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SMAS
Southwest Montana Astronomical Society

Latest news and information

2008-04-25 — Your Telescope and You - An Introduction

SMAS will host a observing session at the Museum of the Rockies on April 25 beginning at 7:30 PM for club members and the general public. So bring our telescope/binocular/eyeballs and let SMAS members help you to learn how use them. If you don't have an instrument of your own, there will be a wide variety of club and member instruments available along with knowledgable and gentle guidance to help you have a memorable observing experience. Come one, come all, and even if the weather doesn't cooperate, there will be plenty of activities indoors.

The Sun will set at 8:23 and astronomical twilight occurs at 10:20. We have prepared all sky charts in PDF form for this time to aid in planning your session.

2008-03-11 — Anatomy of a Revolution: How Galileo Democratized the Sky

Jim Manning, Executive Director of The Astronomical Society of the Pacific, will present the third and final lecture in our 2008 winter lecture series "Anatomy of a Revolution: How Galileo Democratized the Sky" on Friday March 27 in the Hager Auditorium at the Museum of the Rockies. The presentation will begin at 7:00 PM and is open to the public.

For more information see the events page or call 406-994-6891.

2008-02-22 — The Search for Earth: NASA's Virtual Planetary Laboratory

Our winter lecture series continues with Dr. John Armstrong's presention of "The Search for Earth: NASA's Virtual Planetary Laboratory" on Friday, February 29 in the Hager Auditorium at the Museum of the Rockies. The presentation will begin at 7:00 PM and is free to the public. The lecture is sponsored by SMAS and the Montana Space Grant Consortium. For more information see the events page or call 406-994-6891.

2008-02-22 — Hundreds Turnout to Observe Lunar Eclipse

Hundreds of people turned out on Wednesday to observe a spectacular total lunar eclipse at the Museum of the Rockies. Despite thin clouds partially obscuring Luna early in the penmbral phase, beautiful views through a wide variety instruments were had by all. In addition to the eclipse, many observed Saturn and its moons which were in close proximity to Luna as well as other favorites such as the Great Nebula in Orion which was high in the South.

Duncan and Robert Banfill piggybacked their DSLR onto their 10" LXD75 Schmitt-Newtonian and captured this time-lapse sequence (WVM, 561kb) of most of the eclipse. The frame interval is three minutes so you get to see most of the eclipse in about 28 seconds.

Thanks to everyone who came out and to the Museum of the Rockies for hosting this event. A very special thanks goes out to all the SMAS members and the museum staff who helped out with this event.

2008-02-16 — Total Lunar Eclipse

Join the Museum of the Rockies and SMAS as we observe the total lunar eclipse that will occur on February 20. It all happens at the Museum of the Rockies Redstart Classroom at 6:00 PM. See the events page for all of the details.

2008-02-01 — SMAS Site Back on the Air

After a fairly long break, we have the site updated with the election results. We have a new President, Dr. Richard Sabo, who has been our Vice President and Observing Chair for the past few years. Dick replaces Fred Birk who is assuming the role of Editor of the Star Wrangler. David Binnewies is our new Vice President replacing Dick. David has been a Member-at-Large and very active in the club for many years. Congratulations to all new officers, members-at-large, and activity heads.

We hope to have the Star Wrangler available online soon and we are looking for content from our members. If you have content to contribute the newsletter or the site, and we know that you do, please contact Fred and get involved.

In the near future we also plan to have an RSS feed for current club activities and events up and running along with the Star Wrangler. Please check here at the site often and please get involved in these efforts.

2007-06-10 — Ryan Hannahoe to Speak at July Meeting

Ryan M. Hannahoe, Resident Astronomer at the New Mexico Skies Observatory, will present "A Basic Introduction to CCD Image Processing" at the SMAS regular July meeting 7:30 PM on July 27 at the Museum of the Rockies. Please see the Club Events page for all of the details.

2007-05-21 — Measuring the Universe Study Group

The ongoing lecture series and study group, "Measuring the Universe", is being conducted by our club President Fred Birk. Part I - "The Solar System", is currently underway with three sessions completed so far and three more planned. Part II and Part III are planned for later in 2007 and for the better part of 2008. The coverage will be "Our Milky Way Galaxy and the Local Group" (Part II) and finally "Sizing up the whole Universe" (Part III).

Check the Study Groups link at left or contact Fred for more information or if you'd like to get involved.

2007-05-19 — Club Membership Dues Reduced

The club has reduced its annual dues from $25.00 to $20.00 per year for single memberships and from $30.00 to $25.00 per year for family memberships. If you're not a member, now would be a great time to join.

2007-05-11 — Weather cuts short the Mini-Messier Marathon

Despite clouds, winds, and the threat of rain, a good number of members turned out for the Mini-Messier Marathon at Dick Sabo's house on the 11th. Our Vice President and his wife put on an very nice event even though the weather cut things short at about 1:00 AM. A good time was had by all and many delicious brownies were consumed along with copious amounts of hot coffee. Thanks to Dick and his wife for hosting this event at their wonderful home and thanks to everyone you turned out in spite of the weather.

Better luck, and hopefully better skies, next time...

2007-04-21 — Astro Fair on Astronomy Day

The Southwest Montana Astronomical Society's 12th annual Astro Fair on Astronomy Day was held on Saturday, April 21, at the Museum of the Rockies. Special thanks goes out to everyone who helped to make this event such a great success. Here is a quick summary and a few photos of the event.

2007-03-31 — The "Pace to Space"

The final lecture of our winter lecture series, Dr. John Bacon's "The Pace to Space: Where We're Going in Space, and How Fast We're Getting There" was held on Friday, March 30, in the Hager Auditorium at the Museum of the Rockies to a nearly full house. Many thanks to everyone who turned out for the lecture, to David Binnewies, Manager of the Taylor Planetarium at MoR and SMAS board Member at Large, on whose initiative we were able to have such a prominent speaker here in Bozeman, to SMAS members Brigitte and Doug Flecter for hosting the after-lecture social and to everyone else who helped to make this event happen.

And a very special thanks to Dr. Bacon for coming and sharing his knowledge and vision with us.

2007-03-29 — Call for member talks

This year’s calendar includes several “Club member talks” during our regular meetings. These are intended to provide an opportunity for us to get to know each other’s interests and astronomy-related activities. They also can be used a catalyst to do some research on a topic of interest and put the information into order so that it can be shared with fellow enthusiasts. Here are a few topics to tease your interest: (all of these were mentioned in the SMAS survey)

Available dates are June 29, August 31 and November 30. Please contact Dick Sabo soon if you are interested in participating.

2007-03-13 — Mini-Messier Marithon announced

Our Vice President and Observing Chair, Dick Sabo, has scheduled a Mini-Messier Marithon for SMAS members at his house west of four corners on Friday, 2007-05-11. An exciting time is sure to be had by all so be sure to mark your calendar and get all of the details from the Club Events page.

We also received a really nice card from the good folks at the Irving School thanking the club for our involvement in their "Cosmic Carnival" last month. Be sure to take a look...

2007-03-11 — Web site work continues...

Work continues on the new site which is now online at http://smasweb.org. The old site will continue to be available through the 'Old Website' link on the left and at http://oldsite.smasweb.org.

Over the last few weeks we have taken some time to firm up the site markup and stylesheet with fairly exhaustive testing across a broad range of user agents including Firefox 2.0, Safari 2.0.4, Opera 9.1, Netscape 8.1, Internet Explorer 6.0 and 7.0, and Lynx. This testing along with XHTML and CSS validation helps to insure that everyone can access our site regardless of their platform or browser. We have also addressed many accessibility issues in the markup and have used Cynthia Says to validate WCAG 1.0 and Section 508 compliance which will help to insure that people with disabilities will also be able to access our site.

As always, please let us know if you find anything not working as excepted on the site.

2007-02-24 — Irving School Cosmic Carnival a great success

Thanks to everyone who helped to make SMAS's involvment in the Irving Elementary School "Cosmic Carnival - The Universe" a great success. The kids and their parents came out in force to take a look at the Moon and Saturn. A special thanks to David Binniwies hosted an inflatable planetarium indoors, along with Fred Birk, Dick Sabo, and Lynn Powers who, in addition to Duncan and I, staffed the telescopes outside. Here are a few photos of the event...