DAS News, February 2019

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Lunar Eclipse Photos

DAS members were out in droves for the January 2019 full lunar eclipse, and they sent in some of their images…   Here’s a selection of their work:

Image of January 20th lunar eclipse.
This picture shows the Moon every half hour during the lunar eclipse. Each image is aligned with respect to the Earth’s shadow, so you can see the Moon passing through the shadow, as our satellite moves from west to east (from right to left). Image © Don Lynn.
Image of January 20th lunar eclipse by Joe Pineda.
The eclipsed Moon on January 20th, 2019. The brighter half of the Moon is in the Earth’s penumbra, the hazier outer part of the eclipse shadow. The darker area, at bottom, is fully within Earth’s umbra, the deepest part of the shadow. Image © Joe Pineda.

DAS Leadership

Have you thought about a leadership role in Denver Astronomical Society? It’s a great way to be involved in making DAS the great organization that it is. Nominations for the election of Executive Board (“E-Board”) trustees and officers opened during January’s General Membership Meeting, and will remain open until our Annual Membership Meeting on Friday, February 15th at DU’s Olin Hall. If you’re interested in throwing your hat in the ring (several already have, although there are no nominations yet for Secretary, as of this writing), drop a note to this year’s Election Chair, Tim Pimentel, who can be reached at nominations@denverastro.org.

We encourage you to nominate yourself—the more folks we have running for office, the wider pool of candidates—and ideas—we can draw from. Please note that you have to be a current member in order to run, as well as to vote in the election.

Spring Banquet

Tickets are now available for the DAS Spring Banquet, which will be held on Saturday, March 23rd, 2019. The Banquet will feature Volunteer Awards, installation of the new Executive Board, an astronomy presentation by David Elmore, Astronomer Emeritus for the National Solar Observatory (NSO) in Boulder—and of course, dinner.

**Unlike previous banquets, we’re meeting earlier, and ending later—come join us at 5:30 PM for drinks and social mixing. Dinner is still at 7:00 PM, but we now have time after the speaker, too—visit with your best buddies until 10:00. (We’ve improved dinner-menu options, as well!)

Tickets are $25 per person.

Chamberlin 125th Anniversary

Sunday, July 14th, 2019 is the 125th anniversary of first light at DU’s historic Chamberlin Observatory. Toss in the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission that same month, and we have a lot to celebrate this year. If you remember Chamberlin’s 120th anniversary celebration just five years ago, we’d like to do something like that, but even grander!

We’re putting together a planning committee to work with the E-Board and DU to formulate ideas, organize, and carry out plans for July’s celebration. The month of July will be here before we know it, so the work has to get underway now. (The E-Board has already been discussing a few ideas that could be done in conjunction with our July 13th Open House, but there is no reason why parts of that celebration couldn’t occur prior to then.)

If this is something that interests you, let us know at president@denverastro.org.

New In-Reach Coordinator

For the last several years, the DAS has provided our members with a special service, known as the In-Reach Program, to help them over some of the technical hurdles amateur astronomers might face in astronomy. In the past, that’s meant special In-Reach events to talk about how to choose a telescope, how to align the mirrors of a ’scope you already have, how to find your way in the night sky, general astronomy primers, and more.

After the program’s successful kickoff by Leo Sack, the helm was taken over by Lisa Judd—and now that she’s pressed by other commitments, we have found a new coordinator, Bill Stevens, to keep the In-Reaches going. We thank Lisa and Bill (and Leo!) for their dedication, and you can count on some new In-Reach events, coming soon.