[Gargoyle_Steve (Steve)]

Phil please pass on to your daughter that I experienced a strange siting on Christmas Eve through my scope .... my elderly mother (85 now) has never seen the heavens through a telescope and as I was visiting her for a Christmas dinner that night, and due to the fact that it was an amazingly clear night, I took my dob along. I set it up on the vacant flat grassy block next door around 11pm and for a while I was showing her some of the various brighter objects in the sky.

As I was looking through the telrad and panning across from The Pleiades towards Orion I saw something in the sky - small, moving fast, slight reddish blur. I moved to the eyepiece as fast as I could just in time to catch a glimpse of something leaving the field of view.

It was a very quick glimpse, but I'm SURE I saw a several brownish objects - all moving in a line and sort of connected to each other - and then trailing very close behind them came a bigger object - sort of reddish in colour, with an even brighter red, well, SOMEONE, near the front of it. The whole thing left a faint trail behind as it raced across the sky, like a comets tail, but somehow more glittery and shiny like it was full of stardust.

I can't say for sure it was Santa and his sleigh being pulled across the sky by the reindeer - but it was getting on towards midnight on Christmas Eve, and to be honest I can't think of anything else it could have been!


I hope Abby had a wonderful Christmas full of that special joy that children both give to Christmas and receive from it as well, and I wish her many more wonderful Christmas's to come in the years ahead.

Steve