Summer Solstice – June 20, 2024, 20:51 UT

The Summer Solstice was on June 20 when the Sun entered Cancer. The Full Moon in Capricorn followed on June 22. The Sun in Cancer is in conjunction with centaur Asbolus, the trans-Neptunian Chaos, and Venus. The Sun squares Neptune in late Pisces and the trans-Neptunian Borasisi in early Aries.

Centaur Asbolus was discovered in 1995. It orbits between Jupiter and Neptune and the orbital period is about 76 years. The planet was named from Greek mythology after centaur Asbolus, a seer that was capable of reading omens in the flight of birds. The name Asbolus means ”sooty” or ”carbon dust”.

In mythology the centaurs are best known for two pivotal fights. One took place between the centaurs and the Lapiths at king Pirithous’s wedding. The other one occured at centaur Pholus’s cave, when Heracles tried to steal the wine which belonged to the whole centaur tribe. Asbolus foresaw the upcoming battle at Pirithous’s wedding, but he was not able to assure the centaurs and prevent them from attending the ceremony, and so many of them lost their lives. When Heracles visited Pholus, it was Asbolus who brought the other centaurs to Pholus’s cave, and thus indirectly and involuntarily contributed to Chiron’s and Pholus’s deaths. Asbolus himself is said to have been crucified by the arrows of Heracles.

Chaos is a cubewano discovered in 1998. Its orbital period is almost 310 years. Chaos was the first of the primordial gods, a void state preceding the creation of the universe. Today we understand chaos as a state where things are out of order, but initially it was an empty, formless and fertile space. Gaia, the personification of Earth emerged from Chaos. As the goddess of the air Chaos was also the mother of birds.

At the Aries point another cubewano, Borasisi with an orbital period of 287.5 years, is in the middle of its sign change, which started in May 2023 and ends in January 2025. Borasisi was discovered in 1999 at 25+ Aquarius, the same degree where Neptune was discovered in 1846. These two bodies are now in conjunction. Neptune is associated with dreams, illusions and untruths, among other things. It dissolves boundaries and thus can make it difficult to tell the truth from a lie. Neptune can also manifest itself in a creative way. Borasisi seems to have much in common with it.

The name Borasisi comes from Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Cat’s Cradle. He uses satire and black humor to examine the relationship between truth and lies. Borasisi is the personification of the Sun in the cosmogony of Bokononism, which Vonnegut describes in his novel. The foundation of the fictional religion of Bokononism is based on living by the holy untruths that make one happy. Many talented writers have a prominent Borasisi in their charts, for example Agatha Christie, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, H. P. Lovecraft, and Henry David Thoreau.

Our challenge today is to find out if the news of the day is true, if the email you receive is just an attempt to empty your bank account, and if the picture you see in your news feed is real or the product of artificial intelligence. For instance, last night I received an email inviting me to join the Illuminati. Not all cheating attempts are so obvious though. Hopefully the presence of Venus, the planet of artistic endeavors, channels the current energies to more positive artistic manifestation instead of deceit.

The New Moon at 16+ Gemini is in exact conjunction with Venus and square to Saturn in Pisces. The New Moon is not tightly in conjunction with any of the named distant minor planets. One of the large Kuiper belt objects that are not yet named, (532037) 2013 FY27, is at 17+ degrees of Virgo square to the New Moon and sesquisquare to Pluto in Aquarius. It forms a t-square with Saturn in Pisces, and the triple conjunction of Venus and the lumiaries in Gemini. At the Summer Solstice in two weeks, 2013 FY27 will be square to the Moon in Sagittarius.

2013 FY27 is one of the three largest unnamed objects in the solar system. It is the ninth intrinsically brightest known trans-Neptunian object. It is bigger than Ixion and almost as big as Varda. 2013 FY27 is a scattered disc object like Eris. It is a binary system with two components approximately 740 km and 190 km in diameter.

2013 FY27 was discovered by Scott Sheppard and Chad Trujillo in March 2013. The orbital period is 448 years. It is currently near its aphelion (the farthest point of its orbit around the Sun), about 80 AU from the Sun. Over time, it will come much closer to Neptune’s neighborhood.

According to the naming rules of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), when the orbit of a minor planet becomes well enough determined so that its position can be reliably predicted into the future, the minor planet receives a permanent designation, a permanent number. The discoverer has the privilege to suggest a name for the body for a period of ten years following the numbering. The permanent number 532037 was assigned for 2013 FY27 five years ago, in May 2019. I hope that the discoverers will make a name proposal soon, unless they already have done so, and this body will get a proper name.

IAU and the science podcast Radiolab have announced a competition to name another unnamed body, one of the quasi-moons of Earth. A quasi-moon is an asteroid that actually orbits the Sun, but if you watch it from the Earth, it looks like it’s orbiting our planet just like the Moon does.

The object in question is (164207) 2004 GU9, an Apollo asteroid discovered on April 13, 2004, near Socorro, New Mexico, by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research project (LINEAR). In the discovery chart it was retrograding at 14+ degrees of Leo opposite Neptune in Aquarius and sextile Mars in Gemini.

People worldwide can suggest a name for the quasi-moon between June 1 – September 30. “We’re excited to bring people together around something that unites us across timezones, national borders, languages, and all manner of differences – our shared sky,” said Latif Nasser, co-host of Radiolab.

If you are interested in participating, read more here:

https://www.iau.org/news/pressreleases/detail/iau2406/