by Ludy D’Angelo, Director AAAP
I cannot believe that it is already half way through the year. Time passes us by so quickly. Blink, and many months have come and gone.
I’m hoping that everyone can attend our last meeting until September. It will be held at the New Jersey State Museum Planetarium on June 14th at 7:30 PM (please note the earlier meeting time). For those of you who have not been there, I encourage you to come along and experience the newly renovated planetarium. Club member Bill Murray will be our host and will give us a presentation not to be missed.
We have decided to cancel the June 4th picnic because of a lack of responses for that date. By the time you read this, that date would be long gone anyway. This was very disappointing to me personally. I always look forward to a good picnic, and it is a new moon week, so going to the observatory afterwards would have been fun too. But alas, even after mentioning this date for the last few months, there was very little response to two emailed invitations requesting an RSVP. If anyone has a better date in mind, please let a board member know. We’ll announce a rescheduled event in the near future.
Last weekend, my family traveled to Oberlin, Ohio for my wife’s college reunion. As part of the festivities during the three-day weekend, the college’s observatory was open day and night for solar and nighttime observing. Suffice to say, it was cloudy and rainy during the three days and evenings except for a small patch of clear sky on Sunday afternoon. On one evening when there was maybe a 1% chance of the clouds breaking up, I went to the observatory, which was perched high atop a five-story building. There I met many of the students who were running the open house and the woman who ran the observatory for Oberlin, Karina Leppik. I also found out that Ms. Leppik was starting a new job as of June 1st as one of many astronomers for the SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy) project. They will fly an infrared telescope very high in a 747 plane to observe and take astronomical data. This NASA project is based in California. So, overall, a very interesting encounter with very enthusiastic individuals.
Some upcoming dates to remember:
AAAP Picnic – To be rescheduled
June 14th – AAAP at the New Jersey State Planetarium, Trenton NJ at 7:30 PM
See you all there!
Ludy D’Angelo, Director AAAP
Amateur Astronomers Association of Princeton 