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Árbol del Sol
Thought for the Month The SunTree Traveler
Christmas in November Event at Elephant Butte As is normal with the SunTree Christmas get-together, we had a gift exchange with the participating crowd as well as the usual mass of potluck contributions for our Christmas meal. Starvation was not a word which could have been used with any accuracy, but is it ever at one of our club events? It is interesting how that many of the gifts brought to the event for the gift exchange seemed to be of one mind. This seemed to be the year of the flashlight. There were some other interesting gifts as well. I will not complain about the screwdriver set that I got. One cannot have too many screwdrivers (I know since I have lost quite a few into unreachable parts of the frame of my truck). A gift from yesteryear (a magnetic dartboard) was donated back to the club to go along with the golf-bolo games for use during our club events (thanks Peter).
December Event (?) The December Event which was referred last month as the “Pre-Thanksgiving Event” in December in order to balance out the Christmas Event in November (see above) is looking for a venue. We currently have the event on the schedule for the weekend of 8 December. It had been hoped that we might be able to have this back at Faywood Hot Springs, but that is still unavailable. If we cannot identify a location for the December event soon, we will have to cancel it. Contact SunTree (see the Contact Us section) for any updates on this.
It is the Holiday Season and Time for the Geminid Meteor Shower Again! (Also Another Comet is Approaching) I am not putting the Geminid Meteor Shower in either the Morning or Evening category because that Meteor Shower will be going on all night long on 13 – 14 December in the Northeast. The meteors will be best after the Moon sets on the evening of 13 December. Morning: Venus is losing some of its dazzling brightness in the predawn sky but remains a spectacular vision in the morning sky.. The Ursid Meteor Shower will be in the predawn northern sky on 22 December (Tuttle) Evening: The headliner for the month is Mars, arriving at its closest and brightest of the year on 18 December (magnitude -1.6). I know that you probably remember a few years ago when Mars put on that spectacular show that will not be seen again for another century. This year, it will not be quite that bright, but it is a good time to look for it because this month, it will be brighter than it will be for the next eight and a half years. Mar will be able to be seen throughout the night. In early December, Mars will rise in the east right after the end of the evening twilight. By the end of the month, it will be rising before sunset (of course you will not be able to see it very well for a couple of hours when it will rise to higher in the east). Mars will be in a "retrograde" orbit from the point of view of Earthlings. Mars will be rising a little be earlier each night rather than later like "normal" planets do. That is because we are screaming past Mars in planet ship Earth and it appears to be moving backward from our point of view. On Christmas Eve, Mars will be rising about sunset (that is referred to as "in opposition" to the Sun) and will be at the top (zenith) of the dome of the sky around midnight shinning very brightly. The year’s 13th full Moon will be rising on 23 December at sunset, right next to Mars, making a neat arrangement.. Saturn rises late (around midnight) this month and will be residing in the southeast sky. The neat part of the viewing of Saturn this month will require a telescope, so ask Santa for one so that you can see Saturn with its rings almost totally edgewise to the Earth. The rings will look exceedingly thin. An Extra-Terrestrial Visitor: It will not be easy to see this month, but high in the sky, in the middle of the constellation Cassiopeia, late in the month, a visitor will appear and get to near-naked eye brightness. That will be a little snowball known as Comet SP/Tuttle. It should get brighter in January. Stay tuned. (For those of you who have forgotten, Cassiopeia is that group of five bright starts high in the sky that look like the letter "W".) Winter begins with the solstice on 22 December if you believe the calendar, but here in Mountain time, the solstice will actually occur one day earlier (21 December) at 11:08 PM. Don’t always believe what you see on the calendar or read in the papers. The year’s earliest sunset will occur two weeks earlier, so what is this “shortest day of the year” nonsense?
© 2004 SunTree Travel Club - Site updated Summer 2008 |
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What Happened in November?