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Árbol del Sol
Thought for the Month Santa Claus has the right idea. Visit people only once a year.
Between-the-Holidays at Elephant Butte There were some unfortunate things that prevented the normal turnout for this popular event. The “perfect storm” of unfortunate events included high winds, diabolical action by the city of Elephant Butte waste management office (they surrounded our event location with signs on the streets in every direction telling us that the streets were closed and attendance at the SunTree event could be achieved only by breaking the law), unfortunate surgery in far-off, frozen Denver and an emergency family birthday party. Despite all of those handicaps, the die-hard participants of this event were able to attend. Each attendee, naturally, brought enough food to satisfy the hunger of all of the expected participants. We all left the event with (over) satisfied stomachs. It is estimated that there were many afternoon naps amongst the SunTree gang on 14 December. One piece of business that took place was to fill in and modify our prediction calendar for 2009. All are asked to please look at the results and contact SunTree if there are any apparent conflicts and any suggestions for filling in the blanks remaining in the calendar. The club events are for the members and potential members. Please let us know what it is that you want and when.
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. Those who have not done this in the past are requested to share your trip news through your newsletter. If you feel that there is information in your report that you want to only share it with the members, let us know and that information will be included only in the members-only versions of the newsletter, but please share.
A little something for everybody in the night sky Evening Sky: A grand entrance into the New Year has been arranged by the cooperation of a spectacularly bright Venus, the crescent Moon along with the two planets at either end of the size category in our system, Jupiter and Mercury. The ceremony actually starts before the New Year’s eve activities. Those of you who do not suffer from blurry vision on New Year’s Eve will want to go look at the chummy hookup in the western sky between the crescent Moon and Venus. Venus will be easy to see at a spectacular magnitude – 4.3. Below and to the right, you can catch a final glimpse of Jupiter (also very bright at magnitude – 1.9), hovering at 40 minutes after sunset in the southwest, to the right of Mercury and just 8 degrees high. The next night, on the first, Venus blazes much higher up, with the crescent Moon higher still. Each successive evening until the eighth, Mercury ascends higher while Jupiter sinks from view. Mercury will reach its highest on 4 January. On that same day, Space Ship Earth will reach perihelion (the closest it comes to the Sun all year) when we will only be 91,400,000 miles from the Sun. Buy some sunblock. Saturn will be rising at around 9:30 PM at midmonth. Venus stands just to the right of Uranus on 22 and 23 January, above the Moon on 29 and below the Moon on 30. 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 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). Morning (Mercury crosses to “the other side”): Mercury might be seen very low in the east 40 minutes before sunrise from 29 to 31 January. Earth reaches perihelion in annual position closest to the Sun on the fourth. Quadrantid Meteor Shower pre-dawn 3 January 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. If you are planning to celebrate the lunar New Year on 26 January in Australia or New Zealand this year, you can observe an annular solar eclipse there.
© 2004 SunTree Travel Club - Site updated Summer 2010 |
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What Happened in December