John Barnett will be hosting an open house at the RAS Ragland Observatory on January 24th, starting at 6:00 PM.  The moon will be visible early in the evening on the 24th and for those that stay until 9:00 PM that night, Mars will clear the eastern tree line and treat us to a view of the planet with a disk 14.1 arc-seconds in diameter.  Watch the Richastro Yahoo Group or check back at this site for weather updates on the day of the event.

If you ‘re not familiar with the Ottewell Calendar, this may be a good way to get introduced to it. For those who are not faimiliar with this treasure, it’s a large (11 x 15 inches) paperbook compilation of information about sky events for the coming year.

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The December monthly open house at the Ragland Observatory is scheduled for December 26, starting at 6pm.  The moon will be ten days old, which will highlight the crater Clavius and Jura Mountains.  A last look at Jupiter may be possible early.  This would be a good time to set up new Christmas and Hannukah telescopes on the grounds!  I will send an email (on the Richastro Yahoo list) early on the 26th day confirming to go ahead or cancel the event, depending on the cloud prospects.
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John Barnett

The year’s show should be exceptional, at 30 to 300 per hour. Look between 2 and 4 am (Tues. morning).

John Barnett will be hosting an open house at the Ragland Observatory on November 22 at 6:00 PM weather permitting.

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The store

Every year, Hands On Optics, hosts The Eastern Astronomy Show. Several RAS members, like myself, John Raymond, and Bill Jeffries, have gone in the past and liked it, so John organized a road trip for the 2009 event (Saturday, Oct. 31). Joining John and me, were Bill Jeffries, Dave Walton, Tim Streagle, and Jim Langley.
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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.
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Clouds prevailed, however, but thanks very much to John Raymond and Terry Barker for bringing their telescopes.  Hopefully we will have better weather next time.  Please watch the calendar and website for updates.

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 them, under the title “Twitter feed.” (more…)

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.