Spring 2010 star party schedule

Hello All,

Hope you had an awesome winter break and beginning of the semester!  Spring 2010 is already upon us, and with it, a new schedule for our club’s star parties…

Check out the new dates on our “star parties” page under “events” on the sidebar on the right, or look for schedule flyers at the front desks of your local SW HCC campus.  As of this writing, the flyers have only been distributed at Stafford campus so far, but in the coming days they will be sent to other campuses as well, so keep an eye out!

As always, clear skies, and hope to see y’all at some of these events…

-Alicia Tristan-                                                                                           HCC S.T.A.R Squad President

Tzec Maun Foundation – Astrophotography

One of the unique resources available to the members and officers of the S.T.A.R. Squad is access to remote telescopes owned and managed by the Tzec Maun Foundation.  These telescopes are located at two locations:  New Mexico Skies in Mayhill, New Mexico and Fair Dinkum Skies in Pingelly, Australia.  All are accessible through the internet with the login provided to interested members of the club. 

Attached is a short movie, compiled using some of the images I’ve taken over the past year or so…  More can be found on the Capellastronomy blog, or at my flickr page:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/capella_891/

-Alicia Tristan-                                                                                         HCC S.T.A.R. Squad President

Ancient Greek Theories of Time: In Brief

Here is a presentation made by Vice President Nathaniel Whitehead on some ancient Greek theories of time. Time for many of the ancients, of whom Plato is one, was highly related to the heavens above and the observed motion of the celestial bodies. As an interesting astronomy note Plato described retro-grade motion of planets in a very interesting way. Take a look and enjoy.

Time Presentation

Recent Astronomy News…..

There has been a lot happening as of late in the world of astronomy and in this edition we will cover only a small fraction of those goings on, but none the less, we still have some very exciting news to report to all you space fans out there trekking your way across cyber-world. Recent findings strongly suggest the presence of liquid salt water on Mars, it appears we are in a deep solar minimum, a new technique is uncovering exoplanets in old Hubble archival data, and results from the Spitzer space telescope show that some chemicals thought to be necessary for life (as we know it) may not be present around all stars. So lets jump into it shall we…..