, but I thought that if she wanted to find the proper person to complain to, she should look in a mirror. Of course the pool overflowed when the friendly crowd entered.

What’s Happening in August?

Conventions and Gatherings are what’s happening. See the What’s Happening page.

August Celestial Events

Gasbags and Meteors 

Evening: Jupiter reaches opposition (on the opposite side of Spaceship Earth from the Sun) in the southeastern sky on14 August. The ole gasbag will be amazing at magnitude – 2.4. This will be his brightest, biggest and closest approach to Earth since the century began. Jupiter will loom over the eastern horizon at sunset and will be stomping across the southern part of the sky all night pretending to be the sky’s brightest “star”. That will be cut off when Venus pops up just before dawn. Now you know why I call him a gasbag.

Jupiter has a planetary friend nearby. Greenish Neptune reaches its own opposition on 17 August, but is at only magnitude 7.8 and you will have to have a telescope to see him.

Morning: In the morning sky, sweet, beautiful Venus will be hobnobbing with those wild Gemini twins just before sunrise. The Moon makes an attempt to help us find Venus (as if her brightness would not be seen by mere humans) on 17 August. The Moon on that morning will be a crescent above Venus (there, she is the one doing the pointing to help us find the Moon). If you use Venus to find the Moon, look above the Moon where a war-like orange Mars is lurking. The next morning, Venus will be below the moon

Watch for the Moon very near the famous red star Antares at nightfall on 27 August.

The Perseid Meteor Shower will be hard to see in the predawn Northeast on 11 and 12 August, because of that pesky Moon. This is a big enough shower, however that some of the 60 plus meteors per hour will be able to be seen streaking across the sky. If you are serious about finding the meteors that are not washed out by the Moon, stand with your back to the brightness of the moon and watch for the meteors that will be shot over your shoulder into the dome of the darkest part of the sky. This meteor shower is the remnant dust trail of Comet Swift-Tuttle.