Back in February I presented a four week course entitled 'the jOURney'. It covered all esoteric matters starting with the history of astrology and introduced the Astro family as the 'hosts' - the father (astroNOMY), the mother (astroLOGY), the son (astroTHEOlogy), the daughter (astroSOPHY) and their pet dog (astroNAUTY).

The relationship between Nomy and Logy started disintegrating in the 17th century ultimately leading to their D-I-V-O-R-C-E when Logy, T-H-E-O and S-O-P-H-Y went their separate ways leaving Nomy with Nauty.

The good news is that Nomy and Logy have reconciled their differences and have finally re-married working together on the true sidereal 21st century approach to studying and interpreting the cosmos which is still in its infancy. I like to call it astronomical astrology although it is known by various other names such as True Sky and Constellational Astrology.

Their re-union led to the recent birth of.....

...AstroNUTS!

Besides having a little fun with this post the real purpose is to announce the launch of a subscription offering which will hopefully enable a helping hand with my operational costs such as the annual web-site/domain/email cost of £205 which is due this month. Yesterday I created a simple two-tier membership offering ridiculously low introductory rates on monthly, annual or lifetime membership for a range of benefits. Full details here.

I have also chosen to resurrect my Telegram channel for those who wish to be kept in the loop on a more regular basis than my 'moonthly' emails and blog posts currently provide - t.me/GelageoHEW

The two membership tiers are named Ophiuchus and the Galactic Centre - lifetime members become Ambassastars (the award given to those who joined me on the jOURney. I was tempted to call them Astronuts but I thought that some may be allergic and 'nut' to keen!

Alongside the family photo is the new Ambassastars logo, created by Leonardo.ai, with the four comets surrounding it added solely for this post, acting as a reminder that 3i/Atlas (comet status in doubt), C/2025 R2 Swan, C/2025 K1 Atlas and C/2025 A6 Lemmon are all crossing our night skies at present with 3i/Atlas due to pass Mars on Friday when hopefully more will be known about its structure and better images (I don't expect the immediate release of either). To observe the path of these comets without venturing outdoors (only two are currently visible with the naked eye) I recommend Stellarium and TheSkyLive websites.

Finally, the gold price continues to rocket and at this rate may well achieve the £3000 per troy ounce/£100 per gram before too much longer. Today's news of the US government shutdown will of course be a factor and, as I have previously remarked, this time of year is associated with the major economic downturns of 1929 and 2008.

Only 85 days to the most commercialised day of the year and 13 weeks until the year end although of course we know that time is cyclical and calendars are control mechanisms.