Category: Club News

On October 29^thCAAS invades beautiful Woolly Hollow State Park, under dark skies near Greenbrier, Arkansas, for our final public event of the year – the “Halloween Tricks or Celestial Treats” star party! Costumes are welcome, but NO FACE PAINT PLEASE. CAAS members will have plenty of candy for the ghosts and ghouls. The fun starts just before sunset (7:26 p.m.) and runs until 10 p.m. The planet Jupiter will be at its closest point in its orbit to earth until 2022 on the evening of the star party and will put on a great show!

Meeting place: Swim Beach. As with all CAAS star parties the admission is free!

At the conclusion of the “Halloween Tricks or Celestial Treats” star party, CAAS will hold the drawing for a Bushnell ARES 5” Compact Truss Tube Dobsonian Telescope Optics Planet Edition to be awarded to one lucky attendee at one of the last three CAAS star parties in 2011! The telescope was donated to CAAS by OpticsPlanet.net and retails for $159.99. http://www.opticsplanet.net/bushnell-dob-5-compact-truss-tube-dobsonian-telescope-opticsplanet-edition.html

The telescope contest is open to all star party guests with a limit of one entry per star party. No purchase is necessary. Members of CAAS, employees of the Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism and their immediate family members are ineligible. The drawing will be held near the conclusion of the October 29^th Woolly Hollow event (approximately 10 p.m.) or at the November 12^th monthly meeting of CAAS in the event of a cancellation. The winner need not be present to win and will be notified the following day if not in attendance for the drawing.

 

The Central Arkansas Astronomical Society (CAAS), Arkansas’s largest organization of amateur astronomers, and OpticsPlanet,  which is recognized as one of the world’s leading online retailers of sport optics, tactical and military gear, hunting gear, and astronomy products,  have teamed up to give away a quality portable telescope to one lucky attendee at a CAAS star party this fall.    The telescope is a Bushnell ARES 5” Compact Truss Tube Dobsonian Telescope OpticsPlanet Edition and retails for $159.99 at OpticsPlanet.net.  http://www.opticsplanet.net/bushnell-dob-5-compact-truss-tube-dobsonian-telescope-opticsplanet-edition.html

CAAS will host three public star parties this fall where attendees can register to win the telescope in a drawing to be held October 29, 2011.  The next public star party is this Saturday evening at 8 – 10 p.m. at Pinnacle Mountain State Park at the Visitors Center.   CAAS will return to Pinnacle Mountain State Park for another public star party on Saturday evening October 1, 2011.   The final star party of the year will be the Halloween Trick-or-Celestial-Treats Star Party at Woolly Hollow State Park, on October 29, 2011, 8 – 10 p.m.  That night guests are welcome to wear their Halloween costumes (no face paint please, to protect the telescopes) and the astronomers will have plenty of candy for the kids in addition to the celestial treats.  All three events are admission free.

During all three star parties, members of CAAS will be on hand with their large aperture telescopes and will show guests galaxies, nebulae, star clusters, double stars, and constellations.  On October 1^st, a crescent moon will provide star part guests with beautiful telescopic views.  At the October 29^th event, the “star” of the show will be the planet Jupiter which will be at “opposition” (or opposite the position of the sun in the sky) and at its closest point in its orbit to earth for the year.   If clouds interfere with observing, an indoor program on astronomy will be presented at 9 p.m. at the Pinnacle Mountain State Park star parties. The Woolly Hollow State Park event will be cancelled altogether in the event of clouds.

The telescope contest will be open to all star party guests with a limit of one entry per star party.  No purchase is necessary.  Members of CAAS, employees of the Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism and their immediate family members are ineligible.  The drawing will be held near the conclusion of the October 29^th Woolly Hollow event (approximately 10 p.m.) or at the November 12^th monthly meeting of CAAS in the event of a cancellation.  The winner need not be present to win and will be notified the following day if not in attendance for the drawing.

CAAS will once again participate in the International Observe the Moon Night (InOMN), which is scheduled for this year on October 8^th.  For those unfamiliar with InOMN, it is now an annual event in its second year, and is an astronomy outreach program sponsored by NASA and multiple astronomical organizations. The theme for this year’s celebration is “What does the Moon mean to you?”  The goal of InOMN is to instill in the public a sense of wonderment and curiosity about our Moon. CAAS will observe InOMN as part of its regular meeting at the River Ridge Observatory beginning at 7 p.m.  The meeting’s program will be on lunar observing and will cover tips for lunar observing as well as the Astronomical League’s Lunar Observing Club requirements.  After the formal meeting will have a moon party on the observing field – clouds permitting. As always, the public is welcome at the meeting.

There will also be an InOMN event in downtown Little Rock organized by Darrell Heath in his role as a NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Solar Ambassador. At 1:00 p.m. there will be a free showing of Ron Howard’s “In The Shadow of the Moon” in Room 124 of the Central Arkansas Library’s Butler Center For Arkansas Studies Building (adjacent to the CALS Main Branch Building in the River Market); 3:00 p.m. there will be a talk by Dr. Marcus Seigar of UALR, in the same room, at 5:00 p.m. a Solar System Walk through the River Market led by Dr. Tony Hall of UALR; and from 7:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m. there will be a moon watch party with telescope viewing in Little Rock’s Riverfront Park.  If you would like to volunteer for the downtown moon party, you are welcome to do so instead of attending the CAAS meeting (unless you are a member of the Board or have business before the Board meeting that evening).  Please contact Darrell Heath to volunteer at DRHEATH@ualr.edu  or darrellh1@gmail.com or by calling 501-569-3512 during work hours.

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Commentary: The conflict in the scheduling of these events is unfortunate but unavoidable.  CAAS has a policy not to change either the location (from the River Ridge Observatory) or date/time (the second Saturday of each month at 7 p.m.) of its meetings (the December Annual Meeting being the lone exception). CAAS also has long standing commitments to co-host star parties at Pinnacle Mountain State Park the week before and Woolly Hollow State Park two weeks following.  The October 8^th date for InOMN was announced after the scheduling of these CAAS star parties.  While we would have liked to have joined the downtown InOMN celebration, it was not practical in light of the October meeting, the fall board meeting, and the proximity to the two previously scheduled October public CAAS events.  Nevertheless, we wish Darrell and the other folks participating in the downtown Little Rock venue for InOMN success for their program. – Jim Fisher, CAAS president.