%1

The Houston Astronomical Society has a series of free star parties scheduled for the latter part of June at Midtown Park, and you’re invited!

• The first star party is the Solstice Star Party, which is held on – you guessed it – the June solstice.  The June solstice is the day when the northern hemisphere gets the most daylight in the entire year, and we’re celebrating on June 21 from 10am – noon by observing our sun.  We’ll have special telescopes and filters that allow us to safely observe the sun in different wavelengths, so you’ll see views of our sun in ways you’ve probably never seen before.

• Additionally, on June 27, we’re going to have our Lord of the Rings star party to celebrate our solar system’s ringed planet – Saturn!  We’ll observe several celestial objects from 7pm – 10pm on June 27, including Jupiter, the moon, and others, but the real star of the show this night will be Saturn, our own Lord of the Rings.  Midtown Park will also be airing the Lord of the Rings movie while we do our observing, so you can catch a flick and see through the telescopes there that night.

If you have any questions, please feel free to email our Outreach group!

We have some comets to report for this season. It has been a long hiatus for comets during these last few years, but Comet C/2016 M1 (PanSTARRS)will be peaking close to 9.0 Magnitude by 1 July prior to its’ time of perihelion passage which will take place on 9 – 11 August 2018 at a distance of 2.2107 AU placing it within the Asteroid Belt. 66P/Du Toit is another potential although it is low in the southern skies and best observable before sunrise around nautical twilight.