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Guest Speaker: Dr. Gianluca Masi

Next 14 April, starting at 23:15 UT, the Northern Virginia Astronomy Club (NOVAC) will offer you a unique chance to explore cosmic landscapes from the comfort of your chair.

Thanks to a joint collaboration between NOVAC and the Virtual Telescope Project (VT)in Italy (www.virtualtelescope.eu), a powerful telescope in Italy will be capturing in real time images of the most beautiful cosmic gems and will share the view with all those connected from all around the planet.

All this with the live commentary of the astrophysicist Gianluca Masi, PhD, founder and scientific director of the Virtual Telescope Project, who will be available on the event chat for questions and comments.

We will surf the northern Spring skies, spying beautiful, distant galaxies like Messier 51, Messier 100, NGC 4565 and so on, also spying dying stars, exploding supernovae millions and millions of light years away. On our way back home, we will visit planet Saturn and its elegant, amazing rings. Of course, participants can suggest their own preferred destinations via chat, adding interactivity to the trip.

NOVAC and VT will open the online event to all, for free: to join, you just need to access, at the event date and time, the page:www.astrowebtv.org

In case of cloudy weather at the observatory, backup images will be used.

This event is part of the Global Astronomy Month 2013.

This meeting is a week earlier due to Mother’s Day.  Our guest speaker is Dr. Madhulika “Lika” Guhathakurta. She’s a solar physicist, program scientist for the STEREO mission, and lead scientist of NASA’s “Living with a Star” program. She’ll be speaking about space weather and solar storms.

More information on our general meetings can be found at: http://www.novac.com/meetings/

The weather forecast is pretty (un)clear for tonight, so I’m canceling this event today. – Jim Mosquera

This event is cancelled by the site coordinator due to bad weather.

See front page of NOVAC Site for changes to event. More information about Great Meadow including directions and parking visit the Great Meadow Site page.

Sunday’s speaker is Will Marchant, who will be delivering a talk on the NuSTAR Mission

Details about NOVAC meetings can be found at http://www.novac.com/meetings/ – including information about the club’s informal pre-meeting dinners at Red Hot & Blue.

This Saturday we have two NOVAC events scheduled at Crockett. From 12:00 PM to 4:00 PM we’ll be conducting solar public observing. And from dusk to 11:00 PM we’ll have our standard public night. The daytime solar observing makes this one of our special Crockett events. Both are weather permitting. And the hope at this time of year is that the unpredictable weather may cooperate for at least one, if not both events.

For the daytime solar observing bring any solar capable scope (e.g., white light, H-Alpha, Calcium) or indirect methods.  Safety first! And don’t forget to dress appropriately – hat, sunscreen, plenty to drink, etc.

Please let me know which event you plan to attend, even you just want to help and don’t have solar astro-equipment.

Please read the C.M. Crockett Page for park details.

The Great Meadow Public Observing Night for tonight (Friday – 7-12-2013) is cancelled due to bad weather and the observing field is too wet to drive on.

See front page of NOVAC Site for changes to event. More information about Great Meadow including directions and parking visit the Great Meadow Site page.

Event is cancelled due to weather.

Please read the C.M. Crockett Page for park details.

NOTE: This meeting will be held in the “Showcase Room” which is the meeting room at the base of the Research Hall Observatory instead of the normal location.

See front page of NOVAC Site for changes to event. More information about Great Meadow including directions and parking visit the Great Meadow Site page.