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 updates on the day of the event.

Directions:

From Henrico West End, go south on Parham rd, cross river on Willy bridge, rt onto Hugenot rd., then left onto Buford rd. Turn rt onto Rockaway rd and travel across the railroad,the creek (where Rockaway becomes Old Bon Air Rd.), and just past Mt Nebo church. Don’t go as far as the stoplight at Robious rd. You should be at the rear/side entrance of a shopping center ( Robious Hall, I think its called). turn left to drive behind the stores until you come to a fire hydrant and a steel gate on the left. The observatory is up　 the gated driveway.

From Chesterfield, go Rt.60 (Midlothian Tpke) and turn north at the stoplight onto Robious Rd. This turn is toward a mobile home park entrance and a small shopping center. Enter the shopping mall, maneuver behind it to the service area. The observatory is located up a gated driveway near the fire hydrant behind the mall.

For those with GPS:

Latitude = 37deg 30′ 31″

Longitude= 77deg 34′ 45″

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.

(more…)

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

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.
(more…)

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.
_____________

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.

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 per hour.” (more…)

Cindy Bowers and I went to a NASA tweetup with the crew of the STS-127 space shuttle in Washington, DC this week. I have the story on my web page.