RAC

The Raleigh Astronomy Club and North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences held our Astronomy Days 2015 event in downtown Raleigh over the weekend of January 24th and 25th. Over 14,000 visitors of all ages attended this year. Our visitors enjoyed dozens of exhibits, attended presentations and participated in workshops on a wide range of astronomy topics. This year’s event had a Pluto and Outer Solar System theme with presentations covering the New Horizons mission to Pluto, Comets and the Kuiper Belt.

We got January off to a good start with over 20 club members and guests attending our monthly observing session at Big Woods. Comet Lovejoy was a popular target and easily found next to the Pleiades. Alan Dyer, a Canadian astronomy writer, produced this beautiful image of Comet Lovejoy and the Pleiades.

SteveChristensen, Ph.D. provided a very engaging presentation on back holes to almost 50 members and guests in attendance at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences.  The presentation was also streamed live via the club’s Google + account and is available for viewing on the club’s YouTube channel at http://youtu.be/x3EqklJbDCg. The presentation covered many aspects of black holes

Our December meeting featured an excellent presentation on NASA Launch Weather Forecasting by local NASA Solar System Ambassador, Tony Rice. Astronomers obviously need clear night skies to get anything done and spend a lot of time studying weather forecasts of frontal boundaries, cloud cover, winds aloft and airmass moisture. To send a space mission on its way, NASA does all that and much more. Tony walked us through other weather factors that govern a launch such as temperature, lightening risk and where winds will carry debris and…

The Raleigh Astronomy Club participated in the ASTC (Association of Science and Technology Centers) 2014 Annual Conference this past weekend. This in an international conference and this year it was hosted by the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh. The conference was held at the Raleigh Convention Center and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. RAC was enlisted to provide help for both the welcome party and the museum open house day. Members provided both daytime (solar)…

The October Imaging Group Meeting at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences featured Guylain Rochon speaking on his excellent program for astrophotography, BackyardEOS. Speaking to us from his basement in Canada, Guylain showed the finer features of using the program and explained some of the design decisions. He also discussed some of the coming features of the program. Everyone in attendance felt like they learned many new things about using the program capture great images. If you were not…

Speaker: Stephen van Vuuren Our October meeting featured Stephen van Vuuren describing his fascinating multi-year project to produce a science documentary for IMAX and other giant screen theaters titled In Saturn’s Rings. This amazing film is made entirely with real imagery from the Cassini Saturn probe, Hubble Space Telescope and other space missions. In Saturn’s Rings provides stunning images of the Earth, Moon, Milky Way and an eye-popping fly-through of Saturn’s system – all in 6K resolution.

Although some clouds threatened the viewing, North Carolina observers were able to see the lunar eclipse in the early morning hours of Wednesday, October 8. Because the eclipse would be occurring as the moon is setting in our location, you needed a very low western horizon to see totality. Raleigh Astronomy Club members and many others were able to get some very good images of the event. Click the read more link for even more views!

With the arrival of fall weather and clearer skies, RAC has been busy with a number of public outreach events in recent weeks with more to come. Public Stargaze: Annie Wilkerson Nature Preserve On Saturday, Oct 4th, RAC held a public observing session at the Annie Wilkerson Nature Preserve in North Raleigh. Skies were clear and about 50 guests showed up for an evening of mostly Moon viewing; but also Mars, Albireo, the M31 Andromeda galaxy and a number of Messier open…

We know a lot of you are curious about tomorrow’s early morning Lunar Eclipse. RAC will not hold a public event to view the eclipse as it occurs too early for the general public to be involved. However, this event does not require a telescope and is visible to the naked eye so we encourage everyone to try ad view this event on their own. On the morning of the 8th look to the West, the timing for the Lunar…

On Monday, 9/8, sunspot AR2158 got a bit unruly and erupted in not one, but two solar flares directed toward Earth. The first flare was a moderately powerful M4.6 class solar flare. But AR2158 was just getting “warmed up”, so to speak, and let rip with a much more powerful X1.6 class solar flare on Wednesday. These flares stream off a tremendous amount of hot gas and charged particles that are called a coronal mass ejection (CME). Images of this flare and the…