Re: Midnight Christmas Eve

"Marty" <movac5@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:454-458F78C9-2066@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
For about the last 40 years, it's been my personal tradition to be
outdoors at midnight on Christmas. It doesn't matter which midnight,
(it's a busy time of year,) but I usually make both.
Tonight at 11:55, I put on my winter coat and my old rabbit fur
trooper hat, and then trudged outside to the middle of the harvested
field next to my house. The temperature was 30 degrees F, (-1 C,)
unusually warm for an Iowa December, but still, my heavy old coat would
feel good as I stood out in the gentle winter breeze.
I was a bit disappointed to see nothing but grey clouds when I
first went out, but as I walked, all of a sudden Castor and Pollux
clearly popped into view... had they been there all along? Looking
around at the horizon, I could barely make out the trees along the top
of the hill to my South, and the Pin Oaks along the side of my yard were
silhouetted black and lacy against the clouds. What must have been a
really clumsy bird flapped noisily out the trees, but I didn't see
anything. Occasionally, I could hear a dog bark. I looked around a
little more... Castor and Pollux had disappeared, but now I saw what
had to be Aldebaran high in the sky just a bit toward the southwest.
The clouds were fairly thin in places, and occasionally a star would
peek through. The subtle streaks in the clouds did make the sky rather
pretty in a sort of soothing way. I played a game of "name that star"
against them. Sometimes, several stars would appear at once, and it
took a few seconds for my mind to fill in the patterns and identify the
stars. Of course, every midnight on Christmas, the stars are always in
exactly the same place, but the game became much easier when the entire
constellation of Orion briefly became very dimly visible... that helped
nail everything down. At one time, the Hyades, El Nath, and the corner
of Auriga all became clearly visible... Taurus charging through the
clouds. Sometimes it was just Capella, high above me. I waited to see
if the sky would clear in the East to uncover Saturn... It never did for
sure... at one time, I thought I caught a dim glimpse of him through the
clouds, but it may have been Regulus or Algieba... I looked around a
little more, and turned to head back to my house... overhead, the
Pleiades shown through the thin clouds as a distinctively shaped
nebula... a little cloud of stars behind the clouds... It was a nice end
to my midnight walk, and I headed back inside. It was 12:20. Tomorrow
brings a long drive and a busy day, and there are still some stockings
to fill behind the fireplace.
It's Christmas! I wish all of my astronomical friends a very happy
one!
Marty


I always look forward to your Christmas night walk reports!!! They NEVER
disappoint.

Hope you're having a pleasant Christmas day...

There's a picture or two of our last night's neighborhood luminaria
extravaganza in my Webshots birding album at the link below, even if they
seem sort of out of place there...

--
Jan Owen

To reach me directly, remove the Z, if one appears in my e-mail address...
Latitude: 33.6
Longitude: -112.3
http://community.webshots.com/user/janowen21


.

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    (sci.astro.amateur)