General News About RAC Events and Meetings. Will appear on the front page.
Approximately 200 people showed up at the Public Star Gaze held at North Cary Park on the evening of November 12th, 2011. Although the forecast was for clear skies, clouds hampered observing much of the night. However between the over 20 telescopes operated by Raleigh Astronomy Club volunteers, visitors were treated to some great views.
During the November 2011 Indoor Meeting, there were two very special awards presented to Mark and Phyllis Lang for their many years of dedicated service to the Raleigh Astronomy Club. Both Mark and Phyllis have served in both Elected officer and Staff officer roles in the Raleigh Astronomy Club for many years.
Eric Raymer from North Carolina State University gave a terrific introduction to eclipsing binary stars in our November indoor meeting. The presentation started with the basics of what eclipsing binaries are, how we detect them, and showed some of the latest research going on at NCSU.
On Tuesday November 8th, 2011 asteroid 2005 YU55 which is about the size of an aircraft carrier buzzed the Earth within 201,700 miles (324,600 kilometers). As a point of reference, our moon is 238,000 miles away! Even though asteroids of this size pass by Earth frequently, the last time a space rock this large came as close to Earth was in 1976, although astronomers did not know about the flyby at the time. The next such close flyby will take…
Even though poor weather caused the regularly scheduled observing session to be cancelled, we had a great discussion on optics cooling and dew prevention during an informal meeting at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences on Friday Night…
We had a great indoor session this past Friday (October 14, 2011). Dr. Fabian Heitsch of UNC’s Department of Physics and Astronomy gave a fascinating presentation on the Cosmic Distance Ladder starting from the use of parallax to calculate distances within our own solar system, the use of cepheid variable stars and then up to type 1A supernovae.
On Sept. 24th, 2011, my eldest son and I joined up with other amateur astronomers from the Raleigh Astronomy Club (RAC) and the Chapel Hill Astronomical Observing Society (CHAOS) at Staunton River State Park in Virginia (http://dcr.state.va.us/state_parks/sta.shtml).
May 27, 2011 The RACOBS meeting was clouded out. Since this was the Memorial Day weekend, the Museum was operating with a reduced staff so the indoor meeting was cancelled also. A few members met a restaurant in Cameron Village in place of a meeting. June 10, 2011 Regular meeting – Club member Mike Malaska gave a talk entitled “Titan’s Earth-like Landscape.” June 24, 2011 RACOBS – Clouds forced an indoor meeting at the Museum. Jim DellaPenna gave the group…
Saturday, June 4th: My 10 PM car count at our Jordan Lake observing site was 11, so at 1-1/2 persons per car we had around 16 or so observers Saturday night.
On Friday evening, June 3rd, 2011, the Raleigh Astronomy Club (RAC) participated in the North Carolina Natural Science Museum’s First Friday event by setting telescopes outside the museum for the public to view through. The theme for this First Friday event was all about Mars from highlighting a full scale model of the Mars Science Lab Rover to a screening of the 1954 film “Devil Girl from Mars.”
Our speaker tonight was Tony Rice who is a NASA Ambassador. Tony’s topic was “Visions and Voyages for Planetary Science 2013-2022.” In the title, Tony was talking about NASA’s decadal survey & the plan for the next 10 years. Tony pointed out that NASA depends on the science community to identify and prioritize projects. The classes of missions are Discovery missions with a budget of $500 million per project, New Frontiers with a budget of $1 billion per project, and…
April 22, 2011 RACOBS. For the second month in a row, cloudy weather prevented our outdoor observing session. In addition, since this was Good Friday which is a state holiday, the Museum was closed preventing an indoor meeting. About a dozen members met at a restaurant in Cameron Village instead.
Gayle Riggsbee from the Charlotte Amateur Astronomers Society was tonight’s speaker. His topic was “Building the 200 inch Hale Telescope.” Gayle began his talk with the topic of constructing large telescopes; especially those equatorially mounted using a split ring design. Today, large telescopes are computer controlled and mounted on altitude-azimuth type mounts. The Hale 200 inch is the most massive equatorially mounted telescope ever constructed. He showed some other examples of equatorially mounted split ring scopes. Gayle’s talk initially focused…
The March 25, 2011 RACOBS outdoor meeting was clouded out, so an indoor meeting was held at the Museum. Doug Lively presented a slide show about beginning astronomy tips to a small group of 13 people. Doug focused on concepts and ideas to help beginners get a good start in the hobby such as what you can see with the naked eye, what the constellations are, how to observe the sun, moon, and planets, and the types of telescopes in…
The night of Saturday April 2nd and the morning of April 3rd was the Raleigh Astronomy Club’s Messier Marathon at Howell Woods. It went very well. Approximately 11 people attended for observing or to do the marathon.
