by Rene Gedaly
If this isn’t your year to finally go west for the Texas Star Party, I hope you have it on your list. Once you get to one TSP, you’ll likely join the ranks of those who make the yearly pilgrimage; it’s just that good. That doesn’t mean HAS shuts down for TSP week, of course. Your astronomy club is open 24/7 and as usual, has a couple of really good talks in store for this month’s seminars.
Mark Holdsworth, aka Mr. Netslyder, to run May seminars
Duty calls so Mark Holdsworth, HAS Secretary, will be running the May 6 membership seminars—I’ll be at TSP. Stephen Jones, Field Trip & Observing, will talk about the Messier Catalog for this season at the 7 pm novice session. Following the short announcements at 8 pm, astronomical bon vivant Bill Spizzirri will talk about his travels to the Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope.
HAS Women’s SIG makes plans at Meet ’n Greet
HAS Women of all ages braved the weather to meet at Amelia Goldberg’s home for the first meeting of the HAS Women’s SIG. We talked about telescope workshops, observing the HAS Texas 45 as a group, the upcoming barn raising of the new bunkhouse, and some exciting possibilities for a December social—this in lieu of our typical meeting during finals week at the University of Houston. At present we’re a group of 17 members but there’s room for you! Contact info@astronomyhouston.org.
Astronomy at Liberty High School
The Education & Outreach Team continue to broaden their mission of bringing astronomy education to the community, in this case to Liberty High School, a unique HISD Charter school that offers night classes (4P-10:45P) for 18-26 year old ELL students who are working diligently to earn a high school diploma after work.
A special thank you to Ray Gedaly, who spoke to Mr. Moult’s science class about the solar system. Steve & Amelia Goldberg, and Ray & Rene Gedaly, Joe Khalaf and Debbie Moran brought telescopes to show students the moon and Jupiter.
Astronomy truly transcends any language barrier.
In the know...
The Video Team is expanding. Welcome Mario Moreno! Mario will back up Rob Morehead as videographer and is an experienced video editor at Channel 13 TV.
Mike Edstrom and I signed the rental agreement for the last personal observatory lot. Wow. The Observatory & Dark Site is the place to be.
And how ‘bout this? The website saw 101,700 views in 2015. That doesn’t just happen. It takes teamwork and continuity. Thank you Web Technology Team: Heather Houston, Drupal Admin, User Support; Michael Murphy, Front end Developer, Look & Feel; Bill Krahmer, Back end Developer, Programming; and of course, Mark Ferraz, Webmaster and Web Technology Committee Chair. (Hey, where’s the gray hair?)
