The annual meeting of the Virginia Association of Astronomical Societies will be held this year on the campus of Roanoke College in the Colket Center (221 College Lane, Salem, VA) on October 9 from 9:00 AM to 4:30 PM with evening observing opportunities. More information is at:
Events
A great night at City Point
RAS had three telescopes at the latest skywatch for the Petersburg National Battlefield Park Service at City Point in Hopewell. And it’s a good thing we had as many scopes as we did, because we were surprised by a sizable group of scouts that had come for a rocket and astronomy activity earlier in the day. With parents, we probably had 100-125 viewers in attendance.
Observatory Open House – 8:00pm Sunday, Oct. 17th
Members and guests are welcome to the Ragland Observatory’s monthly open house at 8:00 pm, Sunday evening, Oct. 17th. I’ll send out a reminder the day before on the club’s directory ( keep Jim Blowers advised if your email has changed) and on Richastro.org. Unless it’s actually raining, a staff member will be present. Use your own judgement about the … Read more
Sydney’s Telescope
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 … Read more
Added share button to site
I just added a new link to our web page, in the rightmost column, under Categories. To use it, once you open an article for reading, just click on the Share button. This will take you to a page where you can select a social network to share it with.
Moon and Mars converge
If you go outside tonight (June 17), or the next few nights, you’ll see the Moon very close to Mars, and moving toward Saturn. Here’ the view on June 16. As the nights go by, the Moon will move to the left.
Shore Leave 32
This is a science fiction convention that I’ve been trying to get to for about three years. I think this is the year I’m actually going to make it. If you’re a Battlestar Galactica fan, the guests this year are going to make you delirious.
We’re less than two months away from Shore Leave 32, so here’s a reminder that pre-registration for Shore Leave 32 should be postmarked by June 15, 2010 to be accepted at the weekend rate of $80.00 for adults and $20.00 for children ages 5-12. After that, memberships will be sold at the door. Cancellations will be honored until July 1, 2010. We cannot guarantee any refunds after that date.
Yuri’s night at the Westover Hills Library
RAS had three telescopes at the Westover Hills Library last night, to help them celebrate Yuri’s Night-an annual worldwide party to celebrate Yuri Gagarin’s first flight into space–as well as to promote space exploration. The library highlighted many books on astronomy and space celebration, and held events for the younger kids to celebrate the night. We saw many home made flying saucers around our telescopes later in the night.
RAS and the 2010 Metro Richmond Science Fair
RAS tries to motivate students to learn about astronomy in several different ways. In addition to holding many skywatches with schools and scouting groups, we also hand out money at one of the bigger science fairs: The Metro Richmond Science Fair. This fair draws students from the greater Richmond area, and usually ends up with two or three hundred projects.
Robot kids invade
Wow, we got quite a bonus at the Science Museum last night. At the beginning of our monthly skywatch, we might see a crowd of 30 or 40 people gathered around the Kugel, waiting for us to set up our telescopes. But, as I pulled up to the entrance last night, I saw a group of about 100 people standing there. And the driveway was full of buses. It turns out that the Science Museum was hosting part of this year’s 2010 FIRST Robotics competition. So, kids had come in from all over the place, including other states.