RAC News

Regular meeting Mar. 11, 2011. Tonight’s meeting was titled “Photographing Auroras” by Michel Tournay.  Michel is from the James Bay, Quebec, Canada.  It was a pleasure to listen to his French-Canadian accent during the talk. Initially Michel described the processes that are responsible for creating aurorae on Earth – the solar wind and coronal mass ejections interacting with the Earth’s magnetic field.  He showed an interesting image of the mirror image aurorae that happen at the same time in the…

It was not a huge crowd, Frank W. with his binocular set up, Mike K. with his 8″ Schmidt Cassegrain telescope, new members Greg B. with his 12″ goto dob and Gary S. with one of the club’s 8″ loaner dobs.  Additionally I counted 7 guests.  I may be missing a few folks so my sincerest apologies.  There was not a cloud in the sky and the seeing was not as bad as predicted, however the transparency seemed lower than…

Tonight’s guest speaker was Rod Streeper who is the North America operations manger for Redshift 7.  His talk was “Redshift 7.”  Lucky for us, Rod lives in Shelby NC and was able to drive in for our program.  Rod’s talk began with what is a planetarium program and what does it do.  He covered specific aspects of Redshift 7 such as what catalogs are included, how the graphics work, images included, how to plan an observation session, and how to…

A good crowd of people showed up at Bigwoods for the Club observing session.  By one count, we had 21 people and 12 telescopes.  The weather showed mercy on the group by not being brutally cold as January can be on clear nights.  As usual, there was a good mix of telescopes available.  There were several good size Dobs present, some regular Newtonian scopes, a couple of refractors, and several Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes.  The crowd thinned out a lot by midnight,…

Tonight’s meeting was called to order by Ian Hewitt.  It was the first regular meeting in three months since the November and December meetings were cancelled due to the holidays. Ian introduced tonight’s speaker: Rob Teeter of Teeter’s Telescopes.  Rob’s talk was titled “Teeter and his Telescopes.”  Rob, who lives in New Jersey. told the Club about his career in telescoping building.  Starting in 1998, he has built 72 scopes so far.  His first scope was an 8″ f/6 Newtonian…

Tonight’s talk was “Current Research on the Origin of Dark Matter” by Dr. Michelle Shinn from the Jefferson National Lab in Newport News Virginia. In addition to being a physicist, Dr. Shinn is also an amateur astronomer and member of the Back Bay Astronomers. One of the interesting observations Dr. Shinn talked about tonight was that “regular matter” observed in spiral galaxies would not be enough to make them stable. There must be some kind of other matter present. She…

Regular meeting Sept. 24, 2010 – RAC Club Swap Meet. Tonight was a regular indoor meeting at the museum, but it was a bit unusual as it was a departure from our normal meeting format of a talk and then a business meeting. Tonight was our second and hopefully annual Club swap meet. Members brought equipment that they wished to sell. Other members and guests came hoping to pick up some used bargains. The Club raffled off several items including…

RACOBS Sept. 10 A really nice crowd of 32 people showed up at BigWoods for RACOBS (Raleigh Astronomy Club Observing Session). Although the skies only partially cooperated, the humidity was low and the temperatures were very comfortable during the evening hours. Tonight’s crowd was made up of mostly visual observers with a couple of imagers mixed in. Lots of Dob type Newtonians were in use, with a few refractors, and several Schmidt-Cassegrains also. We were treated to some nice views…

Hello, It’s been a while since I blogged, I will get back on schedule and start posting some new entries regularly…. We have a lot of events coming up this fall and hopefully will get some good weather. Details can be found on the web site, but they include: September – Dark Sky Weekend at Pettigrew state park October – Public observing at the NC Museum of Art and the Mid Atlantic Star Party November – Public observing at Howell…

(This article originally appeared in the Q1 2007 STAR Newsletter and was written by Brian Reasor. -I) Messier Marathon 2007 by Brian Reasor Thanks to all who came out for the RAC 2007 Messier Marathon at Howell Woods. Everyone seemed to enjoy the event. Skies were clear, although seeing suffered some due to wind, and it got down to about freezing overnight. We had, by my count, 16 people and maybe a few more who showed up after dark. Most…

(This article appeared in the first quarter 2007 STAR Newsletter. -I) Astronomy Days 2007 By Ian Hewitt It was January again (seems to come around every year) and you know what that means! New Year’s? Playoff Games? No! Astronomy Days!!! This year, RAC had another great event and you all deserve a big hand of applause! This year everyone focused on updating many of the exhibits to help keep the event fresh and it resulted in an attendance of 16,695…

A nice crowd showed up for a public observing session on the soccer field at North Cary Park on Saturday April 4 from 8:30 to 11:00. The main objects shown were the Moon and Saturn because high clouds plagued us almost the whole observing session. Fittingly, the skies cleared after the observing session was over. Many guests asked about the large ice crystal halo around the Moon. Over the two and a half hour event, I would estimate that there were around 300…

The February meeting for the Raleigh Astronomy Club was held on Friday, February 13th at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.  We had great presentation from Johnny Horne, Photo Editor for the Fayetteville News and Observer, entitled Earth and Sky.  Johnny talked about some of his terrific astrophotos and how he planned and used natural features to improve the images. You can read more about Johnny and his activities at his blog at http://blogs.fayobserver.com/backyarduniverse.

On January 24 and 25th The Raleigh Astronomy Club and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences hosted the 18th Astronomy Days event in downtown Raleigh.  Over 14,500 people participated in this free weekend event.  It features exhibits and presentations from local astronomy clubs, NASA, the Museum, and mayn other organizations.  This year’s them was the international year of astronomy.  The Raleigh Astronomy Club would like to sincerely thank every individual and every organization who attended or volunteered for the Astronomy…

The January 9th meeting had a great turnout and featured presentations from the RAC Imaging Subgroup.  This is a special interest group with the Raleigh Astronomy Club that focuses on astrophotography and imaging.  It is open to any member of RAC and has been holding meetings for almost a year.  They have discussions on everything from getting starting in astrophotography to advanced techniques and even conduct field sessions. Steve Izzo leads the group and introduced the session.  Ian Hewitt, Mark Lang, Joe…