Greetings All!
Here it is again - another Advent season. This season of expectation, waiting and contemplation always seems so incongruous with the Real World. Even though we can barely call it fall here in our Sonoran Desert home, the light tells us it is late fall. I love waking in the early morning darkness and descending the steps after a day of work into the same quiet stillness.
There are other subtle signs of winter. We've enjoyed a few cloudy days and a little rain here in Tucson. Today, Nov. 30, it has fallen steadily all day, and that is a blessing for the desert trees. The grape leaves have fallen, and the palette of greens in the back yard turned from the greyish desert green, to a distinctly yellowish green. Laura says the roots are absorbing sugars from the leaves.
Through late October and much of November, we watched Comet Holmes. Sky and Telescope reported: "On October 24th, periodic Comet Holmes (17P) brightened by nearly a million times overnight. For no apparent reason, it erupted from a very dim magnitude 17 to about magnitude 2½. Within a day its starlike nucleus had expanded into a perfectly round, bright little disk in binoculars and telescopes. It looked like no comet ever seen."
Bob expertly picked it out each night - visible with the naked eye even in the city (well, our city with a dark skies ordinance) and better yet with the binoculars. It is moving through the constellation Perseus, though we found it to the right of Cassiopia (the big W constellation) and near Capella, a really bright overhead star. It slowly moved from a perfect right triangle to an arc as the month passed. It will be up there through March. We've posted a photo from the NOAO website below in case you missed it.
The Beaver Moon - the funniest name for the full November moon - lit up the sky last week. Orion is peeking over our rooftop - another harbinger of winter.
The Winter Solstice occurs today, Dec. 21 at 1108 pm MST.
Here's the National Weather Service report on the Solstice.
THE WINTER SOLSTICE WILL OCCUR WHEN THE SUN REACHES ITS
SOUTHERN MOST LATITUDE OF THE YEAR AT 1108 PM MST FRIDAY.
THIS IS WHEN THE SUN WILL BE DIRECTLY OVER THE TROPIC OF
CAPRICORN IN THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE AT 23 1/2 DEGREES
LATITUDE SOUTH OF THE EQUATOR. IT WILL BE PRECISELY 1108 PM
MST FRIDAY WHEN THE SUN ENDS ITS 6 MONTH JOURNEY SOUTH AND
BEGINS ITS 6 MONTH JOURNEY NORTH.
THIS IS THE TIME OF YEAR WHEN THE LONGEST SHADOWS ARE CAST
BY OBJECTS IN THE SUNSHINE IN THE NORTHERN HEMISPHERE. AT
1228 PM MST FRIDAY IN PHOENIX...THE SUN WILL BE AT ITS LOWEST
ANGLE OF THE YEAR WHEN DIRECTLY SOUTH IN THE SKY. THIS ANGLE
IS 33 DEGREES ABOVE THE SOUTHERN HORIZON IN PHOENIX.
We're further south in Tucson, so the angle here is 34.4
degrees. Sunrise/sunset are at 7:21 am and 5:23 pm today,
then we welcome the return of old sol.
