Mega Meet May 3-5, 2024!!! Cancelled
Rescheduled for
August 10th through 11th, 2024
The gate at the Hamburg reservoir will be manned from 4 p.m. until 7 p.m. on August 10th for new members who do not have keys.
LVAAS is not providing any food or beverages! Please bring your own refreshments.
Click here for more details about Mega Meet.
Click Here for directions.
See you on the mountain!
LVAAS Public Star Party
Saturday, October 21
6:00 p.m. - Planetarium Show for families with children aged 14 and under
7:00 p.m. - Presentation TBD
8:00 p.m. - regular Planetarium Show
Arrive early! Seating is first-come, first-serve.
Weather permitting, the observatories will be open for the public to use.
Also, LVAAS members may be demonstrating their personal telescopes.
620 B East Rock Road, Allentown
Open to the public. Donations accepted
Website Upgrade Complete!
Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays and welcome to your newly-remodeled LVAAS Website! Santa's elves -- actually, just one elf -- has been busy reconfiguring our website programming to work with the manadatory upgrade to PHP version 7.2. (See the latest issue of The Observer for more details.)
As you unwrap this shiny present, please be thoughtful of the presenter. You are pretty much guaranteed to not like everything about it, at least not right away, but please consider putting your protests back under the tree for a little bit, and see if you can accept the whole in the spirit it is given. We did not ask for this gift, but we are forced to take it, and I have done my best to make it acceptable. Unfortunately there was no easy way to keep everything the same (and it's not really obvious that we should.)
Tips on getting the most out of the new lvaas.org
One of the features of the updated software is that it tries to be more friendly for users of smart phones and other small screens. The way that it does this was not friendly to our old menu organization, so now we have a new one. The main navigation menu is moved to the bottom, so that on large screens, the Upcoming Events feature remains prominent.
You will notice a "Menu" link on the top left, and I have gone to some extra trouble to make sure that it is always there, although the rest of the horizontal menu goes away on devices. I've decided to keep a few items on the top menu to entice casual visitors to learn more about LVAAS. In any case, a quick click on the Menu link will take you to the complete menu, where you will find a "Back to Top" link to reverse the effect.
Also, notice that clicking on the Menu link and then scrolling up a bit is an easy way to get to the Clear Sky Clock. We could also move the Clear Sky Clock down into the footer area, if we want.
On mobile devices, the Login button on the upper-right corner disappears, but there is a Login link available in the second footer menu, which contains other member-specific choices.
I've removed links to a bunch of stuff that seemed mostly obsolete and neglected, but anything that we really need can be brought back.
Open Issues
The site will continue to evolve and improve, and we will continue to find things that need to be fixed. Hopefully, we'll also find things that we prefer over the old site. Those of us who edit content on the site should enjoy the updated, less buggy editing software.
If you notice a critical issue, please don't hesitate to let me know right away. But as I mentioned, if you have a minor complaint, I would prefer you hold back a bit to see if it's really something that you can't live with.
Here is a list of some known issues that I think we must fix soon, although I elected not to let them cause a delay in bringing the site back on-line:
I have a complete list including many picayune defects that I have noticed, and there will be more.
-- Rich Hogg, December 19, 2019; email
Occultation Timing Links
These are from Steve Conard's presentation at out Nov. 10, 2019 General Meeting.
http://www.poyntsource.com/New/Global.htm
http://www.lunar-occultations.com/entersite.htm
http://www.asteroidoccultation.com/ *
http://www.asteroidoccultation.com/observations/Results/
Book: "chasing the Shadow: The IOTA Occultation Observer's Manual" (free download from *)
Contact: Steve Conard (steve dot conard at comcast dot net) ("I'm happy to help you get started")
Transit of Mercury on November 11
Next Monday, Novermber 11, the planet Mercury will pass in front of the sun, beginning at about 7:30 a.m. and lasting until just after 1 p.m. This will not happen again until 2032!
LVAAS has arranged for a viewing opportunity at the Da Vinci Science Center, outside the main building on the east side (which is to the left as you come in the main entrance from the parking lot.) We are planning to have members there with solar telescopes for the entire event. Stop by and take a look, and then check out the fascinating exhibits that Da Vinci Science Center has to offer!
The weather forecast is "partially sunny." We will be there, to take advantage of the sunny parts!
NASA photo from the 2006 Transit of Mercury.
Is That Saturn?
It seemed too bright, and too early for Saturn to be so clearly visible! Once it was brought into focus by Chris Kiely in LVAAS' 12" Newtonian Reflector, it turned out to be a very beautiful high-altitude balloon, hanging in the sky like a Christmas tree ornament, a rare special treat for visitors to our Star Party on Saturday, October 5.
A later search on flightradar24 indicated that it was most likely HBAL024, an experimental balloon for providing Internet service belonging to Loon LLC, formerly a Google X project. It was launched from Winnemucca, NV on Wednesday afternoon, and drifting at 16 kts at an altitude of 67,800 ft. over Plymouth Meeting, PA, easily visible from our South Mountain HQ.
This shaky, almost-focused photo was taken by Rich Hogg's smartphone held up to the eyepiece. The image shown is how it would look to the naked eye; in the telescope it was turned upside-down.
The Construction of LVAAS HQ
This fascinating 33-minute film has a history that is almost as long and convoluted as LVAAS itself, and its colorful facilities and people. Originally shot on black and white film by Walter W. Leight, it was later transferred to videotape by Dan's Camera City, and narrated by Paul Shenkle, Bill McHugh, and George Maurer. From there it found its way (in 3 versions) onto a DVD possessed by LVAAS Programs Director and club historian, Sandra Mesics. Now, we have taken the longest, unedited version (the one without any music) and uploaded it to Youtube, which has enhanced it to make it more enjoyable than ever.
Featuring many of the founding personalities of LVAAS, this film reveals the very bones of our organization as well as our headquarters building. Enjoy a rarely-seen view into the beginnings of LVAAS!
LVAAS General Meeting at South Mountain
Sunday, November 9, 7 p.m. at LVAAS South Mountain Headquarters
Presenter is in person
"Meteorites and their Origins"
Featuring Ray Harris
Ray Harris, former director and life member of LVAAS, will speak on Meteorites. He’ll review the classification of various kinds of meteorites, the properties which make them unique and what this tells us about their origins.
Ray is the son of a career Naval officer and grew up mostly near Naval facilities in Virginia and California, graduating high school on the Naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He attended Yale University and upon graduation spent five years in the Navy supervising reactor operations on a nuclear submarine. Ray left the service for a career in civilian nuclear power. He joined PPL in Allentown in 1980 as staff supporting the Susquehanna nuclear power plants in Berwick. He later moved into PPL corporate IT before retiring in 2009 but he got bored with retirement and currently works part-time as a school bus driver.
In 1984, Ray bought a C-8. He joined LVAAS in 1985 and began exploring and photographing the night sky (back before the digital imaging age). His photo of the Horsehead Nebula appeared in the January 1990 issue of Sky & Telescope. In 1987 he purchased a pair of celestial charts published in 1741. He discovered a couple of deep-sky objects on these charts and for the past 38 years, Ray has been researching and collecting early celestial charts and atlases. Ray’s article “The First Deep-Sky Atlas” appeared in the January 2022 issue of Sky & Telescope and his article “The Constellations of Petrus Plancius" appeared in the February 2023 issue. Ray resides in Macungie, PA, with his wife who does not share his interest in astronomy but who does share his love of early celestial charts as works of art.
Prospective new members who wish to attend the meeting should email membership@lvaas.org.
— LVAAS —
THE LEHIGH VALLEY AMATEUR ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY -- 620B East Rock Road -- Allentown, PA 18103 -- 610-797-3476 -- www.lvaas.org
WELCOME!
Founded in 1957, the Lehigh Valley Amateur Astronomical Society (LVAAS) is one of the oldest continuously-operating amateur astronomy organizations in the U.S. The mission of LVAAS is to promote the study of Astronomy and to maintain a meeting space, observatories, and a planetarium.
LVAAS operates two astronomy sites: The South Mountain site in Salisbury Township is the headquarters of the Society. It has a planetarium with a Spitz A3P projector, a 21 foot dome, meeting space, the Red Shift store, library, workshop space, and three observatories. The Pulpit Rock site near Hamburg is LVAAS's members-only dark sky site. At 1600 feet above sea level, the site features five observatories and a pad for member's scopes.
Members who receive training on the scopes may obtain keys to the observatories. LVAAS also maintains a rental "fleet" of telescopes that members may rent at low cost. Members also receive access to The Observer, our online newsletter, as well as reduced subscription prices to Sky and Telescope and Astronomy Magazine. If you want to learn more about astronomy and LVAAS, please join us at our next public star party.
