General News About RAC Events and Meetings. Will appear on the front page.
The regular indoor meeting on April 10 featured a great presentation from Matthew Goodson from the UNC-Chapel Hill Department of Physics and Astronomy speaking on the formation of the Solar System. Matthew talked about the process for forming the solar system and about some of the work they are doing on this at UNC-Chapel Hill.
The Raleigh Astronomy Club was to host 3 venues for the 2014 Statewide Star Party as part of the NC Science Festival. Due to poor weather, events planned for Friday night were postponed to either Saturday night or later in the year.
Michel Tournay is always a good presenter and has presented to the club before. He travels to many exotic places capturing eclipses. In addition to capturing the eclipse, he will also capture the interesting aspects of the place. This presentation was no exception.
The regular indoor meeting in February was originally designed to be a club social event. However, winter weather had other plans and the original meeting was cancelled and rescheduled to Thursday, February 20. Around 15 members and guests were present to enjoyment the refreshments and good conversations. The discussions varied from topics like the supernova in M82, cameras and dynamic ranges, and one of the founding members of the NCSU Astronomy club talked about their plans. A good time was…
In 2014, the Raleigh Astronomy Club decided to change the format of their eductional program from a single Telescope Tune Up Clinic to more specialized sessions focusing not just on telescops but rather Learning Astronomy. Our new offerings include 3 classes in a classroom setting and an Equipment Clinic held in an outdoor setting. You can find more information about these various sessions on our Learning Astronomy page. We held our first Equipment Clinic on Feb 8th at the…
Janaury’s RACOBs on Friday the 31st started out with some rather pesky high clouds obscuring most of the sky. However by 8pm the skies started to clear up and stayed mostly clear the rest of the night. We had about 20 Raleigh Astronomy Club members in attendance and several guests. One of the most sought after targets of the evening was the type 1a supernova SN2014J in the Cigar Galaxy (also known as M82 or NGC 3034). It is estimated…
Recently there was a bright supernova in the galaxy M82. Several members got some really good images of it before it faded.
The Raleigh Astronomy Club co-hosted it’s annual Astronomy Days event with the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in downtown Raleigh on Saturday, January 25 and Sunday January 25, 2014. Over 10,000 guests attended the event and enjoyed the exhibits, activities, presentations, and workshops. This year featured an expanded presentation format with over 30 different topics so there was something for every astronomical of space interest!
There was a special indoor meeting for the Raleigh Astronomy Club on Friday, January 24,2014. We were fortunate to have Russian Space Policy expert Yuri Karash on the state of the Russian space program. As a former cosmonaut trainee and journalist, he was able to provide a fascinating look at the space program and provide context around public attitudes toward space inside Russia. He is now working with on a super realistic space game/experience. For more details on the Space…
Our very own club member, Ron Monti, presented this topic. This is a continuation of the topic he presented in July of 2013. He was kind enough to briefly go over the first part for those of us that missed it. After this brief overview, he dove into the new material.
Dr. Patrick Treuthardt, Ph.D. Assistant Director, NRC Astronomy Laboratory was the presenter in the December meeting. His talk was divided into three sections. The first he gave an overview of the formation and evolution of galaxies. The second section, he showed examples of different galaxy formation –both the expected and the unexpected. Lastly, he discussed some of the recent research in the field. All during the talk, he answered questions that came up.
On Saturday November 9th the Raleigh Astronomy Club hosted a public observing session at North Cary Park. Despite some thick cloud cover the club proceeded with the event by delaying the start time one hour. The weather forecasts had estimated the clouds to clear by 9pm but is was closer to 9:45pm until there was a substantial enough amount of clearing, though there were pockets of clearing by 8pm.
The morning of Sunday November 3rd, 2013 saw a rare hybrid solar eclipse. The type of eclipses has features of both an annual and total solar eclipse. Unfortunately, here in North Carolina, the eclipse was already well underway at sunrise and only showed as a partial eclipse. Although the morning dawned quite cool, several groups went to locations in North Raleigh and Cary to view the event. The weather was very clear and with a low horizon, it was a…
The October indoor meeting features Gary Stephenson, Chief Meteorologist for Time Warner’s News 14, speaking on his interest in astronomy and the challenges of communicating astronomy and science related topics to the general public. This was also the first regular meeting held in the new Nature Research Center on the new Thursday schedule. The new venue was really great!
While a large contingent of RAC members attended the Staunton River Star Party, some of those that were not able to get away still took advantage of the very good weather do some observing. One group of six went to the Big Woods site and 5-6 people traveled to Howell Woods. After a dreary summer, it was great to gather some photons, no matter where it was done!
