“Summertime! How lovely it was out in the country, with the wheat standing yellow, the oats green, and the hay all stacked down in the grassy meadows! And there went the stork on his long red legs, chattering away in Egyptian…” Tales by Hans Christian Andersen The Summer Solstice. Midsummer, that’s what is happening. On…
Author: Dave
Mayday
Mayday The first of May is Mayday, the second of the four cross-quarter Days of the year. It falls midway between the Vernal Equinox and the Summer Solstice, two of the year’s quarter days. In Celtic England, Mayday was called Beltane. The Sun today will rise midway between the place it rises along the horizon…
April Skies
April Skies The first of April, some do say, Is set apart for All Fools Day, But why the people call it so, Nor I, nor they themselves, do know. Poor Robin’s Almanac, 1760 No one knows where the tradition of “April Fools” came from. It’s origin has been wrapped in obscurity for a long…
The Vernal Equinox
The Vernal Equinox: What do you get in Springtime (or thereabouts; that’s how we define it), when the Earth rolls around in its orbit to a place where, if we Earthlings were to gaze up, the Sun lines up against the intersection of two imaginary rings, and the stars behind that intersection are the stars…
Earth Reaches Midpoint in Orbit Between Solstice and Equinox
Earth Reaches Midpoint in Orbit Between Solstice and Equinox: February 2nd is an astronomical Cross-Quarter Day, one of four days in the year when the Earth is midway between the the Equinoxes and the Solstices. This month’s Cross-Quarter Day is called Groundhog Day in the USA, and I’ll bet that 99.9% of the population has…
January Skies are Incredible for Learning the Stars
It isn’t easy, this star business, and it’s terrifically hard to learn the night sky in any season, unless you have someone with you who knows it well already, and can tell the tales that make the forgetting impossible. Well, January’s a good month to get started. Around 8 p.m. local time, there are constellations…
Winter Solstice
December 21st (2021) is the 53rd anniversary of Apollo 8 (December 21–27, 1968), the first manned flight to the Moon. On that day astronauts Lovell, Anders and Borman left the Earth for a 6 day mission to the moon for a live close-up view, as well as the first complete look at the Earth from…
Leonid Meteor Shower
November’s Meteors On the night of November 16th/17th the Leonid Meteor Shower will peak in the wee hours of the morning. This shower is maddeningly unpredictable. In 1933, it was described as ‘like a child’s sparkler held against the sky.’ In 1966 it burst forth over the central western states in the greatest meteor display…
A Crack in Time
Halloween The last night of October was traditionally celebrated as the eve of Winter by the ancient Celts. Moreover, it was also the beginning of their New Year. In ancient Ireland, a new and sacred fire was kindled on this night, from which all the fires of Ireland would be lit. The Celts believed this…
Luna.ClubYachats.Com
Luna has moved to a new server and will be coming online very soon. Luna, and all ClubYachats domains and subdomains are now hosted by RipTide Technologies LLC. This site is “Made in Yachats” Hope to see you in the log files!