Amateur Astronomy Under The Big Sky
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  • January SMAS meeting

    Join us at the Sore Elbow Forge on Friday January 27th at 7:00 p.m. guest speaker Deanta Kelly will talk about the Pulsar search collaboration that Montana State University is doing with local high school students.   Stay tuned for the Winter Lecture Series: Feb – Dr. Ivy Merriott will update us on her Medicine Wheel research, March – Dr. Joe Shaw will share his new book with us, April – Dave Hoffman will talk about what he is doing as a NASA intern.   April the club will have a members only Messier Marathon.  In May SMAS members will travel to private land to view and research a set of cairns and a medicine wheel. 2017 will be a fabulous year!

  • September 2016 SMAS meeting

    apollo_sampling

    Join us Friday September 30th starting at 7:00 p.m. at the Sore Elbow Forge.

    We’ll catch up after our summer break.  Learn about setting up our scopes so they track well.  View some lunar samples from the Apollo missions.

    See you there!
    Free and open to the public.

  • White House Astronomy Night: A Celebration of Science, Technology, and Space

    Join the Southwest Montana Astronomical Society as we celebrate the White House Astronomy Night.  Astronomy clubs around the nation will be heading to the lawn with telescopes to view the night sky.  We will be at the Bozeman Public Library front lawn Monday October 19, 2015 starting at 6:30 p.m.  Starting off with a short talk “What’s up in our night sky”, followed by viewing through telescopes.

    To find out more about the White House Astronomy Night check out this link.

    The Bozeman Public Library is located at 626 East Main Street, Bozeman.

  • Co-founder and chief scientist of the SETI@home to give next SMAS lecture!

    Dan Werthimer, co-founder and chief scientist of the SETI@home project, will present “IS ANYBODY OUT THERE? The Search for ET with help from Eight Million Volunteers,” on Friday, Oct. 15, at 6 p.m. in the Hager Auditorium at the Museum the Rockies.

    Werthimer will discuss the possibility of life in the universe and the search for radio and optical signals from other civilizations. He will also discuss other citizen science projects, next generation telescopes, instrumentation, and algorithms for SETI, as well as speculate on when earthlings might discover other civilizations.

    Doors open at 5:30 p.m. The lecture is free and open to the public.

    Sponsors of the lecture include the Montana State University Physics Department, Museum of the Rockies, Montana ESPCoR and Southwest Montana Astronomical Society.

  • APOD of Interest

    Take a look a this Astronomy Picture of the Day from the 20th. It is a tour of the known Universe and as the camera moves away from the Earth, it shows the limit of all radio transmissions from humans.  I found this to be very interesting and pertinent to Dr. Larson’s lecture last night.

  • Thank you Dr. Larson…

    The SMAS Winter Lecture Series is always a hit and last nights lecture, Connections to the Cosmos: The Search for Life Beyond Earth presented by Dr. Shane Larson of Utah State University, was no exception.

    The question whether there are others like us or are we alone in the Universe has been asked since there has been someone to ask it.   Dr. Larson’s deep insights into this question, and the questions that it leads to, helped me to make some sense of these profound and fundamental issues.

    This was a wonderful presentation and I was very glad to see a large turnout at the Hager Auditorium at the Museum of the Rockies for the event.  A big thank you to Dr. Larson for coming up here on short notice and presenting this lecture and thank you to the Museum of the Rockies and the Montana Space Grant Consortium for their support of the Winter Lecture Series.   Thanks also to SMAS and it membership for making this all happen.

    I am really looking forward to next month and the next lecture in the series when Mike Murray, Programs Manager of the Clark Planetarium in Salt Lake City, will present Seeing in the Dark: Tales of an Amateur Astronomer.

  • SMAS Winter Lectures Rock…

    Dr. Stacy Palin presented the first of our 2009 winter lectures, News From The Very Latest In Very Large Arrays, last night at the Hager Auditorium at the Museum of the Rockies to large and enthusiastic audience.

    She has the amazing ability to present this complex subject matter in a clear and comprehensible way.  I was amazed with the breadth of the information she was able to cover in the hour.

    “The speed of light… it’s more than just a good idea, it’s like a law.”

    We all need to extend a Very Large Thank You to Dr. Palin for taking the time to share this wonderful presentation with all of us.  Cheers…

  • News From The Very Latest In Very Large Arrays

    The Very Large Array, the most powerful radio telescope on the planet, is in the midst of an upgrade. It will soon see more of the sky, in more detail, across more of the radio spectrum than ever before. Find out what’s happening, what’s new, and what to expect in the very near future.

    Please join Stacy Palen, Assistant Professor at Weber State University for this lecture on Friday, January 30 in the Hager Auditorium at the Museum of the Rockies.