Happenings this Week

Here’s what’s happening this week:

Look alive, inners. This week full wit stargazin’ all over da spin. Big sky party up north where da air clean an’ dark—hope your buggy Earth legs can handle da woods. Down south, a fancy one for folks wit creds who tink dey too good for da light pollution. Den your big “Statewide Star Party”… bring da crowds, bring da scopes, maybe even bring da snacks. New greenhats gettin’ da teachin’, learnin’ not to look down da bizness end o’ da scope. Bring your optics, drop da egos. Sky don’t care if you from Earth or Ceres–it just shine bonito for anyone who look. Voilà.

Steve Emert, our Membership Coordinator, is planning a group purchase of the observing reference book, “Objects in the Heavens” by Peter Birren.  This book is normally sold direct for $29.95 plus $7.50 postage, or $37.45.  The individual price is $25.00 shipping included, in the group purchase.

This book is in its 7^th edition (Steve has the v5.2 version).  It’s a spiral bound field book that with illustrated constellations depicting objects down to 10^th magnitude.

In addition to general reference material (major stars, double stars, red supergiant stars and carbon stars lists, Messier catalog including suggested Messier Marathon search order, NGC catalog with cross reference to other catalogs, a Moon map and viewing guide by day, etc.), the major attraction is it shows an illustration of each constellation in alphabetical order together with a listing of the objects within it.  Brighter “eye candy” objects are bolded for ease of selection, and each object has a short description as well as its RA/Dec coordinates.

It’s excellent if you want to just go out, pick out a constellation and quickly find the DSOs within it.  Each constellation also has a cross reference to the corresponding Sky & Telescope Pocket Sky Atlas page.  It works both as a standalone reference and as a selection guide to objects to use with your smartphone planetarium program.

For a closer look, the web site is:  www.birrendesign.com/astro.html

The group purchase is being advertised on the MAS Discussion Forums under the “MAS Electronic Media & Book Group” topic.  Reply to the message thread to reserve a copy.  Steve plans a deadline for signing up around the end of September or possibly into the first week of October.   

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