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Ephemeris: 10/13/2025 – Celebrating Indigenous Peoples Day
This is Ephemeris for Indigenous Peoples Day, Monday, October 13th. Today the Sun will be up for 11 hours and 4 minutes, setting at 7:01, and it will rise tomorrow at 7:57. The Moon, at last quarter today, will rise at 12:19 tomorrow morning.
This is, according to the current U.S. administration, Columbus Day and only Columbus Day. Some of us commemorate it as Indigenous Peoples Day because they discovered this place first. Columbus never set foot on the continental United States, however he did visit Puerto Rico. The indigenous people beat him to it by more than 1000 years. The reason that Columbus is celebrated because he unleashed the giant migration of Europeans and others, what the indigenous people might just think of a flood of illegal aliens into what they called Turtle Island. It being named after one of their creation stories, which we call North America. No, it’s not “Turtles all the way down”. That’s a Hindu thing.
The astronomical event times given in this blog are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (Lat 44.7° N, Long 85.7° W; EDT, UT – 4 hours) unless stated otherwise. Times will be different for other locations.
Addendum
Ephemeris: 10/14/2024 – The One Who Came From a Shooting Star
This is Ephemeris for Indigenous Peoples Day, Monday, October 14th. Today the Sun will be up for 11 hours and 1 minute, setting at 6:58, and it will rise tomorrow at 7:58. The Moon, 3 days before full, will set at 5:24 tomorrow morning.
I’ll relate it to our comet. Comets are the cause of meteor showers. However, our current comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS will never produce a meteor shower for us because its orbit doesn’t come close to the Earth’s. The closest it gets is half the distance to the Sun which it did five days ago.
The Anishinaabek have a story about how the Wolverine got its name, in their language, gwiingwa’aage, which means “The One Who Came From a Shooting Star”. An evil star spirit crashed to Earth and created a crater in what is now northern Quebec. Later it filled with water, and sometime later this ill-tempered creature crawled out of it. The University of Michigan’s teams are called the Wolverines, even though the wolverine is not native to Michigan.
The astronomical event times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (EDT, UT – 4 hours). Times will be different for other locations.
Addendum
Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog 