RAC

December’s observing session officially started at 7:00PM but the gate was opened before that time.  A few RAC members were already there (Jim DellaPenna had opened the gate) along with some visitors. The night was quite pleasant and the temperature was in the Low to Mid 50’s.  There was a ~5mph breeze coming off of Lake Jordan that made it a little chilly but over all it was still comfortable.

On December 9th, the RAC indoor meeting was a club Social.  We had a pretty good turnout of club members, guests and visitors who enjoyed the many great tasting items provided by the membership.

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).