Father Doug McGonagle, director of the Newman Catholic Center at the University of Massachusetts. PHD received from the University of Massachusetts in 1995, specialized in the radio observation of nitrogen bearing molecules and worked on the Large Millimeter-Wave telescope project. In 2000, Father McGonagle received a Master of Divinity from Pope John XXIII seminary and is an ordained Roman Catholic priest.

Solar observing begins at 3:00pm.

If you plan to attend the cookout and have not paid or notified us please RSVP to Kathy Siok.

While you are out there casually stargazing from a dark sky location, you might see some other interesting objects. You’ll see some familiar constellations, and of course there are a few meteors on any clear night. And you might see the Moon and a naked-eye planet or two. But every now and then some unknown object may traverse the sky. You might even see a brief, but bright flash.

Last month I talked about how a casual stargazer can identify the International Space Station, the Space Shuttle and Iridium Flares traversing the night time sky. While the appearance of these man-made objects change from night to night, the star patterns we observe have remained practically unchanged for thousands of years.

A hazy summer evening may prevent you from observing nebulae and galaxies, but it could afford ideal seeing conditions for high power targets like double stars.