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From: dipper@utastro.UUCP (Debbie Byrd)
Newsgroups: net.astro
Subject: StarDate:
Message-ID: <717@utastro.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 31-Oct-84 02:01:28 EST
Article-I.D.: utastro.717
Posted: Wed Oct 31 02:01:28 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 2-Nov-84 05:23:36 EST
Organization: UTexas Astronomy Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 36

The first quarter moon will illuminate the sky this Halloween evening.
More -- right after this.

October 3l  Halloween

A first quarter moon will be shining down on trick-or-treaters on
Halloween night -- a moon dead overhead when evening begins -- bound to
illuminate the landscape as well as any neighborhood streetlight.  This
happens to be the second first quarter moon for this month -- possible
because the moon takes slightly less than a month to go through all its
phases.

If you're out there trick-or-treating tonight, you might let the moon
remind you that Halloween is really an astronomical holiday.  It's the
fourth and final cross-quarter day for the year.  Cross-quarter days
lie about midway between a solstice and an equinox.  In the case of
Halloween, and the other cross-quarter days, the dates aren't exact --
since people used to be less precise than we are about the dates for
the solstices and equinoxes.

The other cross-quarter days are Candlemas, February 2nd, called
Groundhog Day in America -- May l, or May Day -- and August l, with its
early harvest festival called Lammas.

Halloween is the most sinister of the four cross-quarter days.  That's
got to be because the days are now growing shorter and the nights
longer -- with no relief in sight until the solstice on December 2l --
the day the sun makes its lowest arc across the sky visible from the
northern hemisphere.  On Halloween, witches and ghosts supposedly prowl
around until midnight -- when good spirits arrive to get rid of them.


Script by Deborah Byrd.


(c) Copyright 1983, 1984 McDonald Observatory, University of Texas at Austin