Calendar

March’s Full Moon is the “Lenten Moon”, “Worm Moon”, “Crow Moon”, “Crust Moon”, “Sugar Moon”, “Sap Moon”, “Chaste Moon”, or “Holi”.

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.

April’s Full Moon is the “Egg Moon”, “Pink Moon”, “Sprouting Grass Moon”, “Fish Moon”, “Seed Moon”, “Waking Moon”, or “Hanuman Jayanti”.

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/

May’s Full Moon is the “Milk Moon”, “Flower Moon”, “Corn Planting Moon”, “Hare’s Moon”, or “Buddha Poornima”.

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.

June’s Full Moon is the “Flower Moon”, “Strawberry Moon”, “Honey Moon”, “Rose Moon”, “Hot Moon”, “Planting Moon”, or “Wat Poornima”.