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 on the first Friday of each month at the University of Houston. 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, by mail or in person at a monthly meeting.
In Septermber, 2016, Amelia Goldberg received her first level Outreach certificate from the Astronomical Leagure. After being presented the certificate by Doug McCormick, she explained why she does Outreach events. Listen to her explain why in this 6 minute video.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/nyq51odnfyxg5if/Video%20Sep%2002%2C%208%2022%2012%20PM.mov?dl=0
This asterism and star cluster NGC 2158 both look like the famous tower in Paris, France, the Eiffel Tower. The asterism is easy to locate because of its proximity to the Mizar and Alcor stars in the handle of the Big Dipper, as seen in this finder chart. The second, categorized as a star cluster, is very close to M35 in Gemini.
The cluster NGC 2158 looks like an Eiffel Tower, also. In this chart, the cluster is to the upper left of M35, which makes it easy to locate.
by Rene Gedaly
Congratulations to Trevor Arnold, Doug McCormick, and Tim Lewis, certified telescope operators of the observatory C14 and f/5 telescopes. You, too, can be a certified telescope operator like these astronomy wizards. Contact Chris Ober, Observatory Director, to get added to the training list.
