Archive for the ‘Just some thoughts’ Category

The Chester County Astronomical Society is bringing “Uncle Rod” Mollise into town March 9th to speak, and we wanted to get the word out to anybody in the area who might be interested in hearing him speak on the Past, Present, and Future of the SCT. He hosts Uncle Rod’s Astro Blog and the Meade Uncensored site on Yahoo, and is an entertaining author and speaker. Please circulate this to your membership – admission if free, of course! More information available at the Chesmont astronomical Society website as well as the Chester County Astronomical Society website.

This Sunday, January 31, the Chesmont Astronomical Society will hold their monthly meeting n the Community Room at National Penn Bank, located on Rt. 23 about 1/4 mile west of the intersection of Rts. 23 and 100. The meeting will be open and free to the public. Karl Krasley will give a presentation on observing late winter objects. The meeting will begin at 7:00 pm and end at approximately 9:00 pm. More information is avaliable on their website at www.chesmontastro.org.

I’m going to try and get out there a little early tonight with my binoculars for a little scanning through Cassiopeia. The moon will rise around 8:18 PM EDT but will remain low enough until around 9:00 PM to get a few good views in. I guess I’m getting a little anxious. Before the full moon this month it skies were cloudy, now that we’re a few days past full moon and headed toward third quarter the skies have been clear but unsteady so seeing has been very poor. Makes me a little crazy sometimes. I was hoping to get some planetary observing done with Jupiter being so well placed, but, as you know, when seening is poor, objects in the eyepiece just boil.

Speaking of scanning through Cassiopeia, did you know, If we were able to observe our Sun from Alpha Centauri, the Sun would appear in Cassiopeia as a yellow-white 0.5 magnitude star. The famous ”W”of Cassiopeia would become a zig-zag pattern with the Sun at the leftmost end. Cassiopeia is positioned directly in the Milky Way.