The “Between the Holidays” Event at Elephant Butte 

The forces of darkness decided to exercise their powers this December with full knowledge that they would win a battle against the powers of light in late December. As this newsletter is being written the powers of darkness are weakening and the daylight hours are already beginning to increase in number. I have full confidence that eventually summer will return (but not before a successful ski season).

The dark powers flexed their muscles during the week of the SunTree "Between-the-Holidays" event in Elephant Butte, NM. The result was some appreciable accumulation of snow in the area, especially on mountain passes causing some hazardous travel for the SunTree tribe.

In the city of Elephant Butte, the snow was no so evident. There were only ornamental accumulations around the flower beds and on the shrubs. These accumulations added to the holiday decorations for the SunTree gatherers.

As in normal for this event, there was a lot of use made of the hot tub and of the potluck food contributions. The sky's were a beautiful blue over the weekend and the only unpleasant thing involved the short distance that a wet body had to travel from the hot tub to either the wood-burning stove or the back door of the warm house.

Holiday Greetings to All

This is the start of a New Year and best wishes are offered to all members and readers of this newsletter for a happy and successful New Year.

It is an appropriate time to thank those members who have reported back to this newsletter on clubs, events, cruises and other holidays that they took this past year. Your reports have been shared with the newsletter readers so that they can, both vicariously enjoy your trips and can take advantage of your experiences in their trip planning. I encourage you to continue to submit your thoughts and reports to SunTree so that they can be inserted into the newsletter to be shared with all.

An additional Note to all readers: In a fit of optimism and dumb guesswork, the activities calendar for 2010 is being posted at this time. There are some holes in the calendar and some of the events may be in places on the calendar inconvenient to prospective participants. Please contact SunTree Travel Club with any complaints or suggestions as early as you are aware of them. Last minute changes only wreck havoc and we hope to avoid that.

Evening: Mars has decided to make January the beginning of a time of a brilliant presence in the sky. Mars will travel its closest visit to the Earth on 27 January and two days later will be exactly opposite the Earth from the Sun. Of course that means that it will be very bright at that time. Mars will be at its highest place in the sky at midnight and will shine at magnitude - 1.2, orange Mars outshines every star except blue Sirius. You may remember back in 2003 when Mars was also in opposition and it glowed an amazing -2.9 and was regularly mentioned on the news. Even today some of the old e-mails from that year get recycled and dirtributed as if it were happening again. It is not (that will not happen again for a few centuries), but is is nicely bright this month.

Mars only has two rivals this month with brilliant Jupiter low in the southwest after sunset and Sirius well to the south of Mars. Mars will remain a beautiful, bright sight for several months. Venus is not a rival of anybody this month because she has decided to hide behind the Sun while she changes her lodging from the morning sky to the evening sky. She actually makes her move on 11 January.

If you have a telescope, look at Mars with it any time between now and the end of March. You will be able to see some of the surface features and perhaps a Martian or two. The best time to look will be around midnight when it will be at its high point in the sky.

If you are familiar with the zodiacal constellations, you might notice that a lot of the celestial body’s are making some moves this month. Mars starts the month in Leo but backs up to move into Cancer. Very bright Jupiter, who can be found low in the southwest at nightfall, starts in Capricornus but crosses into Aquarius. Uranus, who has been hanging out in Aquarius, strolls over into Pisces.

Earth comes closest to the Sun on 2 January. The year's nearest Moon, a full Moon to boot is on the 30 January.

I wish to add a little note about a neat constellation in the evening sky. In the northwest evening sky, you can see the constellation Cygnus (the swan) which some people call the Northern Cross. It is situated in a position right now to allow you to see why. The swan, with outstretched wings is soaring up from the horizon and actually looks like a cross. Normally it is flying higher in the dome of the sky and looks more like a big bird. Another little note for you since I mentioned the “dome of the sky” concerns a constellation that is right up there near the top of that dome on the same side of the sky’s center pole with big bird. That bunch of five stars that look like the letter “W” is called Cassiopeia (I normally leave off that last “e” but my spell checker told me to add it. I think that the spell checker is not correct, but there it is).

The Quadrantid Meteor Shower will peak in the pre-dawn hours of 3 January. The shower actually performs from 28 December through 7 January though the extravaganza performance will be in the night of 2 - 3 January. This shower will be about a third of the size of December’s Geminid but the biggest one to be seen until the Perseid in August. Do not put this meteor shower in your trash box though. It sometimes is very spectacular. It is unusual in that there will be several meteors scrambling across the sky for maybe a day or two before and after the peak, but when the peak occurs, there can be 120 meteors stampeding into the sky each hour. The expert guessers are prognosticating that the middle of that peak should happen around 6 AM on the morning of the third. Here in the Mountain Time Zone, that happens when the sky is brightening up in preparation for the Sun to declare a new day-light period. That should be alright, because the Quadrandid meteors can be rather flashy. You will probably be able to see the best ones. The peak stampede might actually happen a little earlier than that in order to start the ceremony before the Sun decides to get into the act.

Dress warm.

By the way, if you are looking for the Morning section of this celestial events, you will not find it. Other than the travel plans for Venus, I could find nothing of much interest in the morning skies for this month