Regular readers of the Yankee Belle blog know the bloggers pretty well, don't you? Mindy is the Texas rancher, Cate is the teacher living in the middle of Brooklyn, Ruthy is the Upstate New York pumpkin farmer, and Missy is the sweet-as-a-Georgia-peach pastor's wife. But what about me? Well, Jan is the lover of all things Black Hills and a closet weather geek.
What? You didn't know I was a weather-geek?
Of course, in our new Black Hills home, there is plenty of sky to be watching!
I've been known to drive a hundred miles to experience a temperature inversion, or spend hours looking at weather maps. I'll go outside in the middle the night to feel what -15° is like, or bake in the sunshine on a 100° day to get my dose of Vitamin D (it doesn't take long!)
Now that we live in the country (wide open spaces and little light pollution,) I'm adding a bit of astronomy in a subheading under meteorology. A couple years ago, I started tracking the sunrise and sunset times in my bullet journal, along with the day's weather and phases of the moon. I'm slowly learning to recognize constellations (hello, Orion!) and have started tracking their nightly progress.
One reason why I take the dogs out for their final nightly walk instead of my dear husband is to look at the stars!
All of this is an introduction about what I really want to talk about today! This is the winter solstice, and it's a very special day.
For the first time since 1226, tonight we will be able to observe a great conjunction of planetary alignment with Saturn and Jupiter - basically, a double star.
That's pretty cool. Here's an article about it: Is it the star of Bethlehem? or This article from Forbes
Whether it is the star of Bethlehem or not, it's still a fantastic occurrence. Not a once in a lifetime event, but a once in a millennium event!
I just hope the skies will be clear tonight!
But the greatest thing about the winter solstice is that our daylight hours begin to increase.
Starting tomorrow, the days will be a little bit longer and the nights a little bit shorter. Only about a 15-20 second difference at first, but then the sun begins its journey north, picking up speed as it goes until we reach the summer solstice. This difference isn't as dramatic the farther south you go, and I can just imagine what that yearly trek is like in Canada or Alaska!
You might have noticed that the increase in daylight just happens to happen close to our celebration of our Savior's birth.
Coincidence? I don't think so.
Many years before Jesus' birth, Isaiah prophesied this:
John, in the first chapter of his gospel, tells us this:
Jesus is the light of the world.
Have a wonderful Christmas week!
Jan Drexler has always been a "book girl" who still loves to spend time within the pages of her favorite books. She lives in the Black Hills of South Dakota with her dear husband of many years and their active, crazy dogs, Jack and Sam. You can learn more about Jan and her books on her website, www.JanDrexler.com.
I am so in agreement over this, all of it! It's fascinating, isn't it? And we're got snow rolling in tonight, so we might be too cloudy to see the planets line up, but take a picture, all right? And share it? I love celestial events, and when we talk about the sizes of galaxies and the expansion of the universe, the whole thing is so much out of my realm of understanding that it boggles the mind.... but the sky over me is a fascination. Thank you, Jan!
ReplyDeleteThe immensity of it all is incomprehensible, isn't it? But only to us. God has it all in the palm of His hand. :-)
DeleteThanks for sharing this, Jan. I never knew you were a weather geek, but I do love all of this detail. I've loved astronomy since I was a girl. My HS had a built-in planetarium (How spoiled were we?), so I got to take astronomy as a senior elective. My final project was to run a show about the constellations. Orion was always my favorite and I can actually see him in the night sky in Brooklyn! So recognizable by his belt.
ReplyDeleteWe don't really get many stars visible here, but that is one of the things my daughter loves about being in Maine. She keeps saying SO.MANY.STARS.
When they were little, we had those little glow in the dark stars and I arranged them in the patterns of constellations on their bedroom ceiling.
Another sweet memory you brought me today. Thank you.
Forgot to add, we're due for snow tonight too. I had been anticipating the Christmas Star ever since I read about it on the Weather Channel a few weeks ago, but we've got nothing but cloud cover for most of the next two weeks.
DeleteAstronomy is fascinating, isn't it?
DeleteToo bad about the cloud cover tonight. We're supposed to be partly cloudy, so we'll just have to wait and see if it's cloudy in the wrong place.
But with the coming snow, maybe you'll have a white Christmas!