Hello! I hope your 2007 is going well so far!

Public viewing on UT telescopes start up again this week. Wednesdays will be on
RLM and Fridays and Saturdays will be at Painter. All viewing is from 7-9 p.m.
The daylight saving time change has moved up a couple of weeks, so we'll change
star party times after spring break.

Information on parking and directions to the telescopes are available here:
http://outreach.as.utexas.edu/public/viewing.html

We also have two public lectures coming up. The first is this Friday at 7:30
p.m. in the ground floor lecture hall in RLM (room 4.102). The lecture will be
presented by Joel R. Primack, University of California, Santa Cruz and Nancy E.
Abrams, co-author and is titled: "The View from the Center of the Universe"

The second is on Saturday February 3rd at 1 p.m. in the ACES auditorium on
campus. It is the annual Board of Visitors "Great Lectures in Astronomy" talk.
This year is will be presented by Dr. Fritz Benedict, a Senior Research
Scientist here at UT. The title is "A Tale of Two Telescopes or Dancing with the
Stars". The abstract is available here:
http://outreach.as.utexas.edu/public/events.html

I think that about covers everything!

Cheers,
Lara Eakins
UT Astronomy Dept.

Hello all! The public viewing nights are finished for 2006. We will resume on
the usual nights and telescopes (RLM on Wednesdays and Painter on Fridays and
Saturdays) in the second half of January. I'll email specific information as the
dates approach.

Happy Holidays!

Cheers,
Lara Eakins
UT Astronomy Dept.

Hello all,

I just wanted to remind everyone that because of the time change
this past weekend all of the public viewing nights will move to
7-9 p.m.

Also, I wanted to let everyone know about the upcoming Mercury transit.
Some of you have probably already heard about it, but I thought I would
pass on a link for more information:
http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/OH/transit06.html

If you choose to observe the transit, make sure you use the proper
techniques or equipment for safely viewing the sun! We will have our solar
telescope (which projects an image) open for anyone who is interested.
We will have it open from approx. 1 to 5 p.m. (or whenever the sun
dips below the fence line on the 14th floor roof). Stop by RLM 13.132
if you want to see it!

Cheers,
Lara Eakins
UT Astronomy Dept.

Sorry... I forgot to put the date of the transit in the first message!
It will be on Wednesday November 8.

Hello all,

I just wanted to remind everyone that because of the time change
this past weekend all of the public viewing nights will move to
7-9 p.m.

Also, I wanted to let everyone know about the upcoming Mercury transit.
Some of you have probably already heard about it, but I thought I would
pass on a link for more information:
http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/OH/transit06.html

If you choose to observe the transit, make sure you use the proper
techniques or equipment for safely viewing the sun! We will have our solar
telescope (which projects an image) open for anyone who is interested.
We will have it open from approx. 1 to 5 p.m. (or whenever the sun
dips below the fence line on the 14th floor roof). Stop by RLM 13.132
if you want to see it!

Cheers,
Lara Eakins
UT Astronomy Dept.

Howdy! I just wanted to remind everyone that there will be no public
viewing at the Painter Hall Telescope this Saturday due to the home
football game, which starts at 6:00 p.m.

Cheers,
Lara

Hello all!

Well, we've almost got the schedule set for the fall semester...

The viewing at Robert Lee Moore Hall will start this week at
8 p.m. (and will run to 10 p.m.). Information on Wednesday night
viewing is available here: http://outreach.as.utexas.edu/public/parties.html

We're still working out the Painter schedule. I don't know if there
will be viewing this Friday, but I know we will NOT have one on Saturday
due to the home football game that night. Past experience has shown that
it is just too hard for people to find parking on those nights and
that the lights from the stadium make the not-so-dark skies on campus
even worse! The Painter information will be updated here:
http://outreach.as.utexas.edu/public/painter.html

Regards,
Lara Eakins
UT Astronomy

Hello all,

Just a reminder that the viewing at the Robert Lee Moore Hall
telescope is finished for the summer. The viewing at Painter
Hall on Fridays and Saturdays will continue through August 12th
from 9 to 10:30 p.m.

Fall viewing will resume in September.

Cheers,
Lara Eakins
UT Astronomy Dept.

Sorry for the delay in getting this out. Summer star parties are now running!

Wednesday night viewing will be held at RLM from 9:00 to 10:30 p.m.
each week through July 26.

Painter Hall viewing will be on Fridays and Saturdays from 9:00 to
10:30 p.m. and will run through August 12.

Have a great summer!
Lara Eakins
UT Astronomy Dept.

Hello all,

The spring public viewing is finished. The summer viewing will start
at some point in June. I'll email a schedule as soon as we figure one
out! :)

Cheers,
Lara Eakins
UT Astronomy

Hello all!

Here's another special event you might be interested in:

On Wednesday, April 19  Documentary Screening of "Cosmic Africa," 7:00pm,
WEL 3.502 (event is free and open to the public, with a star party at the
16-inch telescope on top of RLM following film, weather permitting).

Here's a synopsis of the film:

At the age of 13, Thebe Medupe built his first telescope in his
remote African village. Today, as a qualified astronomer, he hopes to
reunite the origins of celestial knowledge with modern astronomy.
While technology has increased our knowledge of the 'heavens,' it has
also distanced us from the cosmos and its influence on our daily
lives.
In Cosmic Africa we join Thebe on his celestial quest into the heart
of the Egyptian Sahara; the precipitous cliffs of Dogon country in
Mali; and the ancestral land of Namibia's hunter-gatherers, the
Ju/'hoansi.
By exploring the various stages of human awareness and development,
Cosmic Africa takes viewers into the world of shamans, sky lore
experts and diviners, where spiritual and practical knowledge is
intertwined.


Cheers,
Lara Eakins
UT Astronomy Dept.

Hello all,

Sorry for the late notice on this. We'll be opening up the RLM roof an
hour early this Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. to celebrate Yuri's Night
http://www.yurisnight.com/ - the 45th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's
first manned spaceflight, which is also the 25th anniversary of the
first space shuttle mission. The UT Space Society and the Austin and
UT chapters of the Mars Society will have displays, presentations and
refreshments.

Cheers,
Lara Eakins
UT Astronomy
http://outreach.as.utexas.edu/

Hello all!

I just wanted to send a reminder that there will be no telescope
viewing nights this week during spring break.

Also, the times will be changing in about three weeks when we go
to Daylight time. Viewing will move to 8 p.m. on April 5 for the
Wednesday nights at RLM and April 7 for Painter.

One last thing I thought I would mention... There is some construction
on the fifth floor of Painter, so if you come up in the elevator, don't
get confused by the temporary wall and other stuff in the hall. You
should be able to get through (turn left out of the elevator and go down
the hall). If for some reason the hallway is blocked, please let me
know and I'll have our buildings people talk with the contractor.
If you come up through the stairwell that goes all the way up to the
telescope, there shouldn't be a problem.


Cheers,
Lara Eakins
UT Astronomy
lara@...

The public lecture will be presented by Prof. Pawan Kumar on Sat.,
Feb. 4 at 1 p.m. at the Applied Computational Engineering & Sciences
(ACES) Bldg., Rm. 2.302 just following our Board of Visitors'
Meeting.  We invite you to this special lecture. Please encourage
others to attend.

Pawan's talk title and abstract are as follows:

The unraveling of powerful cosmic explosions

Bright flashes of radiation (gamma-rays and x-rays) are observed at
Earth once or twice a day. These flashes come from a random part of
the sky and appear randomly during the day or night.  These events
(explosions) typically last for a few seconds. However, during this
brief time an enormous amount of energy comes out -- the energy
release in these explosions in a few seconds is comparable to the
total energy output of the Sun over its entire lifetime of about 10
billion years. For several decades after their discovery, little was
known as to where in the universe these explosions are occurring. And
we didn't know anything about what kind of an object is exploding and
why. However, in the last two or three years the mystery of these
cosmic explosions has rapidly unraveled, and we now know that some of
these events are associated with deaths of massive stars and some
others with colliding neutron stars. It is almost certain that we are
"seeing" black holes being born in these violent explosions.
Observations of these events, called Gamma-ray Bursts or GRBs for
short, by the recently launched NASA satellite - Swift - and the
follow up observations using optical, radio and x-ray telescopes have
greatly advanced our understanding of these enigmatic explosions. I
will describe some recent observations and discuss what we have
learned about these explosions from them.

Hello all!

We've set the schedule for the spring semester viewing.

Painter Hall will be open from 7 to 9 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays
starting this week. The time will change to 8 to 10 p.m. starting
April 7. There will be no viewing on March 17 and 18 due to Spring Break.
The last night will be May 6, although there is a possibility we will have
to not hold the Saturday one since a crane will be erected that weekend
to begin the upgrades on that building.

As an aside, there will be no summer viewing in 2006 or 2007 at Painter Hall
because of the renovations. We're still deciding which nights we'll have over
at RLM, but right now I'm guessing it will be Wednesdays and Saturdays.
(If we have more TA time available, maybe Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays.)

The Wednesday night viewing at RLM will run from 7 to 9 p.m. starting
February 8. They still haven't finished the construction on our roof,
but if they don't complete the remaining stuff in time I'm just going
to rope off the areas that pose a hazard in the dark (hopefully the
yellow CAUTION tape will be easily visible with the city lights).
There will be no viewing on March 15 because of spring break.
We'll switch to 8 p.m. on April 5 and the last night will be May 3.

As always, times, maps and parking information is available at
the website: http://outreach.as.utexas.edu/public/viewing.html

Happy 2006!

Lara Eakins
UT Astronomy Dept.

Hello all,

The public viewing nights are now on break over the holidays. We're
planning on being up and running at the end of January 2006. I'll
send out an email as soon as we have a schedule worked out. Hopefully
we won't have any construction and broken drive issues next year!

See you in 2006!

Lara Eakins
UT Astronomy Department

Hello all! Just wanted to let you know that the Painter telescope drive
has been successfully repaired and the public nights will be held
(weather permitting of course) as scheduled this weekend. There will
be no viewing on the 25th and 26th due to the Thanksgiving holiday.

An update on the RLM roof construction... The contractor was supposed
to deliver the remainder of the roof materials to finish the project
over the weekend, but it apparently didn't happen, so we're still waiting.
I do hope we can open at least a couple of nights this semester, but if
not, things should be back to normal when we come back in January.

Regards,
Lara Eakins
UT Astronomy Dept.

Hello again... just an update on the Painter viewing. It's taking
a bit longer to fix the problem, but the parts are now at the shop
and we expect to have everything back up and running next week.
There will be no public viewing this weekend, however. Sorry
for any troubles. As you all can probably imagine, between the
Painter issue and the slow construction on the RLM roof and dome
project, it's been quite a frustrating semester!

Regards,
Lara Eakins
UT Astronomy Dept.

Hello all,

I'm sorry to have to be the bearer of bad news once again, but we've
some trouble with the Painter Hall telescope and we'll have to cancel
this weekend's public viewing.

For those of you who have visited or read about the telescope, you
know that it uses an old antique manual clock drive system. We did
figure out what the problem was (which took a couple of days right
there), but we didn't have the right tools to fix it. So, we called
in a clock repair person who has worked on antique clocks, but they
can't come until Monday. We're very hopeful that he will be able to
fix the issue and we'll be back up and running next weekend (the 11th
and 12th).

And for an update on the RLM viewing situation....
We're almost there! They have replaced the metal "skin" of the
telescope dome and control room and have done some of the work on
the wall around the roof. But, the surface itself isn't finished and
they haven't replaced the fence that keeps people out of the area
with the antennas. If they hold to the schedule we were given a
couple of weeks ago, they should be done next week. We'll see!

Cheers,
Lara Eakins
UT Astronomy Dept.

Hello all! There is an upcoming lecture about the Mars Rovers missions
that you all might be interested in. Information on the lecture and
the series in general is available here:
http://www.esi.utexas.edu/outreach/lectures.html

If you can't make it, they also provide a webcast!

Cheers,
Lara Eakins
UT Astronomy

Hello again folks,

Since a few people asked (and I meant to put this in the first email),
yes, the Painter viewing on Fridays and Saturdays are as scheduled.

Cheers,
Lara

Hello all,

The Wednesday night viewing at RLM will be delayed for at least one more
week due to continuing construction. At this point, I don't have a firm
estimate on the completion date, so just stay tuned for more information.
I'll send out a notice when we're back up and running.

Cheers,
Lara Eakins
UT Astronomy

Hello all!

The Painter Hall public telescope nights will start next Friday and Saturday
(Sept. 16 and 17) at 8 p.m. and will run through 10 p.m. Viewing will
shift an hour earlier once we leave daylight time and there will be no
viewing the week of Thanksgiving.

We're hoping to get the Wednesday night viewing back up and running at
the end of the month (Sept. 28 at 8:00 p.m.), but this depends on how
the roof construction goes. There was jackhammering and tar-spreading
this week, so at least it's progressing... If we end up having to push it
back, we'll post something at the outreach pages.

Cheers,
Lara Eakins
UT Astronomy
http://outreach.as.utexas.edu/

Hello folks!

Summer viewing on the Painter Hall telescope will resume this Friday and
Saturday at 9 p.m. (to 11 p.m.). They will run through August 13th.

There will be no viewing on the 16-inch telescope at RLM this summer.
We will be having our roof ripped up to (hopefully) finally solve the
leak issues we've been having on the 17th floor. When they are done
they will be covering the surface with concrete pavers, which will be
a great improvement. We're hoping the project will be finished by the
end of the summer and we can resume Wednesday night viewing in the fall.

Regards,
Lara Eakins
UT Astronomy

http://outreach.as.utexas.edu/public/painter.html

Hello all!

Sorry for getting this out so late, but the spring semester public
telescope viewing nights finished the weekend of May 7th. We will be
taking a few weeks off until the UT summer session starts.

At this point, the location and schedule is still to be determined for
the summer. We will probably have some sort of construction on the top
roof of RLM and we are going to be doing some work on the telescope itself,
so it remains to be seen if we will have viewing on the 16-inch at RLM
this summer.

Regards,
Lara Eakins
UT Astronomy

Hello all!

First off, the star parties will be moving back to 8 p.m. for the start
time. There are 5 weeks of public viewing left for the spring
semester before we take a break until the summer session starts.

Also, as I'm sure a lot of you already know, there will be a partial
solar eclipse visible here in Austin on Friday the 8th. We will be
opening up our solar telescope (weather permitting) to view it,
and anyone is welcome to drop by. The solar telescope is on the
13th floor of Robert Lee Moore Hall, which is where the Wednesday
night public viewing is held. We'll have signs directing people to the
room with the telescope (it projects on to a wall, so it is safe to
observe).

Directions and parking information is available here:
http://outreach.as.utexas.edu/public/events.html

Cheers,
Lara Eakins
UT Astronomy

Hello folks!

This is just a reminder that there will be no public viewing over
spring break this week.
We'll resume at regular days and times next week.

Lara Eakins
UT Astronomy

Hello all,

The public viewing nights will resume next week. Wednesday night viewing
at Robert Lee Moore Hall's 16-inch reflecting telescope will run from
7 to 9 p.m. from January 26 through March 30 and then will change with
Daylight Saving Time. There will be no viewing on March 16 due to Spring
Break.

Fridays and Saturdays are open to the general public at Painter
Hall's 9-inch refracting telescope. Those viewings will start on
January 28 and will run from 7 to 9 p.m. They will change times in
April. There will be no viewing on March 18 and 19 due to Spring Break.

   For more details and parking maps, please see our website at:
http://outreach.as.utexas.edu/public/viewing.html


The Department of Astronomy and Board of Visitors will be hosting a
public lecture on Saturday, February 5 at 1:00 p.m. in ACES 2.302
It will be presented by Dr. Wendy Freedman, Director of the Carnegie
Observatories and is entitled "A New Century of Astronomy". Here
is the talk's abstract:

"In the past decade, astronomers have made some spectacular
discoveries. For the first time, planets beyond our own Solar System
have been detected. The census of such planets is growing rapidly and
is now approaching 150. The universe has been discovered to be
expanding at an ever-accelerating pace, a result of a mysterious new
"dark energy," which is repulsive in nature, and pushing the universe
apart. Astronomers have exciting and bold plans to build a next
generation of giant telescopes, both on the ground and in space, to
explore these new frontiers. I will describe the plans to build the
Giant Magellan Telescope, a 24-meter telescope, made of seven
8.4-meter segments. This project is a collaboration of seven
universities, mostly recently among them the University of Texas at
Austin, and Texas A&M university."

Cheers,
Lara Eakins
UT Astronomy

Hello all!

Public viewing nights will not be held over the winter break and
will resume with UT classes in mid-January.

I hope everyone has a great holiday season!

Cheers,
Lara Eakins
UT Astronomy

Hello all,

There will be no public viewing events this week due to the Thanksgiving
Holiday. Next week will be the final week of viewing for the UT Fall
Semester and viewing will resume in mid-January when classes start back.

Have a great Thanksgiving Holiday!
Lara Eakins
UT Astronomy

Hello all!

As I'm sure most of you know, there is a total lunar eclipse on
Wednesday the 27th. Conveniently we already have a public viewing
night scheduled for that evening on the top floor of Robert Lee Moore
hall (weather permitting, of course).

As always - times, locations and parking information is posted on
our website at: http://outreach.as.utexas.edu/public/viewing.html

I'll be sending out a note next week with our new schedule after
the time change and information about holiday closing.

Cheers,
Lara Eakins
UT Astronomy Dept.