Amateur Astro Announcements

Greetings fellow astrophiles, We’ll be opening the observatory tonight with the Moon past half-full, making for observing conditions that strongly favor the Moon (obviously), Jupiter, and brighter clusters. It will be quite cold (so dress for mid-winter temperatures) and is predicted to be quite clear. According to heavens-above.com, we’ll be having TWO passes of the International Space Station tonight, although we’ll only likely be able to see one of them. The better-seen of the two, starting at 7:43 p.m., will be low in the horizon from West to South, just below or between the radars of Corona Borealis, Hercules, Ophiuchus, […]

Greetings, fellow astrophiles! We have decided to try to make something of this weekend’s Public Observing Session and will be opening Darling Hill tonight around 7:30 p.m. It will be cold and still partly overcast, but we hope the clouds keep to a minimum to allow us to reclaim some of the observing time lost over the last few completely overcast weekends. Again, dress for extra-cold conditions. You will be the only source of heat at the observatory tonight, so try to keep as much of it for yourself as you can. NOTE: Those of you present (or looking North-West) […]

Greetings fellow astrophiles, We are 0-for-2 this session, but are being spared the snowfall despite not being spared the considerable cloud cover. We hope to still schedule at least one more session in short order in expectation of November not being reasonable for observing. Stay tuned!

Greetings fellow astrophiles, The weather is not on our side this evening, with small patches of light blue surrounded by considerable higher haze and dark clouds. As the predictability of reasonable conditions tonight is in question, we will not be opening for tonight. Worse still, tomorrow looks similarly bad, but we will keep track of conditions and hope for changes in the forecasts.