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Time to Renew Your Membership for 2020

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Time to RENEW YOUR HAS MEMBERSHIP so you can take your 2020 Dark Site Training January 1st and get the new gate code before it changes on March 7th! HAS memberships run from 1 January to December 31. Fortunately, renewing your membership is fast and easy!

Membership dues are a bargain. Dues amounts:

  • Regular - $36/year
  • Associate - $6 (lives at same address as regular member)
  • Student - $12 (full-time student)
  • Sustaining - $50 or more (if you want to give a little extra to keep the club strong)

As always there are three ways to renew:

  1. Renew online with PayPal - Login to your account at https://www.astronomyhouston.org/members/renew
    We greatly appreciate if you pay by PayPal because it automates the process. With 500 members, it saves us a lot of work.
  2. Renew at a monthly meeting and pay by check or cash.
  3. Mail a check the old-fashioned way to Treasurer, Houston Astronomical Society, PO Box 6657, Katy, TX 77491.

We hope that you will continue to support HAS and look forward to seeing you at our next meeting or event at the Columbus dark sky site! — Mike Edstrom

(Posted 11/14/2019)

By: Steve Goldberg

Asterism: a grouping of stars that form a recognizable pattern.

Constellation: Ursa Minor
Right Ascension:  02h 49m 00.0s
Declination: +88o 54’ 00”
Magnitude: 2 to 9
Size:  40’
 

This month’s asterism is called the “Engagement Ring”. If you noticed the Declination, +88o, you should have thought that it is pretty far north. Well, Polaris is the “diamond” on the ring.

This is a binocular object instead of a telescope object. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here you can see the stars that make up the ring. They are “above” Polaris in this picture.

If you use a telescope, can you see the companion to Polaris? It is a double star system. When aligning my optics on my telescope, I look for the companion to verify I am on Polaris.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Congratulations 2020 Leadership

Online voting closed midnight 11/8/19. Thank you to all who voted, both online and at the Annual Meeting November 1, 2019. 

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Online voting results. Yes votes approved the slate as presented; No votes did not.

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