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Vote to Help Fleischmann Get a Portable Planetarium! |
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Written by Tim Burns
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Sunday, 07 March 2010 19:46 |
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The Fleischmann Planetarium has applied for a 50K Pepsi Refresh Grant in order to buy an inflatable portable planetarium for use at schools, etc. In order to win this grant, they need your help to vote for their project over other competing projects. To vote for this project, please click here. Voting ends March 31, 2010. |
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Last Updated on Sunday, 07 March 2010 20:08 |
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Written by Tim Burns
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Saturday, 19 December 2009 10:52 |
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Just a reminder (until we get our events calendar up and running again) that the ASN has the following ongoing events: - Telescope viewing at Ranch San Rafael Park in Reno on the first Friday of every month (weather permitting). Enter at the main entrance on Sierra street and proceed all the way up the road to the large dirt lot at the west end of the park.
- Members meeting at Fleischmann Planetarium at 7pm on the second Tuesday of each month. Despite the name, all are welcome. We usually have an astronomy-related lecture by one of our members or by a guest speaker.
Hope to see you at one of our events! |
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Written by Tim Burns
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Friday, 18 December 2009 17:47 |
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First of all, I'd like to apologize that it has taken so long to get the website back up and running again (at least to a point that would once again allow interaction among ASN members). The web site is once again moving to the top of our priority list and below summarizes some of the changes we are making: - Update the Forums. Although the forum software we were using in the past (Simple Machine Forums) was quite powerful, it's ability to integrate with the rest of the website was quite limited (the ability to bridge users between SMF Forums and our Joomla web management system is difficult and most independent developers have given up on developing a bridge until SMF 2.0 stabilizes). Anyway, rather than waiting forever for this to happen, we are going to switch our forum to a sytem that is more tightly integrated with Joomla in the first place. This should make the user experience smoother and less disjointed.
- Increase ability for ASN members to search for and interact with other members with similar interests. We will be adding additional astronomy-related fields to each member's profile... some information which will be available to the public and others will only be available to registered users. Other information (phone, address, etc.) will remain private unless you choose to make it available to other users. The overall goal will be to maintain the club's membership list online instead of on a separate spreadsheet. You will also be able to join/renew online using PayPal.
- Updated calendar. One of the calendar utilities I am looking at will allow members to RSVP for meetings, star parties and other events that will be holding. This will allow you to see who is planning on attending various events!
- Members will be able to submit their own articles which will appear on the main pages of the website (instead of just the Forum).
The plan is to have most of this up and running by early January 2010. I will have a meeting for those that might be interested in helping as moderators for the website (monitor and approve member content). Letters will be sent out to existing members with instructions on how to register on the website and how to navigate around. We will also provide training on the website at our monthly membership meeting at the planetarium in either February or March. Stay tuned for the updates and be sure to come back soon! v/r, Tim |
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NASA Image Of The Day
| Snapshot of the International Space Station |  | | On March 13, 2008, the International Space Station passed across the field-of-view of Germany's remote sensing satellite, TerraSAR-X, at a distance of 195 kilometers, or 122 miles, and at a relative speed of 34,540 kilometers per hour, or more than 22,000 mph. In contrast to optical cameras, radar does not 'see' surfaces. Instead, it is much more aware of the edges and corners which bounce back the microwave signal it transmits. Smooth surfaces such as those on the station's solar generators or the radiator panels used to dissipate excess heat, unless directly facing the radar antenna, tend to deflect rather than reflect the radar beam, causing these features to appear on the radar image as dark areas. The radar image of the station therefore looks like a dense collection of bright spots from which the outlines of the space station can be clearly identified. The central element on the station, to which all the modules are docked, has a grid structure that presents a multiplicity of reflecting surfaces to the radar beam, making it readily identifiable. This image has a resolution of about one meter (about 39 inches). In other words, objects can be depicted as discrete units--that is, shown separately--provided that they are at least one meter apart. If they are closer together than that, they tend to merge into a single block on a radar image. Since this image was taken, the station has expanded and is more than 90 percent complete, including a full complement of solar arrays. Image Credit: DLR... | | 09 Mar 2010 | | 800x600 | 1024x768 | Large |
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