Monthly meetings are held on the second Tuesday of each month at 7:30 PM online at this link

Events

Ladies and Gentlemen, start your webcams!

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If you haven’t heard, something has hit Jupiter and left a dark spot in the upper cloud layers of the planet.  The impact apparently occurred several days ago and the resulting spot is reportedly still visible through moderate size telescopes and would make a great webcam target for the imagers in our group.  More information … Read more

Tesla lecture

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This was a Lunch Break Science event at the Science Museum. The talk was given by the Byrd Theatre’s Todd Schall-Vess. He gave an excellent overview of Nikola Tesla’s contribution to science, and also the gut wrenching details of how he was cheated out of large amounts of money several times in his life.

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Alan Bean, art exhibit at Smithsonian

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Alan Bean, NASA astronaut, and 4th man to walk on the moon, is also an artist. He hightlighted some of work at the recent Green Bank Starquest convention, and he now has a large exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum in DC. The exhibit will run through January.

Apollo 11 is getting ready to launch!

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This is from Komando.com.

Today is an important day in America’s history. It’s the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 launch from Cape Canaveral, FL.

Apollo 11 was the first manned mission to land on the moon. To commemorate the anniversary, NASA is recreating the mission. You can watch it on today’s Cool Site.

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Brandermill Skywatch, Aug. 3

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John Raymond, our outreach coordinator, has arranged for a Summer Skywatch on Monday, August 3, 8:30 – 10 pm at Swift Creek Middle School.  This is a repeat performance – last year we provided telescopes and astronomers for a skywatch which was well attended by lots of interested Brandermill residents. Please let John or me … Read more

Iridium flare tonight (July 13)

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There’s going to be a nice flare tonight (July 13) at 21:04:33, -4 magnitude, 65 degrees high, in the east (84° degrees). I’m also going to start posting these events on Twitter at richastrova (note the VA on the end, richastro was taken).

ISS pass Fri. night (July 10), 9:10 pm

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If you missed last night’s (yes, it was visible, despite the clouds), here’s another chance. It’s later tonight, so we might have a better chance of seeing the Russian space craft, too. -1.5 magnitue, traveling from the WSW to NE direction, it will get 37 degrees high. There’s a Russian space ship following it, Progress … Read more