Request a Private Event For Your Group
The Raleigh Astronomy Club is a 100% volunteer, member driven, non-profit organization. We enjoy sharing our knowledge and excitement for space and the night sky with our community.
We evaluate each request based on volunteer availability, club meeting conflicts, event site location, and whether the goals of the event can be satisfied by one of our already scheduled public observing sessions. We focus our efforts on larger events with an astronomy or STEM focus. For smaller groups, we recommend that you attend one of our public observing sessions. If your event has a strong astronomy component and is open to the general public, or if the group has an educational focus (e.g., schools, scouts), please read further.
Some notes about requesting an event:
- RAC is a community partner. We never charge for outreach nor can we accept compensation.
- Events planned for daytime, especially during the work week, can be difficult for our volunteers. Evenings and weekends tend to get more volunteers.
- Planning an evening observing session:
- Do a quick check of the sunset time. Observing can typically start about 1 hour after sunset. This can be very late for school age groups in the warmer months.
- We need not only dry conditions, but also skies that are reasonably free of clouds. Around our area, about half of our observing events are canceled or postponed. Please consider a rain date, if possible.
- Volunteers bring their own personal telescopes – they need to be able to get close to the observing location with their vehicles and/or have safe transportation for their equipment.
- Remember only one person can look through a telescope at a time – for larger groups this can mean time waiting in line for their turn.
- Please check our club calendar for conflicting events before submitting an outreach request.
Please fill out the form below with as much detail as possible and a member of our outreach committee should respond within a few days (if you do not hear from us within a week, send an email to [email protected]).
