Thanks to everyone who came out for the skywatch at Woodlake.  It was one of those events where the weather made it a tough call whether to have the skywatch.  Reports at the site indicated clearing and there was some clear sky to the west, so it made sense to go ahead with the event. [...]

Bryan Park Skywatch: I understand that the latest Bryan Park skywatch went well.  There were about 50 visitors at the park. Tim Streagle, John Barnett, Terry Barker, and John Raymond brought scopes with Tim and John Barnett bringing their homemade scopes.  One of the attendees commented to me that they really enjoyed seeing the homemade [...]

Richmond Astronomical Society 721th Consecutive Meeting October 13, 2009 —– Jim Browder called our meeting to order, in the Eureka Room. Greeting & Announcements – approximately 36 in attendance at the meeting. This will be a very special meeting! Share table: John brought some books for anyone interested in having them.  He also brought a [...]

Richmond Astronomical Society 720th Consecutive Meeting September 8, 2009 —– Jim Browder called our meeting to order, in the Eureka Room. Greeting & Announcements – approximately 34 in attendance at the meeting. Share table: There were a few magazines who want them.  There was also information regarding how far the TV broadcast signals have traveled [...]

I post stuff periodically on the club’s Twitter site, richastrova. Up to this point, you had to have a Twitter account to see those postings, but now we’ve made those “tweets” available from the club’s web page. If you go to the web site, and page down, looking in the right hand column, you’ll see [...]

The best time to view this shower will be tomorrow morning, before sunrise. I plan on going out to the scout camp around midnight–is anyone else up for going? Send me an email, and maybe we can ride together.

If it’s like last night,there will be a very nice Iridium flare tonight, 20 Oct, at  8:02 pm. It will be  -5  magnitude, 38° high, in the NNE direction.

October 19, 2009: The Orionid meteor shower peaks this week and it could be a very good show. “Earth is passing through a stream of debris from Halley’s Comet, the source of the Orionids,” says Bill Cooke of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office. “Flakes of comet dust hitting the atmosphere should give us dozens of meteors [...]

Many, many thanks to Anne Verbiscer for fascinating us at our meeting on October 13 with the story of the discovery of Saturn’s largest ring by her, Michael Skrutskie (UVA) and Douglas Hamilton (University of Maryland)! In February of this year, Anne and her colleagues used Spitzer’s infrared camera, called the multiband imaging photometer, to [...]