Tonight was the monthly TAAA meeting. I went down there with my friend Larry, we attended both the "Astronomy Essentials" lecture as well as the main lecture.
The first part was a talk about Optical Abberations by Dr. Mary Turner. It was interesting to hear how different telescope designs affect the quality of both visual and photographic observations. Mary is a high-energy presenter and always makes her talks entertaining.
Next was a talk by Dr. Nalin Samarashina, called "New Insights in Cometary Science. He gave a great presentation about the scientific studies that have been done in the past few decades on comets. We now have comet dust (from the Stardust mission) to study, and of course there have been a number of other missions. He gave some good information about the results of the Deep Impact mission, which several of us were fortunate to have watched through our telescopes last year.
It's partly cloudy tonight but there were enough clearings to step outside to check on my new friend Chi Cygni. I brought the family outside to see it as well. It has a red tint even to the naked eye. Neat stuff - there is always something new to see in astronomy, whether it be comets, stars in outburst mode, or whatever!
BTW the dates and times in some of my pictures lately are all wrong, I need to fix that.
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