Due to the last minute addition of the NASCAR Imax movie to our schedule, we'll have to relocate the RAS meetings from the planetarium to the Eureka Theater beginning with the April meeting and lasting through the September meeting.

Share table:

Reports and observing:

Observatory:

Skywatches and other events:

Jerry Vaughn gave a book report, on Astronomy for Dummies. He thought it was a very good intro to general astronomy. The book encourages sidewalk astronomy, and even touches on cosmology. It also inclues high level astronomy charts for each month of the year.

Jim Blowers gave a short talk on transits. The Moon, Mercury, and Venus are eligible for these events. A Venus transit is very rare, only occurring every 100 years, with another one following eight years after that. Jim observed the recent Venus transit.

Gary Cowardin gave the main presentation, on CCD photography. Gary has many years of experience with this subject, and was able to break down the process so that it was easily understood.

Here's the latest on the VAAS conference, to be held Oct. 16 in Charlottesville. There's a web site, http://www.vaas.com, that you can go to for the latest details.

To date, two guest speakers have been selected, with more expected.

First is Dr. Steven J. Dick, who has recently been appointed as the new Director, History Office, and Chief Historian for NASA. He is a well-known expert in the field of astrobiology and its cultural implications, and served on the panel to examine the societal implications of possible life in the Mars rock.

Dr. Edward Murphy, University of Virginia Department of Astronomy will also give a presentation on the history of astronomy at UVa, as well as the history of the McCormick Observatory, together with a visit to the observatory and observing from the 26 inch McCormick Refractor.

The chief coordinator for this year's VAAS event is Mark Klosinski, klosinski@adelphia.net.

Please pass the word of this announcement to your respective club members and mark your calendars now! If you know others who should receive this announcement, please feel free to forward this notice, and/or email me a list of names and they will be put on our email listing. Thank you.

Larry Eicher, CAS secretary, and VAAS publicity chair, tuzlu@att.net

The Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD, is holding an open house on Saturday, July 31, from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm. You can get more information at http://community.gsfc.nasa.gov/. There is going to be:

Greetings all!

Sorry I couldn't make it to the meeting last night, but we'd just gotten back (after 3 flights and 24.5 hours in transit- no pun intended!) from our trip to see the Venus transit from Luxor, Egypt and I was sick as a dog (sinusitis and laryngitis!). I hope the meeting went well.

Betty and I were successful in our quest to see the entire transit, although the temperature reached 139 degrees F at Luxor! I shot video and 35mm stills with my ETX90. I'm still waiting to get the digital versions of the 35 mm shots made so that I can post them. In the meantime, I've taken the low res digital stills (XGA) that I made using my camcorder and stitched them together into a crude animated gif that I've put on the SMV web site. If you're interested in seeing it, it's at:

http://www.smv.org/ethyl/Transit/TransitTimelapse.html

Thanks to all of you who came out to the Science Museum on transit morning!

I just came back from the Science Museum's Transit of Venus Watch. We got a beautiful view of the Venus transit from the museum. What struck me was the perfect and sharp image of Venus in front of the sun, which by the way was almost, but not quite, devoid of sunspots (Maunder Minimum II coming?). At about 6:20 am we were watching the transit, as it has cleared the building and was shining through fog. Visibility was good until Venus started to exit the Sun, and then the clouds came in and prevented us from seeing the raindrop effect. Andrew Freiden was there and he broadcasted to Channel 12, including an interview of me at 5:48 am. Gary Cowardin, Grace Suttle, Ray Moody, and some others were there too. I took several shots and will put some later today (after work) on the yahoo group.

I observed the transit from a rooftop on the campus of Mary Washington College-overlooking the Rappahannock River. We had a beautiful, prolonged naked-eye view of about 15 minutes with the sun filtered reddish orange through a fog bank. It was stunning seeing the jet-black dot of Venus on the sun with both eyes and no filter! How rare and fortuitous a view! I also managed to get some really nice video using a color Orion eyepiece camera and Wilbur Stone's 4.5" f/15 refractor-again WITHOUT a solar filter of any kind. Unfortunately the clouds thickened and we lost the sun about 15 minutes before Third contact. However, I will always remember this morning with its truly remarkable and rare sunrise!

I am looking forward to seeing images posted by members of the RAS.