Food Closet hosts open house Feb. 9

Carson Valley Community Food Closet hosts an open house 3-6 p.m. Feb. 9. All are welcome to visit the facility for a tour of the warehouse and distribution center and to enjoy some light refreshments.

The annual community open house is an invitation to the public to see first-hand all CVCFC is able to accomplish through the generosity of food donations, monetary contributions, and volunteer hours. The non-profit CVCFC provides grocery assistance to those experiencing food insecurity with support from individuals, businesses, food merchants, service groups, and churches as well as their partnership with the Food Bank of Northern Nevada.

CVCFC volunteers perform a variety of roles that include greeting clients, shelving items, filling food vouchers, and picking up food donations. Anyone interested in volunteering at CVCFC is invited to attend one of their monthly orientations, held onsite the fourth Tuesday of each month from 10:30 a.m.-11:30 a.m. The next orientation takes place February 28.

CVCFC is located at 1251 Waterloo Lane in Gardnerville; their phone number is 775-782-3711. More information about the food closet’s services, programs, special events, and ways to help can be found online at www.thefoodcloset.org

Comet makes a pass close to Earth

My sister is well acquainted with my fondness for nighttime sky gazing and has been sending me updates about Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF), which was discovered last March by Zwicky Transient Facility astronomers at the Palomar Observatory in Southern California.

“The Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) is a public-private partnership aimed at a systemic study of the optical night sky” (ztf.caltech.edu). Every two days, ZTF uses “an extremely wide-field of view camera” attached to the Samuel Oschin Telescope to scan the Northern sky. Astronomers can use the data collected to observe and investigate space objects both near (in relative terms) and into the far outer-reaches of space.

NASA defines comets as “…frozen leftovers from the formation of the solar system com-posed of dust, rock, and ices. They range for a few miles to tens of miles wide, but as they orbit closer to the sun, they heat up and spew gases and dust into a glowing head that can be larger than a planet. This material forms a tail that stretched millions of miles” (solarsystem.nasa.gov). A more comprehensive exploration of comets and a great gallery of comet images are available on NASA’s solar system website.

Today marks the day that C/2022 E3 (ZTF) reaches its closest proximity to Earth, a distance of about 26 million miles. There’s a chance the comet will be visible without the aid of binoculars or a telescope in the hours after sunset, but the waxing moon’s light could impact visibility.

So far, my efforts to see this green-hued comet haven’t been successful, but that won’t stop me from trying again this evening. Though the Wednesday forecast calls for partly cloudy skies as of this writing, I still plan to head outside with binoculars and look north toward Ursa Major and Ursa Minor to see if I can catch a glimpse of the comet. If the moon is too bright, I’ll try again early Thursday morning sometime after the moon sets at 4:30 a.m.

A beautiful blooming

My dad and stepmom sent my family a potted amaryllis at Christmastime. The container showed no evidence of growth when it arrived, and I wondered if the bulb had maybe frozen in December’s frigid temperatures.

Soon after the holidays however, a green stem emerged from the soil and has been growing steadily since. To my great delight, the amaryllis has opened in a fiery spectacle of red, just in time for Valentine’s Day.