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What’s Up for the December Sky

December 2, 2013 admin 0

Key Stars For observers at mid-northern latitudes, the Pleiades star cluster is due south around 10 P.M. local time. Above it is Perseus, flanked by Auriga and Cassiopeia. Orion can be found above the southeastern horizon, and between it and the celestial pole glitters Capella. High in the east are [Read More…]

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Star Party

November 22, 2013 admin2 0

On November 1 Joseph Carro, Tom Frey, Dave Majors (aka Galileo), Gus Nelson, and one parent with an SCT were at Branch Elementary School outside Arroyo Grande.  The school had a very good turnout and we estimated at least 100 people. At one point all 5 telescopes had long lines of at least [Read More…]

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Black Holes, Solar Flares and Jupiter’s Lasers

November 20, 2013 admin 0

On Saturday Oct 5th, 2013 at 10am Aurora Lipper gave an astronomical presentation at the SLO library to the general public entitled “Black Holes, Solar Flares, and Jupiter’s Lasers”. We had over 80 people join us on this bright sunny morning, Dave Majors, Joseph Carro, and Aurora Lipper amazed the [Read More…]

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Annular Eclipse on May 10th

May 13, 2013 admin1 0

Here are a couple of beautiful images from the annular solar eclipse on May 9 / 10th. More info and images are available from NASA and Space.com

Constellation Photography by Lee Coombs

March 1, 2013 admin 0

One of my earliest projects when I first started doing astrophotography was photographing all the Northern Hemisphere constellations. These early photos are still some of my most used photographs whenever I give talks yet were the easiest to take. With today’s modern films, one can record all the stars visible [Read More…]

Photographing the Sun by Lee Coombs

February 1, 2013 admin 0

With an abundance of light, photographing the sun may seem like an extremely easy thing to do. It is this abundance of light, which includes harmful infrared and ultraviolet radiation, that presents the problems associated with solar photography. As kids, many of us experimented with a magnifying glass using it [Read More…]

Reflections of an Obsession by Tom Frey

January 1, 2013 admin 0

Some of you probably don’t know me but I’m called Obsession #860, a truss tube Dobonian telelscope. My credentials include an18 inch f/4.5 Galaxy objective mirror with an enhanced coating and a JMI NGC MAX set of digital setting circles. I’m constructed of maple and red alder plywood. I pal [Read More…]

Me and My Scope by Ryan Koch

December 1, 2012 admin 0

Greetings, after having attended a few of the wonderful star parties put on by CCAS I’ve just recently decided to become a member and was given this opportunity to introduce myself. My name is Ryan, or perhaps more commonly known as “that guy over there with the Coronado PST,” and [Read More…]

Me and My Telescopes by Jim Carlisle

November 1, 2012 admin 0

I started out in amateur astronomer as a kid interested in building my own telescope. At that time, that was the way most amateurs got their scopes, especially if you were too poor to buy one. My first telescope came from the advertisement pages of Popular Mechanics magazine, when I [Read More…]

Me and My Telescope by Dr. Russ Genet

October 1, 2012 admin 0

Since I couldn’t make up my mind which of the many telescopes I’ve been involved with over the last half-century was my favorite, Aurora agreed that I could write two articles: one on my past telescopes, and the other on my current telescope. Here is number one. I wasn’t born [Read More…]