RAS member Steve Bellavia has created a set of excellent observing charts focusing on the Messier objects and the more popular NGC objects. Each chart is printable and shows the more prominent objects with Telrad circles to help you find them in the sky with your finder scope. He has kindly made them available for … Read more
An Update from John Sokol (Editor’s note: The Library Telescope Program is a project that a number of astronomy clubs support. Participating clubs purchase and maintain simple telescopes that are donated to libraries. The scopes can be checked out as any other materials from the library. Our compliments to John on this very worthwhile endeavor! … Read more
She’s Got It – an update from Josh Urban’s adventures on the farm and in the city. #212 By Josh Urban – Nov 18 Appearing in the Altavista Journal, etc: The Evening Star Howdy, folks, and welcome back to the show! Don’t you think the evening star has a nice ring to it? It used … Read more
by John C Raymond I’d like to share some of my ideas and opinions on binoviewing. What is a System of Binoviewing? An assembly of common observing equipment that’s powerful, portable, easy to use, effective, and fun to use. In my experience Binoviewers enhance the observation of Targets of Excess Light (moon, safe solar, and … Read more
NASA recently selected 75 student teams to begin an engineering design challenge to build rovers that will compete next spring at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center near the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Participating teams represent 35 colleges and universities, 38 high schools, and two middle schools from 20 states, Puerto … Read more
RAS decided to try something different this year, and partner with Henrico County for Astronomy Day. While the crowd was not great, everything else worked out very well, and we were able to smoothly combine astronomy activities at our demo tables with solar observing and nighttime observing, all in the same general area. Henrico County … Read more
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.