Finally a SkyScraping with something other than COVID-19 discussion and the world gone amok. That’s right, the Minor Planet Center posted two new names for potentially inspiring Kuiper Belt Objects: Mbaba Mwana Waresa and Leleakuhonua. Despite the Sun and Venus in Gemini, it’s going to take a few articulations before those names roll off the tongue.
Mbaba Mwana Waresa supercedes the nomenclature of the minor solar system object 184314, A.K.A. 2005 EO302. The daughter of the sky god Umvelinqangi, she is a fertility goddess for the Zulus in South Africa. She lives in the clouds in a hut made of rainbows. She oversees rain and when she played her bongos it became thunder. She holds powers over water and earth, and within that, she stands as the ruler of agriculture and one of the most revered gods for the Zulus.
As well, she possesses the ability to shapeshift. Another name for her is Nomkhubulwane, which literally translates to “she who chooses the state of an animal.”
Her shape shifting skills came in handy. According to lore, she could not find a suitable mate in the heavens so in the days before Tinder and such, she scoured South Africa for a good partner. She fell in love with a herdsman, Thandiwe. She decided to test his loyalty. She shifted herself into a hag and watched as she sent a lovely bride his way. Thandiwe did not fall for the deception and the overjoyed Mbaba Mwana Waresa and he were married.
The other gods, who looked down on humans, expressed their discontentment with this marriage. She needed a pacification of sorts. Her remedy: She invented beer. Conflict resolved. In honor of her, traditional beer, umqombothi, is made from sorghum and brewed only by women.
A raucous kegger will not honor Mbaba Mwana Waresa. There is a protocol for consuming beer:
First, the female brew master skims the head off the pour and renders it on the ground to honor the ancestors and spirits.
The hostess drinks to indicate that the beer is safe to drink.
The host drinks to verify the brew is of sufficient quality for his guests.
The guests are served. All drink from the same clay pot or gourd (obviously pre-coronavirus) and everyone must sit or squat while drinking.
Men are to remove hats, in respect for Mbaba Mwana Waresa and her gifts to the world.
As of zero hour GMT on 14 June, Mbaba Mwana Waresa transits 8 Scorpio 29 within her 305.27 year orbit. Her north node is 0 Aries 30; her perihelion (both positions heliocentric) stands at 29 Sagittarius 46. Her zodiac defined orbital elements align with the cardinal cross for all intents and purposes. What does this mean?
Pull from her a sense of urgency that comes from what is known. Know the seasons, know the time. When it is time to do what you must do and you know it, get on with it, without hesitation. Since she now transits Scorpio, how about getting on with those creative and passionate endeavors that feed the depths of the soul? You know the kind of stuff you have to do no matter what... the kind of stuff that one might cry in their beer if they failed to pursue. We can’t have that! Beat the bongos, ride the rainbows, and get on with it.
From rainbows in South Africa we socially distance astral travel to one of the most rainbow abundant lands in the northern hemisphere: Hawaii nei.
The astronomers watching the most-distant regions of the Kuiper Belt named object 541132 (2015 TG387) as Leleakuhonua. This compelling object came to light as part of the search for Planet 9, the Mars-sized object presumed to be in the orbital realm of Sedna... which will be a full-fledged planet in our solar system when discovered. Previously called “the Goblin” because it was first discovered in October of 2015, Leleakuhonua literally means “where heaven meets the earth,” an appropriate tagline for astrology. One online source speculates the exact location where this meeting of worlds occurs is located immediately beside the Four Seasons Resort on Oahu. You think the green fees were high before! Wait until they hear about this!
Leleakuhonua falls into the astronomical categories of an extreme trans-Neptunian object and sednoid A sednoid is defined as a trans-Neptunian object with a perihelion distance greater than 50 AU and a semi-major axis greater than 150 AU. As an aside, raising the semi-major axis of an object to the 1.5 power will determine the orbital period of that object. In this case the orbital period is 35,762.62 years. That’s no typo. This is an object that orbits our Sun and takes a leisurely damn near 36K years to do so.
The body crosses the ecliptic at 0 Aquarius 47, which offers up the north node. It has an extremely eccentric orbit. As of 0 hours GMT 14 June it transits 10 Aries 13. Given it maintains a perihelion of 28 Taurus 33, the object is closing in on the closest contact to the sun where it travels the fastest. While we might be inclined to assume that an object taking so long to move about the Sun emulates a fixed star and remains in virtually one place in a lifetime, that’s not so. If one were born in 1950, the object moved through 5 degrees of Pisces. In 1958, it passed through about 9 degrees of Pisces... and now at 10 Aries! As such, this is a compelling object to watch.
Presently, chart data for Leleakuhonua remains difficult to find. While Mbaba Mwana Waresa can be added into charts on astro.com, the data for Leleakuhonua is not yet available. The zodiacal positions provided above were converted from raw astronomical data. Ultimately the data will become available and I will generate ephemerides and keywords. So, in that... more to come.
We’re dang near at the 50% point of 2020. It’s been a year right? Believe it or not, despite restrictions, quarantines and such, there is still something to be made of this year.