Welcome to Houston Astronomical Society

" Navigating The Spring Sky "

By: Chris Morisette

April marks the beginning of Galaxy Season.  In “Navigating The Spring Sky” Chris Morisette will present various references and methods to help you find your way around the cosmos.  In particular we’ll see how we can use The Big Dipper as a “sign post”, which will allow us to find and view several beautiful celestial objects, including some very cool galaxies.

Also… an announcement about an upcoming Spring Novice Lab will be presented.

Speaker Bio: Chris Morisette is HAS Novice Chairperson and an active member of the Houston Astronomical Society, North Houston Astronomy Club, and the Fort Bend Astronomy Clubs.  He is also a member of the University of Texas Astronomy Department Board of Visitors.  On clear Saturday nights you may find him volunteering at the George Observatory engaging with visitors and sharing his love of the night sky, or you may find him at the HAS dark site trying his hand at astrophotography.

To see the video, click Navigating the Spring Sky.

Big THANKS - to all the volunteers that helped out yesterday. We made a big bang at the Kleb Woods nature center astronomy night yesterday. We doubled (!) our participants from last time in January, over 120 visitor book sign-ins (but that is only the adults). We got a bit of a shock when a scout troop walked up, but we managed to get most of the people a seat (we used the chairs from the lobby and the park offices).

The star party was a blast! It was a great atmosphere in the small Kleb Woods park, between the trees, with a bright clear Orion above us. Clear skies exactly when we needed it. A little bit of luck but also thanks to great preparation by all of you. From dobs to Seestars, livestacking the Horsehead... we brought the universe close up that night. You all blew the lid off. Thank you all for bringing your equipment and managing the crowd! 

Khady Ndao wowing the audience with info about the coming eclipse. Fellow Eclipse Ambassador Dan Roy at right

Special thanks to Dan Roy and Khady Adama Ndao; our guest NASA Eclipse Ambassadors. We held a team presentation on the Eclipse, why you need to go, how it works (explained by a real Astrophysicist, how cool!!!), and how to enjoy it safely with Dan's build projects. It was a great show, full of energy and excitement - we are so happy we survived the smart questions from the kids ;-). The pinhole camera building was an absolute hit, many arrived with cereal boxes and left with a NASA approved solar eclipse viewer - what a blast!
 

Our Kleb Astronomy night is now officially a top visited event for the Kleb Wood park. Our Kleb naturalist is a big fan of our work and we will coordinate with her on the next events to put together, will keep you all posted!

Thank you all again for all the help and support, what an astronomical awesome community!

clear skies!

Matt & Erica

Lecture and photos by Alan Friedman

By:  Alan Friedman

avertedimagination.com

The sun is a unique and rewarding subject for the astrophotographer. It can be studied in different wavelengths, imaged from almost any location and can be presented in different ways to portray our star in a unique and compelling light.  The sun is now well along on its journey to maximum activity (predicted 2023-2026) and a Total Solar Eclipse visible from many locations across the United States is only weeks away on April 8, 2024. Now is the perfect time to hone our solar imaging skills for the opportunities to come. This talk will discuss technical and creative considerations in solar imaging with the goal of exercising those solar “muscles” and preparing for the increase in activity that lies just around the corner. 

See the full presentation here.

By: Bill Spizzirri

Bill’s presentation will focus on the nature of time itself. He will describe what we think it is, and address such questions as does time flow, can we directly measure?  How does time relate to relativity and everyday life, does it really exist at all and if it doesn't exist, why do we seem to know so much about it?

Speaker Bio: Bill Spizzirri is a retired mainframe computer software engineer who has been studying all types of science including astronomy for over 65 years. His favorite thing to do is to teach astronomy to the public, especially children. Bill has been doing this more or less continuously for over 40 years. He now does it at Houston area schools and community centers. The pay is excellent, in the form of great questions from the students.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

This meeting will be held virtually via Zoom. To attend, you must register for the meeting. You can do sousing the link below. You will receive an email with the details of the meeting and a link that will allow you to join in.

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMof-uqrz0sGdWRHNzElidsKhoAEZQrlyEe

You only need to register once!

Join us Thursday, March 7th, 2024, at 7:00 pm CT. See you then!