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. CANCELED (muddy) - Friday, April 5, setup 6:30 PM Star Party at Los Flores Ranch Park, 6245 Dominion Road in Santa Maria. We enter via a dirt road to the north past the main entrance - look for the sign. "First (not Second) Saturday", April 6, 4:30 PM *** NOTE CHANGE OF DATE - Due to SBMNH Construction *** SBAU Monthly Planning Meeting on Zoom. Watch your email or find the link on the SBAU web page. "First (not Second) Saturday", April 6, setup 7 PM *** NOTE CHANGE OF DATE - Due to SBMNH Construction *** Monthly Public Star Party at SBMNH, next to Palmer Observatory, from 8 PM to 10 PM. Monday, April 8, setup 9 AM 40% partial solar eclipse viewing at Camino Real Marketplace, in the plaza by the theater, from 10 AM to 12:30 PM. See celestial mechanics in action through safely filtered telescopes and eclipse glasses. [We always knew that the Sun was the same size as the Moon!] "Telescope Tuesday", April 9, setup 7 PM (Second Tuesdays in 2024) Telescope Tuesday in the plaza by the theater at Camino Real Marketplace. Wednesday, April 10, setup 7:30 PM Telescopes for fifth graders at Monte Vista Elementary School, 730 N Hope Ave. We'll set up on their playground blacktop. "Second (not First) Friday", April 12, 7:30 PM *** NOTE CHANGE OF DATE AND VENUE - Due to SBMNH Construction *** Monthly meeting in the Courtyard Gallery 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. Dave Kary, speaking on the search for extraterrestrial life. Monday, April 15, setup 7:30 PM Telescopes for the Encina Royale community, in the parking lot of their clubhouse at 250 Moreton Bay Lane in Goleta. Thursday, April 18, setup 4:30 PM Telescopes for Science Night from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM at Vieja Valley Elementary School, 434 Nogal Drive, Santa Barbara. It won't be dark, so show the Sun, or just talk about astronomy. "Third Friday", April 19, setup 7 PM Monthly Public Telescope Night at Westmont's Keck Observatory, next to the athletic fields. Friday, April 26, setup 4 PM Telescopes for a large gathering of Girl Scouts for Kaleidoscope, at the Live Oak Campground, 4600 CA-154, enter by the former Rancho San Marcos Golf Course. Early arrival at 4pm to set up before access is hindered by hundreds of arriving Girl Scouts. Dinner for volunteers. Please email info@girlscoutsccc.org to inquire about whether your clearance has lapsed, or to get your initial clearance. Then, please RSVP to me, as they need me to send them a list of everyone who will be volunteering. 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. |