Just got back from the Huachuca Astronomy Club's 25th anniversary banquet, which was held at the Arizona Folklore Preserve in Ramsey Canyon. It was a nice dinner with good friends. This picture shows guest speaker David Levy, the author and famous comet discoverer; his talk was titled "A Nightwatchman's Journey: My Life and Hard Times as a Comet Searcher". David always gives wonderful talks and tonight was no exception - his passion for astronomy is infectious. The picture is not too good, as I took it with my cell phone (I forgot my camera).
I actually won a door prize tonight! My winning ticket earned me a very nice large Orion hardshell eyepiece case. I've sat through a lot of raffles with no luck so it took me a moment to realize that they had called my number.
Last night was another good astronomy club meeting, with the monthly Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association club gathering at Steward Observatory's main lecture hall. In addition to various short discussions about club activities (including the TIMPA roll-away observatory project and the dark site search), we heard from Dr. Mark Dickinson, a Kitt Peak professional astronomer. His talk was "Multi-Wavelength Deep Field Surveys: Watching Galaxies Grow". He gave an excellent overview of the numerous deep field surveys, beginning with the original Hubble Deep Field. The trend in professional astronomy is towards more joint efforts where different observatories all observe the same area of the sky with different wavelength instrumentation.
No observing for me, however, as the monsoons let loose yesterday and today with heavy rains and clouds.
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