RAC News

The September observing session lived up to everyone’s expectation with cool, but not cold temperatures and good skies. The Milky Way was clearly visible from Big Woods and made for a very nice site. About 20 members and first time guests attended the event. Mike Keefe and Doug Lively gave the visitors and first time attendees a lot of help and good advice on telescopes. Way to go!! Joe Pedit also shot this image of the southern sky and the…

The September indoor meeting feature and on-line presentation from Tom Field, contributing Editor to Sky & Telescope magazine. Tom, from his home in Seattle, provided a great introduction to affordable spectroscopy for amateur astronomers that was both informative and very entertaining.

After a summer of rain and generally poor observing conditions, late August brought some clear skies with favorable moon conditions and photon-starved members went have gone and taken advantage of the conditions, including this wide field view by member Joe Pedit (used with permission).

The August meeting featured the annual Club Social event. This is always popular with the members and there was a really good turn out this year. Many members brought a wide array of food items, including some great desserts!

The Perseid meteor shower is expected to peak the night of the Monday Aug. 12th thru to the morning of Tuesday Aug 13th.  The best times to view will be from 10:30pm to 4:00am.  We are keeping our fingers crossed for good weather. The best place to view the Perseids, or any meteor shower is a location with unobstructed views as close to the horisons as possbile and away from city lights.  Here is link to an article written by one…

Unfortunately we have had quite a string of clouded out RACOBS.  In general, we have had rather poor weather for astronomy since mid-spring of this year. For August’s clouded out RACOBS, we had an informal meeting at the Museum where a fellow member gave a presentation of his recent visit to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

On Tuesday evening, May 14th, there was an impromptu observing session at the club’s Big Woods site.  There were only two members present, Greg Bradburn and Michael Keefe, but that is enough to have a productive evening. Greg started out with some imaging of Saturn and then moved over the take some images of the Markarian Chain.  For Mike, this was “first light” for his new (to him) Celestron CPC 1100 telescope.  

RAC was privileged to bring in Rod Mollise from Alabama for the April 2013 meeting.  Rod is now a contributing editor for Sky & Telescope Magazine.  He has recently completed a big project:  observing 2500 deep-sky objects cataloged by William and Carolina Herschel.  Rod began his discussion by giving the group a history lesson on the Herschel’s.  Wilhelm and Lina (William and Caroline) were born in Hannover Germany in the early1700s.  They emigrated to England.  William was initially a musician…