Alachua Astronomy Club

05/19/2026

An opportunity to contribute to some Citizen Science efforts on the new Rubin Observatory. Take a look, its a fun experience.

05/17/2026

Dr. Reyes hosted club members at Rosemary Hill Observatory (UF Department of Astronomy) for a technical presentation on radio astronomy. We then shared a pizza dinner before weather moved in to end the evening.

05/13/2026

We don't want to play favorites but having a resource like the SF Kika Silva Pla Planetarium and it's incredible director, James C. Albury available for our monthly meetings is such a treat. This month we watched Birth of Planet Earth and explored the night sky, including a few special celestial moments on the planetarium projector.

05/08/2026

Last night our longtime Outreach Coordinator, Lisa was surprised with her Bronze, Silver, and Gold Outreach Awards as part of the Astronomical League's Observing Program. This represents a tiny fraction of the hours she has dedicated to our mission of sharing the night sky with the community. Please join us in congratulating and thanking her for the years of dedication.(and the many years to come!)

05/03/2026

This image is a composite showing the position of Regulus before and after occultation by the moon on 25 April 2026.

Multiple images were taken by Jerry Cheney using a Canon Eos R6 MarkII with a 400mm zoom lens between 8:20 and 10:00 pm from Ocklawaha, Florida.

Three of these images were combined in Corel PaintShop Pro. The first image shows Regulus to the left of the moon less than a minute before occultation, the second image shows the moon occulting Regulus, and the third image shows Regulus to the upper right of the moon about two minutes after occultation. Glare from the bright moon, exacerbated by high, wispy clouds and high humidity, prevented him from seeing the occultation naked eye, but the camera allowed Jerry to "see" this event in real time.

04/25/2026

Our members are amazing!
Today they were out working on painting 2 fire hydrants as part of the City of Newberry - Government's fundraiser supporting an equipment purchase for the local fire station.
Thank you to JoAnn for leading the painting and Ali for matching our donation to sponsor a second donation. Jay and Jessica were our other master painters while Dave and Matthew helped clean and painted a base coat on our second hydrant.
We are excited to see these develop with more details as the layers are added.

04/15/2026

A full house and Zoom for our April meeting.
A great Lunar presentation by Jerry followed up by exciting work being done in our area to preserve the night sky.
In case you couldn't join us, the meeting is coming soon to our YouTube channel

04/10/2026

From club member Howard Eskildsen:

Moon As Seen from Artemis 2 (NASA Photo) Southwestern Moon as Seen From Earth The top photo was taken from Artemis 2 as it was swinging around the far side of the moon. The lower image was taken fr…

04/08/2026

We sometimes forget the full motion of Earth through space. Here is a fun look at the route Artemis II is taking to the Moon and back.