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Dark Sky Park: The Mischievous Month of October

http://ipraudio.interlochen.org/2013-10-4%20Mischievous%20Month.mp3

The Headlands International Dark Sky Park was pleased to participate in the inaugural MidWest Space Fest held over the weekend at the Traverse City ECCO Center. Guest speakers included Jerry Dobek, from Northwestern Michigan College and Mary Stewart Adams, Program Director for the Headlands, with keynote speaker, Dr Alex Filipenkko from UCLA, Berkeley discussing "Dark Energy."

The story of this time of year is full of mischief, given that October brings the first Full Moon north of the celestial equator for the season. This means we will have greater moonlight than sunlight in the northern hemisphere from Autumn Equinox to Spring Equinox in March ~ and the Moon, as Luna, is traditionally more associated with mischief than the Sun.

Further, the first few weeks of October each year bring a series of days that were, once upon a time, completely removed from the calendar. Headlands Program Director Mary Stewart Adams has dubbed these ten days the "Gregory Days" because they are the days in 1582 that Pope Gregory XIII removed from the calendar in 1582. This reform was imposed upon the Christian nations in Gregory's domain on October 4, 1582, and resulted in the loss of ten days ~ so that folks went to bed on October 4, and when the awoke the next day, it was October 15 on the calendar. This calendar reform caused riots in nearly every community where it was adopted for the next two-hundred+ years.

It wasn't until 1755 that the Gregorian calendar was adopted in the Americas. At that time, the North American colonies still belonged to the British Empire, and this imposition for a calendar reform caused a great disturbance among the colonists, who were angry because they felt that their time and days and ability to work and earn money were being taken away from them.

Other "hidden" days in our calendar and our culture include Leap Day, Blue Moon, the 20-year sleep of Rip Van Winkle, and the century-long sleep of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus.