Welcome To The Birmingham Astronomical Society Site
May 20th Solar Eclispe
East Asia and the western United States Astronomers should circle Sunday (May 20) on their calendars. That's when a solar eclipse will block out most of the sun, leaving a spectacular "ring of fire" shining in the sky for observers located along the eclipse's path.
Venus Transit Time
On June 5, 2012, you will see the planet Venus as it moves across the face of the sun. This astronomical oddity has played a very important role over the last few centuries in giving scientists a way to understand the size of the solar system. The event starts on June 5 2012 at 18:09:00 EST and this will be the last time it will occur before 2117!
APOD
A New Picture From The APOD Every Day!
MAY 19, 2012 CMO Star Party
The Chandler Mountain Members Only Star Party is scheduled for 19 May, 2012. Sunset is at 19:30.
If you are new to the club and have never been to the CMO site please send us an email to let us know that you need assistance getting to the site. We can arange to have some one meet you at the Texaco Station right off exit 166.
If you need to contact us on this please contact us via email.
Check out Cloudy Nights. In their Forums/Announcements and News/Celestial Events (http://www.cloudynights.com/), there is a monthly post by Dave Mitsky titled “Celestial Calendar”. It gives a great summary of upcoming celestial sights. For example, this month he mentions a double Galilean transit of Jupiter’s Ganymede and Io for tomorrow night. He also notes ” The Curtiss Cross, an X-shaped illumination effect located between the lunar craters Parry and Gambart, is predicted to occur at 2:33″ on January 28th. Neat stuff and fun to ramble through while planning what to observe.
StarHopping 101
Great Resources
The Birmingham Astronomical Society Proudly Supports
In less than 48 hours, SpaceX is primed to make history and launch the first ever commercial rocket and spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) early Saturday morning on May 19. Following today’s Launch Readiness Review (LRR), SpaceX was just given the official “GO” from NASA to proceed with the blastoff of the Falcon [...]
There’s a great reason to look up this weekend and hope for clear skies! On May 20-21 an annular eclipse of the Sun will be visible from a 300 kilometer-wide track that crosses eastern Asia, the northern Pacific Ocean and the western United States. An annular eclipse means the Moon will not cover the Sun [...]
