Did you miss the presentation? Check out the Houston Astronomical Society Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/@HoustonAstronomicalSociety/videos. Novice Presentation via Zoom. Speaker: Craig Lamison. The Astronomical League has produced many observing programs and recommended a progression of programs to optimize their value to the observer. The League’s programs cover visual, astrophotography, and scientific observing. This presentation shows how these can benefit you, whether you choose to formally complete programs and follow the progression or not. It explains the progression, provides an overview of how the programs work, gives general guidelines on program requirements and further describes some the programs. These Astronomical League resources are fun and informative, hopefully this presentation will inspire you to take up or continue your observing progression. If you’ve been out at the dark site on a good weekend night, you may have heard some of your fellow HAS members talking about the observing programs they were working on.
Welcome to Houston Astronomical Society
Fostering the science and art of astronomy through programs that serve our membership and the community. Founded in 1955, Houston Astronomical Society is an active community of enthusiastic amateur and professional astronomers with over 60 years of history in the Houston area. Through education and outreach, our programs promote science literacy and astronomy awareness. We meet via Zoom the first Friday of each month for the General Membership Meeting and the first Thursday of the month for the Novice Meeting. Membership has a variety of benefits, including access to a secure dark site west of Houston, a telescope loaner program, and much more. Joining is simple; you can sign up online or by snail mail.
Did you miss the presentation? Check out the Houston Astronomical Society Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/@HoustonAstronomicalSociety/videos. HAS Monthly Meeting via Zoom. Speaker: Don Selle. Camera trackers have become a very popular piece of equipment for astro-imaging since their recent introduction to amateur astronomy. For those new to the hobby who are interested in learning astrophotography, they can be a good place to start. They are versatile and low cost. In addition to wide field astrophotography, which is a standard of smaller sized equatorial mounts, they can support several different types of night sky photography such as nightscapes and time-lapse photography that a small equatorial mount cannot.
Rene Gedaly was presented the Omega Centauri Award for "Promotion of Public Awareness of Astronomy" at the 2023 Texas Star Party. Rene's particular interest in public awareness is rekindling the love of astronomy women first discovered as girls. Recognizing that women need to see themselves as belonging before joining, Gedaly created the Women's Special Interest Group (WSIG), a social group as well as a club within an astronomy club. Events included Pizza & Planets, a telescope petting zoo, themed lunches out, and a year-long observing program at the club’s dark site.
As astronomers, citizens of this Earth, there is no more challenging or critical issue facing us than access to dark skies. DarkSky advocates represent the single best way to protect and enhance our knowledge base of the universe while simultaneously protecting the environment.
When we host star parties, there are usually larger crowds in attendance than we have volunteers to support them. Last week at John Paul Landing Park, just north of Katy, sometimes I had as many as twenty people in line at my one position. Usually, I didn't even have a moment to look around at what the other volunteers were doing. Guests would ask about the other telescopes and what they were observing. I simply did not know because I was busy with my group...but, I did point out they were aimed in some other direction from mine, which was generally enough to pique their curiosity.
Current Conditions
Columbus Current Weather
Today, June 6, 2023
Sunset: 08:19 P.M.
End Twilight: 09:52 P.M.
Tomorrow, June 7, 2023
Dawn: 04:50 A.M.
Sunrise: 06:24 A.M.
Houston
Columbus
Learn how to read it the clear sky chart.