Richmond Astronomical Society
798th Consecutive Meeting
March 8, 2016
Greetings – approximately 30 in attendance at the meeting.
Jim Browder called our meeting to order in the Eureka meeting room
Announcements / Share Table:
Astronomical League Youth Award (see www.astroleague.org for more information):
Youth imaging award — deadline March 31 2016
Mercury Transit and Astronomy Day activities (Leslie Bochenski)
Library Report:
Welcome 3 Visitors:
• Omar Tibi
• Jeffrey Schulee
• Seth Cameron
Events and Individual Observing:
• RAS members
• Science Museum
• Belmead
Upcoming Events
Staunton River Star Party, March 9-13: Registration is now closed, the Spring installment of the Staunton River Star Party, but there will be another from October 24-30! More information is at this link: http://www.chaosastro.com/starparty/.
Astro-imaging hangout on Google, Tuesday, March 15, 8:00 PM, additional dates to be announced: Bryan Hartley has been most generous in sharing with us his images and the expertise he is rapidly gaining with Pixinsight, a very powerful image processing tool, specifically tuned to the needs of astronomical image processing. Bryan is having an informal series of Google hangouts on astro-image processing with Pixinsight. If you want to join in the hangout, please contact presidentrichastro.org.
Tuckahoe Library Skywatch, Wednesday, March 16, 6:30 PM: Madhup Rathi will have his telescope deployed at Tuckahoe Library on March 16 (rain/cloud date is March 17). At the last skywatch at this location, there were quite a few attendees. We could probably use a few additional volunteer astronomers. If you can help with this event, please contact president@richastro.org.
Science Museum Skywatch, Friday, March 18, 6:30 PM: Skywatch at the Museum in conjunction with the Museum’s Science After Dark event. Please join us and bring a telescope if you can.
Westover Hills Library — Yuri’s Night Celebration, Saturday, April 9, 7:00-9:00 PM: Westover Hills Library is celebrating Yuri’s Night and RAS astronomers will be deployed in the parking lot adjacent to the library to show visitors astronomical views and images, weather permitting. Please contact president@richastro.org if you can help with this event. More info about Yuri’s Night across the world is at https://yurisnight.net/.
RAS Monthly Meeting, Tuesday, April 12, 7:30 PM, Science Museum of Virginia: Please join us for the meeting and, if you can, for dinner before the meeting at Arby’s across the street from the Museum. For those that cannot attend in person, we will stream video of the meeting (internet bandwidth permitting) at: http://ustream.tv/channel/richastro
Belmead skywatch, Saturday, April 16, 7:00 PM: There will be an indoor presentation and skywatch at Belmead on the James starting at 7:00 PM. Belmead is a beautiful dark sky location in Powhatan County. The presentation will be held in the mansion with stargazing afterward.
Please join us if you can. A map to the entrance of Belmead at 5004 Cartersville Road is at the link below. After entering the main gate, just follow signs to the mansion: https:f/goo.gl/maps/K6VXrPG4VWD2.
More information about Belmead and its special place in history is discussed in a recent article in Powhatan Today. Also a short documentary about the storied past of Belmead by local filmmaker Ryan Heathcock is at this link: https://vimeo.com/44733342
Astronomy Day, Saturday May 14, 10:00 AM: The Science Museum of Virginia and the Richmond Astronomical Society will celebrate Astronomy Day at the Museum with a number of exhibits and activities including the ever popular water rocket launching and more. If you can help with this event, please contact president@richastro.org.
Dinwiddie Tiger Den Stargazing: A Dinwiddie area Tiger Den has asked for an RAS volunteer astronomer to make a presentation and facilitate stargazing at one of their meetings. They meet on Monday nights at 7:00 PM in an area with limited light pollution. The group consists of approximately 45 boys ages 6-12. Please contact John Raymond at raymond7419@verizon.net if you would like to help with this presentation.
2016 Star Parties: Lots of star other parties in 2016. The events for which we currently have information are listed at: http://richastro.org/index.php/blog/2016-star-parties/
ShortTalk: “Adventures in Remote Observing,” Madhup Rathi
Break
Presentation: ‘Starting out in Astrophotography,” Madhup Rathi and Bryan Hartley