Tag Archives: International Sunday

A Rescheduling Of Today’s (Saturday, June 20th) International SUNday On The Onondaga Creekwalk Session Due To Cloud Cover

Greetings fellow astrophiles,

12:30 p.m. – Unfortunately, all of the weather sites are predicting increasing cloud cover for CNY into the afternoon, with rain possible in the early evening. As tomorrow is predicted to be even worse, we’ll be rescheduling our International SUNDay session for some time in the not-too-distant future. Stay tuned!

Weather Update For International SUNday On The Onondaga Creekwalk – Scheduled For Saturday Afternoon, 4 to 6 p.m.

Greetings fellow astrophiles!

Weather update: The forecast for CNY does not look promising for the official Int’l SUNDay on the 21st, so we’re going to instead run a session on Saturday afternoon at our usual downtown location. We’ll be providing a final weather update on Saturday, 12:00 p.m.

11174816_10155510931665088_9158140535153847873_nWith special thanks to Stephen W. Ramsden, The Charlie Bates Solar Astronomy Project, Rainbow Symphony and Lunt Solar Systems, CNYO’s second hosting of International SUNday is going to include (for the first 100 people, anyway) an extra dose of solar safety. Stephen et al. have made available 100 solar glasses to send off to organizations hosting International SUNday events!

CNYO ran a session for International SUNday on the Onondaga Creekwalk last June 22nd (see the observing log HERE), complete with H-alpha and Baader scopes (and we even had a good day for it, which is a bit of a rarity in CNY). I learned about the event from Stephen’s talk at NEAF 2014, where I found his lecture to be equally informative and inspiring.

I urge you to check out the website and Facebook page for the Charlie Bates Solar Astronomy Project – the amount of outreach Stephen does is tremendous (I am also happy to direct your attention to the Donate Button on the Project’s website to show a little love).

We’ll again host the session along the Armory Square slice of the Creekwalk – again next to Walt The Loch West Monster.

We hope you can join us on Saturday, June 20st in giving a little extra attention to our nearest star and reason why we’re all here!

CNYO Observing Log: A Quick Overview Of The Last Month

Greetings fellow astrophiles!

CNYO members (several of them, anyway) have grown tired of sorting and cleaning their eyepieces this extra-frosty winter (not me – I think it’s fun!) and are getting ready for a long Spring and Summer of (hopefully) using them at observing sessions. With several scout, school, and public sessions scheduled or in the works, CNYO already has several successful events under their collective belts. A quick sampling of updates from these events is listed below.


1. North Syracuse Community Room For International Dark Sky Week – Tuesday, April 14

It happens to all of us at some point – we become so wrapped up in the minutia of a hobby or profession that we completely forget that the vast majority of the rest of the planet has little idea what we’re rambling on about. Light pollution – the encroachment of civilization on amateur astronomy due largely to a lack of forethought in the way people and businesses attempt to turn “the night” into “the late afternoon” – has been shown to have negative impacts on health (melatonin!), safety (street light glare!), security (blind spots big enough to eat hay!), energy conservation (714 lbs of coal are required to light one 100 W bulb for a year!), and the environment (plant cycles can be affected by stray light and the nesting and migration habits of several species have been shown to be affected by a lack of proper day/night cycles).

Within minutes of my starting the lecture on light pollution, I discovered that this was a completely brand new topic to half of the audience. The tone of the lecture changed rapidly from complaining to educating (you do learn to think on your feet a bit when giving public lectures), and I am optimistic that the audience left with a new understanding of the problem and many of the solutions now available (from simple solutions at Home Depot and Lowe’s all the way to legislation recently passed in Albany).


2. Bob Piekiel At Baltimore Woods – Friday, April 17

Bob’s monthly sessions at Baltimore Woods are, bar none, the most reliably-scheduled public observing events in CNY. Despite a bit of light pollution to the East-ish from Marcellus and Syracuse and a tree line that eats the very edge of the horizon for early-setting objects (and we’ve still managed to catch some photons from special objects at tree level in the past few years), the rest of the sky is wide open for constellations, planets, and the Messier Catalog.

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A colder Baltimore Woods session (February, 2015).

Bob reports that this session hosted about 20 enthusiastic observers – a sure sign that CNY was starting to thaw in April (as only the bravest/craziest made it out to the earlier sessions this year).


3. NEAF 2015 – Saturday & Sunday, April 18 & 19

Ryan Goodson and I missed the April 17th BW session, instead heading Southeast with vehicles full of both New Moon Telescopes Dobsonian parts and a very large fraction of the Stuventory. The NMT NEAF 2015 booth was (quite fortuitously) wider than expected, providing ample room for (1) Ryan to showcase a newly completed Dob, collapsible truss assemblies, and a new design prototypes and (2) me to run the biggest little used equipment sale I’ve seen in my 5 years of attending NEAF. I am pleased to report that the vast majority of the Stuventory is now in the hands of dedicated amateur astronomers from all around the Northeast and as far away as the Dubai Astronomy Group!

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Before…
During…
After…


4. Maker Hall At Parent University – Saturday, April 25

Larry Slosberg, Ryan Goodson, and I lucked out with clear skies and a large crowd of kids and adults alike at the Dr. King Elementary School. What could have been a demonstration table indoors turned into a full-on solar session outdoors in the playground, complete with some of the best and busiest views of the Sun I’ve ever seen through my Coronado PST.

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A snapshot of the observing crowd.

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A prominent prominence at 2:30 p.m.

As has been the case with all of the kids’ sessions to date, half the kids keep you on your toes and the other half approach observing with their pint-sized science caps on (these ones are easy to pick out as they spend a good long time at the eyepiece).


5. CNYO At Beaver Lake Nature Center – Thursday, April 30

Our weather-alternate session at Beaver Lake started a bit on the soupy cloud cover side, but ended up clearing nicely just after sunset to give Bob Piekiel, Chris Schuck, Larry Slosberg, and myself reasonable skies for the Moon, Jupiter, Venus, and a few bright Messiers. With a short lecture on the observing highlights for the year (see below) already loaded on the laptop, several of us waited out the Sun indoors while others allowed their eyes to adjust gradually as the skies darkened and the early bugs slowly cooled out around the main rotunda.

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Attending observers at Beaver Lake.

We’re tentatively scheduled to host a Summer observing session late August and will post as the schedule finalizes.


6. Syracuse Rotary Lecture – Friday, May 1

2015may10_rotarymbs_rgbAn invitation to speak for 30 minutes (which turned into nearly an hour with questions) to the Syracuse Rotary Club provided the perfect excuse to prep a lecture on all of the major astronomical events happening in 2015 (planets, eclipses, International SUNDay, NASA missions, and comets). How often do you end up hearing about something interesting the day after? The +30 attending Rotarians were very welcoming and engaging during the lecture, with several questions taking us far, far away from the Powerpoint presentation into all areas of astronomy. If you ever get the opportunity to lecture to a Rotary Club, take it!

June 21st International SUNday Session & A Major Kudos To The Charlie Bates Solar Astronomy Project

Greetings fellow astrophiles,

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I think the image about covers it.

With special thanks to Stephen W. Ramsden, The Charlie Bates Solar Astronomy Project, Rainbow Symphony and Lunt Solar Systems, CNYO’s second hosting of International SUNday is going to include (for the first 100 people, anyway) an extra dose of solar safety. Stephen et al. have made available 100 solar glasses to send off to organizations hosting International SUNday events – and we’re anxiously awaiting a box of them!

CBSAP_Large_Logo_White_ShadowCNYO ran a session for International SUNday on the Onondaga Creekwalk last June 22nd (see the observing log HERE), complete with H-alpha and Baader scopes (and we even had a good day for it, which is a bit of a rarity in CNY). I learned about the event from Stephen’s talk at NEAF 2014, where I found his lecture to be equally informative and inspiring.

I urge you to check out the website and Facebook page for the Charlie Bates Solar Astronomy Project – the amount of outreach Stephen does is tremendous (I am also happy to direct your attention to the Donate Button on the Project’s website to show a little love).

We’re getting the attending scope list together presently and will have another announcement or two (and scheduled Facebook and meetup events) shortly. I expect we’ll again host the session along the Armory Square slice of the Creekwalk – again next to Walt The Loch West Monster.

Stay tuned – and we hope you can join us on SUNday, June 21st in giving a little extra attention to our nearest star and reason why we’re all here!