Hi Everybody,
 
I'm back down in Washington DC for a couple weeks and decided to look for a local astronomy group to see if they had any activities going on.  I found one that was having a club meeting so I attended last night.  The name of the group is NOVAC Northern Virginia Astronomy Club.  They claim to be the biggest in the country with over 800 members (self proclaimed).  They also said that "only half of us are active", half - thats like 400 people!!!  They also said that in the summer months the meeting participation drops off, last night there was probably 100 people in attendance and this was just a general meeting, no observing. 
 
They first talked about observing reports, one group meets every Friday night at a local "dark" observing site, thier report sounded very simmilar to what we do in both group size (30 +/-) and duration (2 to 3 hours).  Another guy had just got back from an astronomy trip to Austraila, wow it was a great report, he is working on a slide presentation and talk. 
Then they talked about club news and upcoming meetings & star parties.  They have a couple huge star parties coming up, maybe I'll be back down here for one of them.  They said it's not uncommon for them to have 200 to 300 telescope set up at one time.
 
Then the main presentation started.  These meetings are on the campus of George Mason University (GMU).  The presenter was the Dean of Astronomy and he talked about thier new 20' dome observatory.  He had pictures and discussed the construction schedule.  Right now they are still working on the telescope, its a 32" RC Scope.  Just the mirror-set alone cost $125,000.  To construct the telescope mount and all the electronics is going to be another $340,000, they're working on it now.  He had some computer generated pictures of the proposed scope and said it should be complete in 6 to 9 months.  It was interesting to say the least.  Then we all got to take a tour of the completed dome.  It was state of the art, really neat to seeI'm back down in Washington DC for a couple weeks and decided to look for a local astronomy group to see if they had any activities going on.  I found one that was having a club meeting so I attended last night.  The name of the group is NOVAC Northern Virginia Astronomy Club.  They claim to be the biggest in the country with over 800 members (self proclaimed).  They also said that "only half of us are active", half - thats like 400 people!!!  They also said that in the summer months the meeting participation drops off, last night there was probably 100 people in attendance and this was just a general meeting, no observing. 
 
They first talked about observing reports, one group meets every Friday night at a local "dark" observing site, thier report sounded very simmilar to what we do in both group size (30 +/-) and duration (2 to 3 hours).  Another guy had just got back from an astronomy trip to Austraila, wow it was a great report, he is working on a slide presentation and talk. 
 
Then they talked about club news and upcoming meetings & star parties.  They have a couple huge star parties coming up, maybe I'll be back down here for one of them.  They said it's not uncommon for them to have 200 to 300 telescope set up at one time.
 
Then the main presentation started.  These meetings are on the campus of George Mason University (GMU).  The presenter was the Dean of Astronomy and he talked about thier new 20' dome observatory.  He had pictures and discussed the construction schedule.  Right now they are still working on the telescope, its a 32" RC Scope.  Just the mirror-set alone cost $125,000.  To construct the telescope mount and all the electronics is going to be another $340,000, they're working on it now.  He had some computer generated pictures of the proposed scope and said it should be complete in 6 to 9 months.  It was interesting to say the least.  Then we all got to take a tour of the completed dome.  It was state of the art, really neat to see.  I wish the scope would have been finished and operational, but just seeing the observatory was relly cool. 
 
They don't set up scopes after thier meeting so no observing session afterwards.  GMU is located in the heart of Fairfax County and the light polution is very bad, look at a map that shows light polution, that real bright area on the East Coast is DC/Fairfax County. 
 
I took some pictures of the observatory, I'll bring them to the next ERNC meeting if anyone is interested. 
 
Tom