Author Archives: ST Editors

Outreach Blotter

Posted on April 1, 2019 by ST Editors

by Gene Allen, Outreach Chair David Letcher, our former, longtime Outreach Chair, served as Event Lead for an Outreach Event in Hopewell on March 22. His report on the Event is as follows: “Well, we continued our tradition of giving … Continue reading →

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March 2019 meeting minutes

Posted on April 1, 2019 by ST Editors

by Jim Poinsett, Secretary Minutes of the March 2019 Meeting of the Amateur Astronomers Association of Princeton Rex opened the meeting and welcomed our new members. He then introduced Ira, the Program Chair. Ira introduced the evening’s speaker Dr. Scott … Continue reading →

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The Earth as a Peppercorn

Posted on April 1, 2019 by ST Editors

by Victor Davis The Earth as a Peppercorn Seeking a “Gee Whiz” Moment With spring comes an upwelling in our club’s outreach activities, from Friday night star parties at the observatory to on-site presentations at schools, libraries, and other venues. … Continue reading →

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The weight of Water

Posted on April 1, 2019 by ST Editors

by Theodore R. Frimet The Weight of Water fundy tides, tidal friction, and Einstein I ordered a copy of the Observer’s Handbook 2019, back a few months ago. I was pretty stoked that The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC) … Continue reading →

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How vast is our Solar system ?

Posted on April 1, 2019 by ST Editors

How vast is our solar system ? We know that the Sun is at the center of the solar system. How far does it extend ? The outer edge of the solar system has been extending since the ancient times … Continue reading →

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Snippets

Posted on April 1, 2019 by ST Editors

compiled by Arlene & David Kaplan Planet Jupiter: Spectacular picture of Jupiter’s storms This beautiful picture of Jupiter was assembled from three separate images acquired by Nasa’s Juno spacecraft as it made another of its close passes of the gas … Continue reading →

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From the Director

Posted on March 3, 2019 by ST Editors

      by Rex Parker, Director Seeing the “Invisible” Deep Sky. Lest you despair that the famed Messier objects are forever lost in the glare of skyglow in central New Jersey, consider this. It was Alfred Lord Tennyson who … Continue reading →

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From the Program Chair

Posted on March 3, 2019 by ST Editors

By Ira Polans The March meeting of the AAAP will be held on the 12th at 7:30PM in the auditorium (Room 145) of Peyton Hall on the Princeton University campus The featured talk is by Scott Tremaine of the Institute … Continue reading →

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Amazing Astronomy

Posted on March 3, 2019 by ST Editors

by Gene Allen It took ten years and $1.3 billion to build the largest observatory on the planet, and it has an expected useful lifetime of only fifty years. The entire installation is rather bleeding edge technology. ALMA is the … Continue reading →

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What a Success!

Posted on March 3, 2019 by ST Editors

by Gene Allen, Outreach Chair Our evening at Stuart Country Day School was a rousing success. It was not a success in terms of showing the fourth grade girls the night sky, because as soon as it got dark enough, … Continue reading →

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Pictures

Posted on March 3, 2019 by ST Editors

“Skies were clear last night and the seeing was pretty good. Here’s a photo I took of M42 using my 10 inch Ritchey-Chretien…” – Robert Vanderbei on 4 Feb, 2019

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the squish factor

Posted on March 3, 2019 by ST Editors

by Theodore R. Frimet oh baby, it’s cold outside! I reached out to the universe, by email, on February 8th 2019, at 11:55 AM, with the following plea, and embedded an image from https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES obtained a few minutes before said … Continue reading →

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Were Apollo manned moon landings fake ?

Posted on March 3, 2019 by ST Editors

by Prasad Ganti In a recent gathering of friends and family, this topic came up. There are some conspiracy theorists who believe that NASA faked the moon landings. The reasoning is that the enormous pressure during the cold war to … Continue reading →

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