Our Halloween Event at Elephant Butte

Regular readers of this website might remember that last month, I said: “I Have No Idea! I am not commenting upon what happened at our October event because at the time that I am writing this, it has not yet happened. It is/was the Halloween event in Elephant Butte. I am certain that there was a fantastic and healthy potluck meal of candy corn, raisinettes, pumpkin tacos with deep fried Snickers bars. There probably were many attending ghouls and vampires. This is, however, only conjecture.”

I will not go into much detail, but I thought that you might be interested in how that Halloween event turned out.  Here are a few comments:

All week the wind had made being outside totally miserable and the clouds looked as though they were planning to pile a late October snow on us any minute (and, in fact did in some parts of New Mexico).

That was before Saturday – then the clouds evaporated and the wind dropped to next-to-nothing and the weather was totally perfect for the Elephant Butte event on the weekend that we celebrated the arrival of New Month’s Day.

The hanging lady ghoul from last year’s October event returned again, but spent her time hanging out on the patio through the weekend.  She did not eat much at all.  That was fine because the SunTree folks made up for her diet regimen by devouring large quantities of good food.

As was usual, this was a good assembly of the SunTree clan.

The Pre-Thanksgiving SunTree Visit to Mira Vista RESORT

Each of the SunTree folks packed up on the weekend prior to Thanksgiving with enough food for 18 or 20 people even though we had planned to skip the potluck meal at Mira Vista RESORT this year.  After all, that resort has a wonderful restaurant with excellent food.  We had planned to have an afternoon get together with a “few” snacks on Saturday.  Given that information, each of us cut back to a few tons of snacks instead of the usual entrees.  Our surprise (since we did not bother to check the website for the resort) was that Mira Vista RESORT was planning a pre-Thanksgiving meal on Saturday night with all of the usual Thanksgiving trimmings plus some more.

The SunTree folks were able to waddle through a wonderful weekend and make good use of the various swimming and soaking pools at that wonderful place.  The air temperatures were about ten degrees higher that those experienced in Las Cruces, as is usual. 

Most of us feel that with Mira Vista RESORT open “just down the road” in Tucson, we have a wonderful occasional venue for our club functions.  We wish the best to them for continued success.

The "between the holidays" event will once again be held in the city of Elephant Butte. This year it will be on the weekend of 5 December and will be held at the home of some of our members who live in the city of Elephant   If the winds are calm and the sun is out, their back yard is a wonderful place for this event When the sun starts dropping over the Black Range, however, we need to stay indoors out of the November air.

This event will once again be a potluck get together. As has become a tradition during this event, we have a blind gift exchange wherein all are asked to bring a gift of less that $10.00 value for a person of the same sex (man's gift given by a man, woman's gift given by a woman). The gifts will be numbered and each attendee will draw a number from a hat to identify the gift that they are to receive.  As it turns out, most of the gifts are serious and thoughtful gifts, though it is not unknown for some of the gifts to be “gag” gifts.

If you are planning to attend please leave a message on the SunTree e-mail box or on the answering machine at the SunTree phone number (see the Contacting us part of this web page).

December Celestial Events

A Blue Moon Graces the Evening Sky During The Hogmanay Celebrations

Evening Sky: Mars, being the night owl this month, rises at around 9:30 PM on the first day of December just as Jupiter sinks into the west. Mars, as you probably remember, broke the magnitude 0 mark last month.  This month he continues to brighten.  He starts out at magnitude 0 and by the end of the month/year, he will brighten up to magnitude -1.  If you have been only a night time observer, you have not seen Mars for awhile.  He has pursued his warlike activities in the morning sky until this month.  By mid-month, Mars will be rising around 9 PM and can be seen high in the southern sky.  If you look at the surrounding sky each night, you will note that Mars seems to pause around mid-month.  After that, he appears to start moving the other direction.  You can never trust these warrior types.  Just what are the Martians up to this month?  By New Year’s Eve, Mars will be rising before 8 PM and will be a very bright orange vehicle to see on that night (if you do not have any other plans) and he will be spectacular through binoculars.

Mars and Jupiter remain on exact opposite sides of the sky throughout the month.  Jupiter will be losing brightness through this month.  If you are watching Jupiter through some sort of optical enhancing device, you might see a blue-green friend move in to have a discussion around 19 December.  That is the closest that the two will come to each other, but that conversation between Jupiter and Neptune will start around 15 December and continue through Christmas Day. The crescent Moon joins in on the night of 20 December.

Mercury will be doing its best to look impressive during the second week of December, but will have a difficult time since he will be hanging out in a highly populated part of the sky.  You might find him on 17 December to the upper left of the crescent Moon.

The evening of New Year’s Eve brings a second full Moon this month.  This is often referred to as a “Blue Moon”.  It will not look blue to Earth bound viewers.  I guess that it might even have a little reddish hue due to a partial eclipse that night.  We will not be able to see that eclipse on the American continents, but it will be a nice night to have a full Moon to adorn the final night of the year.

Morning Sky: There is not much happening in the morning sky this month other than a great view of Saturn.  Saturn will rise about midnight and will be getting to the meridian (the top of the sky) about sunrise.  He will be glowing at a somewhat bright magnitude 1.0

Welcome to Winter! The Winter solstice arrives with winter on 20 December at 10:47 PM. The “news” people on your idiot box will probably say that the solstice will be on 21 December.  That is because the solstice will occur at 12:47 AM on the morning of 21 December for folks who reside in the Eastern Time Zone and points east from there (to Longitude 180).

Ideal moonless conditions make the Geminids the year’s best meteor shower with a peak scheduled for the night of 13 December. 

Look in any direction and expect one per minute.

There are several theories about why the Geminids is such a spectacular meteor shower.  As you well know, meteor showers are the residue of comet tails.  They are orbiting dust and ice particles left by those orbiting objects that we call comets.   If you look in most almanacs, you will see the name of a comet as the assumed source of any meteor shower.  Most almanacs have a blank space where a comet name would normally be placed referencing the Geminid Shower.  The following is a theory which is accepted by many as to the origin of the Geminid Shower.  If you tend to be a fatalist, you might not want to read further here.

There were no reports of any meteors of the Geminid Meteor Shower prior to 1862.  Since the Geminid Shower was first noted, it has tended to get more active every year.  In the early years, there were reports of exploding meteors in the shower.  In 1930, observers reported up to 70 meteors per hour in this shower.  In 2006 over 100 meteors per hour were reported.  Many people now feel that the “parent” of the Geminid Shower is an object that we now call an asteroid.  Specifically, this parent is possibly the one known as asteroid 3200 Phaethon which was discovered in 1983.  This asteroid is in an orbit in which it comes closer to the Sun than any comet.  It passes through the planetary plane about one seventh the distance between Spaceship Earth and the Sun.  It is assumed by many that at one time this was indeed a comet, but it has lost all of its coma generating assets due to its close proximity to the Sun.  It probably is still losing some ice and stones on each orbit and those castoffs join the dusty path that we know as the Geminid Meteor Shower whenever we drive our home vehicle through that trail.  The scary part of this story is that 3200 Phaethon may be the asteroid (ex-comet) which is taking aim at a direct impact with our space ship.