Letters from Josh (A weekly update from Josh Urban’s adventures on the farm and in the city. #204) Excerpted from a Letter from Josh as it appeared in the Altavista Journal. Howdy, folks, and welcome back to the show! The mountain is ripping pieces of clouds. Mom’s chickens do this with a kale leaf, which … Read more
By John Raymond Lyra is a prominent and fascinating constellation that passes overhead for us in the mid-northern latitudes. Its visible most of the year. It has one of the brightest stars, Vega. The other bright stars are famous multiples: Epsilon, Zeta, Delta, Beta, Theta, and Eta. It has two bright Messier objects, planetary M57 … Read more
By John Roberts One of the hurdles that we amateur astronomers have is that most of us live in or near cities with bright night skies. Our home’s Bortle 8+ skies and round trip drive times of 3-5 hours to reach Bortle 3-4 sites means my 11 inch scope does not get used very much … Read more
This was a small group, and the sky adjacent to the building was extremely limited. Luckily the Moon was visible from the sidewalk right outside the front entrance. There were some landscape lights out front, but a paper bag over the closest one made us happy.
The stars aligned for our 7th annual event at Trinity Episcopal High School. We had a large turnout of enthusiastic science students, hot dogs, five telescopes, and a beautiful sky. The physics teacher there, Mrs. Kelly, makes sure that the event is well publicized at the school, and we always have a large group of … Read more
Dear members of RAC, RAS, CAS and the BRAC, Yesterday in Rustville , Va the genesis of what I believe will be an important effort to restore a historical telescope took its first step! Yesterday Jim Browder and Randy Tatum of the Richmond Astronomical Society delivered to the home of Josh Urban (a member of … Read more