Mention in the media:  The RAS skywatch scheduled for tonight, January 21, at the SMV was mentioned in an online news item at NBC 12 On Your Side.  Please join us and bring a scope if you can.  Dress warmly if you come, temperatures are expected to drop below freezing into the mid-twenties during the [...]

Happy 2011:  I hope everyone had a great holiday season and enjoyed celebrating the arrival of 2011.  To greet the new year, we were treated with a Quadrantid meteor shower under a near-new moon. I spent about an hour or so taking in the sky and looking for meteors early this week.  I saw three [...]

Thanks to Wayne Boggs and Richmond Alarm Company: As most of you reading this already know, it became necessary earlier this year to find a new location for our library volumes.  After we searched around quite a bit for an appropriate location and debated the various approaches for managing the library, Ken Wilson contacted RAS [...]

The RAS Fall picnic was definitely a success.  Thanks very much to Tim Streagle and the Heart of Virginia Scout Reservation for use of the facility, for supplying grilling equipment and for providing such a great stargazing venue afterward.  Thanks also to Prashant Reddy for coordinating the event and the menu and making sure that [...]

The annual meeting of the Virginia Association of Astronomical Societies will be held this year on the campus of Roanoke College in the Colket Center (221 College Lane, Salem, VA) on October 9 from 9:00 AM to 4:30 PM with evening observing opportunities.  More information is at: http://www.rvasclub.org/vaas/index.htm

Many many thanks! Our volunteers put forth a huge amount of time and effort to coordinate and support our many outreach events and skywatches as well as moving and organizing our library books, caring for our observatory and taking care of the club’s business and other activities.  I cannot begin to thank everyone properly.  It [...]

A couple of months ago, several very dedicated graduate students from UVA presented at our monthly Richmond Astronomical Society meeting about the “Dark Skies, Bright Kids” program they are sponsoring in Charlottesville.  The program enhances science education at rural schools.  The graduate students have put a great deal of their personal time and effort into [...]

The Richmond Astronomical Society will meet on February 14, 7:30 PM at the Science Museum of Virginia.  Please join us for the meeting and for dinner before the meeting at Arby’s across the street from the Museum. Be sure to read John Goss’ article on some great observing opportunities for amateur astronomers in 2012 in [...]

Masayuki Tachikawa was observing Jupiter early on the morning of August 21st (18:22 Universal Time on the 20th), when his video camera captured a 2-second-long flash on the planet’s disk.  Check out this article in Sky and Telescope. The video of the flash is at this link and below along with an image captured by [...]

Sydney asked her dad Mark (one of our members) if they could build a telescope.  They are doing just that and have set up a web site to chronicle their adventure here.  Mark has also set up an email address for comments/suggestions:  sydney.telescope.blog@gmail.com.   It looks like they are going to have loads of fun with [...]