A couple of months ago, several very dedicated graduate students from UVA presented at our monthly Richmond Astronomical Society meeting about the “Dark Skies, Bright Kids” program they are sponsoring in Charlottesville.  The program enhances science education at rural schools.  The graduate students have put a great deal of their personal time and effort into [...]

Many thanks to all who helped out with Astronomy Day at the Science Museum of Virginia and at Belmead on the James.  Everyone did a great job – thanks for all the good work! Also please join us for our next monthly meeting on June 12 at 7:30 PM at the Science Museum of Virginia [...]

Masayuki Tachikawa was observing Jupiter early on the morning of August 21st (18:22 Universal Time on the 20th), when his video camera captured a 2-second-long flash on the planet’s disk.  Check out this article in Sky and Telescope. The video of the flash is at this link and below along with an image captured by [...]

Sydney asked her dad Mark (one of our members) if they could build a telescope.  They are doing just that and have set up a web site to chronicle their adventure here.  Mark has also set up an email address for comments/suggestions:  sydney.telescope.blog@gmail.com.   It looks like they are going to have loads of fun with [...]

As we all know, astronomy is an extremely weather-dependent activity (unless you happen to have a space telescope at your disposal).  As such, most astronomers have an interest in the weather and many of us have gained quite a bit of expertise in gauging weather conditions for a night of viewing.  What better subject to [...]

SMV Skywatch: The last skywatch at the Science Museum of Virginia was very well attended.  As Terry Barker noted in his March 20th post on the event, our skywatch coincided with an event at the museum associated with the 2010 FIRST Robotics competition.  Bus after bus of participants rolled into the museum parking lot.  Many [...]

Astronomical Events for 2010: Wow!  The calendar is already filling up with astronomical events for the year.  Thanks to Betty Wilson we have a list of some of the more notable upcoming events.  Betty discussed these during her presentation at the regular RAS meeting in March.  (Image by David Medici) ___ ___ ___ ___ March [...]

Last Skywatch: Thanks to everyone who helped out with the last Skywatch at the Science Museum on Friday, February 19.  I understand that the event was well attended as was the January skywatch.  After I sent out the call for additional telescopes, I got a fantastic response from the members which is very much appreciated!.  [...]

Last meeting: Thanks to John Barnett for the informative presentation on the Aphelic Opposition of Mars and thanks to Bill Dickinson for allowing John to show us his outstanding images of the planet.  I know I learned a lot.  Even though I missed viewing Mars around the opposition, it still is quite a nice view [...]

Thanks and good wishes for 2010: Thanks to everyone who attended and who assisted with our 60th anniversary dinner in December.  By all accounts it was a great event.  The Holiday Inn served us good food, Jim Condon with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory presented a fascinating talk and Gary Cowardin and John Barnett helped [...]