The passing stars light the way
Last night was my first official meeting with the local astronomical society! I wanted to post about it while it was still kind of fresh in my memory.
The meetings are held at a local nature center, tucked way back from cvilization. The park has signs everywhere about how it closes at sundown, so driving back through the woods in the pitch dark was super sketchy. The nature centure is not very brightly lit at all, either, so I wasn't too sure I was in the right place. I went in anyway, and I met this older gentleman who was super nice and introduced himself as the Outreach Coordinator. He made me feel right at home and pointed out some people of note, then he gave me some free merch! I now have a poster of Hubble images, some New Horizons stickers, a New Horizons paper craft to build, a magazine supplement about telescopes, and a couple other small informational things.
I took a seat kind of off to my own, but the room was small so you really couldn't avoid anyone. The now-former president (they were voting on new board members tonight and her term limit was up) came over and chatted with me for several minutes. She told me about a lot of the programs and things that the group does throughout the year, and pointed out a few more people to note.
This month was the annual business meeting, so it was all about board members, updating their methods of group communication (they still use Yahoo Groups...........), and briefly talking about their Night Sky Network profile. NSN is a national (USA) orgnaization of astronomy groups, focuses on community outreach and education, and is run by NASA. There are rules and regulations to joining, of course. It turns out that our group is currently ranked first in the country for community outreach! That is super exciting. One of the perks of that is apparently that all of the huge labs (NASA Goddard, JPL, JHU, etc) like to just send boxes of free stuff to the top clubs, so that they can use it and spread the word. That's where all of the merch I got tonight came from.
There were a good 20-30 people there last night, fcoming from up to an hour away. Most of the people at the meeting were gentlemen who had probably been retired for 10+ years. I felt a bit out of place because of that, but everyone I talked to was super friendly and welcoming. There is also a mother/daughter pair (the daughter is in college) who seem really nice. I do feel intimidated because we have actual NASA engineers and scientists in the group, and here is me who can barely calibrate her own telescope, let alone tell the difference between M81 and M83. But I am not alone, and that is a comfort. They warmly accept everyone of all knowledge levels, and are more than happy to teach you.
The group is having a party for the upcoming lunar eclipse. The following day is a holiday and I have off from work, so I am planning to go to the event. The nature center has its own observatory, so a little before the event starts they are going to teach people how to use it. I am nervous because it's fancy (and expensive!) tech, but they were saying that once you get the hang of it it is super straightforward and really cool to use.
The meetings are held at a local nature center, tucked way back from cvilization. The park has signs everywhere about how it closes at sundown, so driving back through the woods in the pitch dark was super sketchy. The nature centure is not very brightly lit at all, either, so I wasn't too sure I was in the right place. I went in anyway, and I met this older gentleman who was super nice and introduced himself as the Outreach Coordinator. He made me feel right at home and pointed out some people of note, then he gave me some free merch! I now have a poster of Hubble images, some New Horizons stickers, a New Horizons paper craft to build, a magazine supplement about telescopes, and a couple other small informational things.
I took a seat kind of off to my own, but the room was small so you really couldn't avoid anyone. The now-former president (they were voting on new board members tonight and her term limit was up) came over and chatted with me for several minutes. She told me about a lot of the programs and things that the group does throughout the year, and pointed out a few more people to note.
This month was the annual business meeting, so it was all about board members, updating their methods of group communication (they still use Yahoo Groups...........), and briefly talking about their Night Sky Network profile. NSN is a national (USA) orgnaization of astronomy groups, focuses on community outreach and education, and is run by NASA. There are rules and regulations to joining, of course. It turns out that our group is currently ranked first in the country for community outreach! That is super exciting. One of the perks of that is apparently that all of the huge labs (NASA Goddard, JPL, JHU, etc) like to just send boxes of free stuff to the top clubs, so that they can use it and spread the word. That's where all of the merch I got tonight came from.
There were a good 20-30 people there last night, fcoming from up to an hour away. Most of the people at the meeting were gentlemen who had probably been retired for 10+ years. I felt a bit out of place because of that, but everyone I talked to was super friendly and welcoming. There is also a mother/daughter pair (the daughter is in college) who seem really nice. I do feel intimidated because we have actual NASA engineers and scientists in the group, and here is me who can barely calibrate her own telescope, let alone tell the difference between M81 and M83. But I am not alone, and that is a comfort. They warmly accept everyone of all knowledge levels, and are more than happy to teach you.
The group is having a party for the upcoming lunar eclipse. The following day is a holiday and I have off from work, so I am planning to go to the event. The nature center has its own observatory, so a little before the event starts they are going to teach people how to use it. I am nervous because it's fancy (and expensive!) tech, but they were saying that once you get the hang of it it is super straightforward and really cool to use.