January Meeting
Friday, January 15, 2016, 7:00 pm
The Beauty of the Southern Sky
Our speaker this month is long time Skyscraper member Steve Hubbard.
Do you ever get tired of the same old night sky? Don’t get me wrong, we have some nice things to see up here in the Northern Hemisphere and having Polaris point the way to the North Pole makes it SO easy to line up a telescope.
For years, I’ve both read and heard about the wonders of the Southern Hemisphere objects. Super bright nebulas, superior globular clusters, a vivid Milky Way and oh ya... a couple of small, close galaxies called the Magellanic Clouds that people in the Southern Hemisphere seem to get all excited about. I mean really, how much better could the southern sky be?
After decades wondering, I finally got the chance to find out. Last November, I was very fortunate to join Astronomy Magazine columnist Bob Berman and 25 other amateur astronomers on a fantastic trip to Chile. We spent a week touring the country, learning the culture and yes, we even did some astronomy. Regretfully, we didn’t have a lot of time for observing and I couldn’t bring a lot of equipment to document the trip, but it was still one of the best trips I’ve gone on.
How were the Southern skies as compared to what we can see? Well, to find out, you’re just going to have to come to our meeting and find out!
Steve has been an active member of The Skyscrapers since 1973 and does visual observing and light imaging as often as he can from his backyard observatory in Auburn Mass.
While he still greatly enjoys The Skyscrapers, Steve can’t get over the fact that so much time has passed (over 40 years!) since he first joined. Where did the time go ?
