The event was a big success—collecting almost 50 Christmas trees and other holiday greens and multiple boxes of food donations and $1,700 for the Lee Food Pantry, which serves residents from several communities in the area.
Cinching evening darkness, new moon falls on the 29th, followed by evenings enhanced by a waxing crescent moon that sets early leading to long, dark, moonless nights.
On Friday and Saturday, the 7th and 8th, follow a robust crescent moon from midafternoon in the southeast until it completes its arc before midnight in the southwest.
In the hour before sunrise during the last week of September and the first week of October, an additional incentive to prompt our waking up to go outdoors in the early morning is the promise of witnessing the ethereal zodiacal light.
There’s much more to lure us outdoors at 4 a.m.: Between catching shooting stars, skim the southern skyline to see one of the most compelling constellations, Scorpius the Scorpion, accented by brilliant, red-orange Mars and golden Saturn.
As spring stars and constellations rise in the east and travel the heavens all night, winter’s dazzling stars and constellations are poised to set in the west before midnight.
I am eager to locate Mercury as soon as it is physically possible for the eye to see it as daylight fades into twilight. It is said that the Greeks tested their eyesight in this way.
In deepening twilight, above Venus the planet Mars emerges, with its dim but steady, rusty-gold to orange light. The two planets appear closer together each evening, an exquisite show culminating on the 20th when a waxing, eyelash crescent moon joins the pair the day before their closest approach.
When a sufficient percentage of the community has been vaccinated, the entire community is protected. We have now fallen below that point with measles, and we are approaching that point with polio.
Uniquely, right now it is easy for relatively late risers to enjoy the beauty and wonder of celestial dawn. Beginning today and lasting through January 10, sunup in our locale is at 7:22 a.m., the latest of the year.
