John Barnett will be hosting an open house at the RAS Ragland Observatory on Thursday, April 22, starting at 8:00 PM.  The 8.5 day old moon will be in Cancer, near Mars and the Beehive cluster. Saturn will be high in the east.  Watch the Richastro Yahoo Group or check back at this site for weather [...]

New board of directors and new officers: At the last regular meeting of the Richmond Astronomical Society, the board of directors for 2010 was elected.  Many thanks to Chris McCann and Jeff Pike for assembling the slate of board nominees for 2010.  Many thanks as well to the outgoing board for their outstanding service in [...]

RAS 60th Anniversary dinner: Please mark your calendars for the evening of December 4.  We will be holding our 60th anniversary dinner at the Holiday Inn on Staples Mill, near the intersection of Staples Mill and Broad St.  Please plan to attend and bring your spouse or significant other.  Bill Jeffries has invited Jim Condon [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

We understand that the Masonic Home and Meadow Glen skywatches went smoothly this past week.  John Raymond reports that the attendance was good and the weather allowed for enough viewing time at each event, although some clouds rolled in and abbreviated one viewing session.  Thanks very much to John, Tim Streagle, John Barnett and Prashant [...]

_________________ Alert! The Bryan Park Skywatch scheduled for the rain date of September 28 has been cancelled due to maintenance on the soccer fields.  We will resume the Bryan Park skywatches in October. Thanks to everyone for helping out with the skywatches.

We have three more skywatches scheduled for September:  Bryan Park on September 24, the Masonic Home on September 29 and Meadow Glen on September 30.  Please let John Raymond or me (president@richastro.org) know if you can help out with any of these events.  Thanks very much to everyone who has participated in our fall events.  [...]

Mini-star party: Last night’s (Saturday, September 19) mini-star party at the Heart of Virginia Scout Reservation went quite well.  Early in the evening the skies were looking very cloudy without much prospect for clearing.  Fortunately, however, they gradually cleared to a usable degree.  Throughout the night we had patches of high thin clouds move through [...]