SBAU EVENTS CALENDAR
Also, our VP & DJ Baron Ron Herron is hosting a LIVE "Astro Hour", Mondays at 11am, at the Youtube SB AstroUnit channel . If you watch, share your comments and questions in its Chat area. GENERAL OUTREACHING INFORMATION To get the latest information on schedules, or event directions, just contact Chuck at 964-8201 or E-mail - Remember Events are subject to cancellation due to rain, pandemic, or other disaster. AU Outreachies - Thanks for all your help making the eclipse event in April a success! Our big event for May will be International Astronomy Day, on Saturday, May 18. I will be recovering from minor surgery for 6 weeks starting May 9, and unable to lift telescope equipment, so I’ll be largely useless. If you can come and help out at observations, please do! "First Friday", May 3, 7:30PM Monthly SBAU meeting at 7:30 in Fleischmann Auditorium at SBMNH. This will be a hybrid meeting, also on Zoom. Watch your email or find the link on the SBAU web page. Our speaker will be Dr. Larry Martinez, speaking on satellites and space debris. "Second Saturday", May 11, 4:30 PM AU monthly planning meeting on Zoom. Watch your email for the link. "Second Saturday", May 11, setup 7:30 PM Monthly Public Star Party at SBMNH, from 8:30 PM to 10 PM at Palmer Observatory. "Telescope Tuesday", May 14, setup 7 PM Telescope Tuesday in the plaza by the theater at Camino Real Marketplace. Thursday, May 16, setup 5 PM STEAM Night at Montessori Center School, 401 N Fairview Ave # 1 in Goleta, 6 to 8 PM. We'll have Moon, and a grab & go dinner for volunteers. "Third Friday", May 17, setup 7 PM Monthly Public Telescope Night at Westmont's Keck Observatory, next to the athletic fields. Saturday, May 18, setup 9 AM and 7 PM International Astronomy Day at Camino Real Marketplace in Goleta. Solar and lunar viewing, plus astronomy activities from 10 AM to 4 PM, then a break for dinner, followed a star party at 7 PM. Tuesday, May 21, setup TBD, email will follow Solar scopes for Santa Barbara High School students at the Westmont Observatory. Hasta nebula - Chuck McPartlin, Outreach Coordinator — International Space Station (ISS) and other satellites may make a few visible passes through Santa Barbara’s skies. Orbits change, so to get the latest and most complete predictions, visit Heavens Above at https://tinyurl.com/y5yt22ch !!! GREEN LASER USE RULES !!! Starting in 2015, the club has decided that we will not allow the use of green laser pointers at outreaches that are above the legal limit of 5 milliwatts. If you see someone operating a laser which is brighter than this level, please ask that person to stop using it.
Try seeing or adding a copy of the events to your Google Calendars:
For those of you who helped out at the October 14, 2023 Partial
Eclipse event and/or the SBMNH Star Party that evening, or just
for fun, here are some great photos from Owen Duncan, the museum
media guru: |
Donations Do you have telescope equipment that your not using? Donate it to our club and we will find a new user for it. We are a Non-Profit Organization, with a receipt for a possible tax deduction. Please contact Art Harris at equipment@sbau.org. Thank You! ________________________________________________________ Newsletters More Local links: Las Cumbres Obseratory https://lco.global/ staff member and UCSB Professor Dr. Andy Howell has released his latest installment of Science vs Cinema | Star Trek PICARD Also, see this Montecito Journal interview with Andy: Andy Howell interview Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at UCSB https://www.kitp.ucsb.edu/ Talks from the KITP Online Talks archive https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6S-TJHOZnwXRhvBd8Ol_1A including Public Lectures, Friends of KITP Chalk Talks and deeply technical Blackboard Talks, and more. Chuck McPartlin Social distancing is a powerful way to combat the worst effects of the pandemic. We're lucky as amateur astronomers, because we can still go out and look at the sky. But what about those cloudy nights, or days at home? The internet provides many sources of astronomy education and entertainment, plus a host of citizen science opportunities. Here are a few: SB Museum of Natural History - SBNature from Home https://www.sbnature.org/visit/sbnature-from-home Las Cumbres Observatory - based in Goleta https://lco.global/everyone/ Lowell Observatory has a collection of videos: https://lowell.edu/media/video-library/ IOTA - International Occultation Timing Association http://www.occultations.org/ CosmoQuest - work on NASA science projects + podcasts http://cosmoquest.org/ Astronomy Homeschool Resources https://skyandtelescope.org/homeschool-resources/ Astronomy in Isolation by BBC Sky at Night Magazine https://tinyurl.com/ydbrkz52 NASA at Home - ebooks, podcasts, videos, etc. https://tinyurl.com/u4rxmud Gravity Spy - Help scientists at LIGO search for gravitational waves https://tinyurl.com/j6srh4z LIGO E-lab - opportunity for students to do research https://www.i2u2.org/elab/ligo/home/project.jsp Einstein@Home - uses computer idle time to search for neutron stars https://einsteinathome.org/ Space Warps - spot outer space being warped https://tinyurl.com/y8ne6ud2 Planet Hunters - help TESS find exo-planets! https://tinyurl.com/yacorz8t AstroQuest -identify the boundary of every galaxy https://astroquest.net.au/ Planet Four -Terrains - help characterize surfaces on Mars http://terrains.planetfour.org/ SCOPE - Stellar Classification Online Public Exploration http://scope.pari.edu/ Globe at Night - measure & submit night sky brightness https://www.globeatnight.org NASA Citizen Science projects https://science.nasa.gov/citizenscience Galaxy Cruise - classify galaxies with higher quality images https://galaxycruise.mtk.nao.ac.jp/en/index.html A number of online resources can help you refresh or extend your astronomy knowledge. Here are some that could be of use: “Astronomy” http://openstax.org/details/astronomy Free textbook aimed for introductory college-level astronomy. Senior authors include Andrew Fraknoi, and David Morrison. Made in collaboration with the OpenStax Project at Rice University Cambridge University Press https://tinyurl.com/w2z953p Various higher education textbooks Astronomy courses https://bit.ly/39ezF9a Most courses are free college-level courses online Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures https://tinyurl.com/yd5fdegk Well-known scientists discuss astronomy in everyday language Amateur Radio Astronomy - Jiri will be missed For its 75th anniversary, the Astronomical League produced a series of videos highlighting various aspects of amateur astronomy. Past SBAU member Jiri Polivka, who recently entered a parallel universe, was an avid amateur radio astronomer, and produced kits using readily available materials to construct small radio telescopes. He was featured in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6c-4jVLnRDo We will miss his enthusiasm for advancing amateur astronomy in our universe. Another Member also passed into the Great Unknown February 2022, Don French. He was very attentive to the night sky and even donated his equipment to the club in his last year. |