The Dutch Observatory

August 20, 2011 on 2:53 pm | In Uncategorized | Comments Off

Back from a two week vacation trip to visit relatives in upstate NY.  The weather was terrible.  More than half the days were cloudy and rainy with the nights dropping in the low 60s, high 50s.  But worst of all, I did not have access to the internet.  But we’re back and I will update my sites soon with the images I was able to take.  Also while we were there, I did attend the August meeting of the Mohawk Valley Astronomical Society which was held in Hamilton N.Y. at Colgate University. I could not believe it as I met a  very active member of MVAS, Carol Higgins, who I worked with 35 years ago.  This was a surprise and it was great to meet her again!!

The program included a guided tour through Colgate’s museum of Minerals and Gemstones.  I used to facet gemstones, so this was a double goody for me.  We also learnd about the dinosaur eggs on display in the museum.  Than on to the planetarium where weekly shows are available for Colgate’s visitors.  Joe and Tom, both members of MVAS and working at Colgate gave us a personalized overview of the capabilties of their planetarium and showed several works in progress of the productions of the students at the university.  The planetary show finished with the screening of “The Violent Universe”, a presentation about everything that can go wrong in the Universe that and might lead to the end of our existence on Earth.  A dozen of us than joined Tom to pay a visit to Colgate’s Observatory “The Foggy Bottom”.  Tom explained how the name came about and then it went up in the tower.  The clouds were scattered and we had a 4 day moon in the sky, lighting up everything around us, so the moon became our target.  It was nice to witness the occultation of a star by the dark side of the moon.  Some of us saw the star, others not any more.  A real great evening.  Thank you Mohawk Valley Astronomical Society and Colgate University.