Matt Lochansky

Please join us for a special meeting Friday, Jan 29 at 7pm for “Unmasking Europa:  The Search for Life on Jupiter’s Ocean Moon” by Dr. Richard Greenberg. The meeting is in the 4th floor Environmental Conference Center in the Nature Research Center at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences.

Several members of RAC (and a couple from CHAOS) joined Jim Pressley and Phyllis Lang at the NCSU Crafts Center Saturday for an informal eyepice cleaning clinic. Supplies and refreshments were provided for attendees who brought an eyepiece or two for cleaning.

Pluto has very much been on everyone’s mind this week with all the information from NASA’s New Horizons mission that has been released this week. Long time RAC member Mark Lang took advantage of the skies during the July RAC observing session to build his own very cool animation of Pluto taken from here in North Carolina. Please note, you need to click the image to see the animation.

Although it was warm and muggy and sky conditions not optimal, the July outdoor observing session offered a chance for some summer season observing for about a dozen RAC members. Some members even took advantage of the conditions to get some imaging time, including this spectacular photograph of the Globular Cluster M13 in Hercules by Steve Christensen (Image Used With Permission).

Speaker:  Tony Rice, Solar System Ambassador This month’s speaker was Tony Rice, one of our local NASA Solar System Ambassadors.  His topic was Planetary Atmospheres.  Tony began by giving the club members a quiz he normally gives to teachers and broadcast meteorologists.  It had 4 questions which our group were able to answer correctly, but the area teachers and TV broadcasters (including the Daily Show with Jon Stewart) had trouble answering.