Buying a telescope, like buying a car or stereo equipment, is subject to your tastes as a consumer. In other words, the choice is up to you — but Astronomy can provide some guidelines to make your purchase as informed as possible. The next sections detail the different types of telescopes along with a bit of history and some general advantages and disadvantages for each. If you're familiar with telescope designs, you can skip to the section, "Things to remember when buying a telescope."

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Tonight Joey and I will be at Swantner Park to do a little moon watching.
Swantner Park is located on Ocean Dr between Airline and Ennis Joslin.
If anyone is interested in getting a closeup view of the moon, please feel free to join us after sunset!! Bring a chair, we will have binoculars and telescopes for your viewing pleasure.

The Moon’s distance from the Earth is not always the same due to the elliptical shape of the orbit and variations in the gravitational attraction between the Moon, Earth and Sun.

When a full moon occurs close to the perigee of the Moon (a point of its closest approach to the Earth) and its distance from our planet is much smaller than the usual one, then we can observe a “super moon” phenomenon.

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A huge "structure" of satellite galaxies and star clusters has been found wheeling around the Milky Way, according to a new study.

The discovery surprised scientists, in part because the structure might spell trouble for theories of dark matter, the mysterious, invisible substance that's thought to make up about 23 percent of the mass in the universe.

The finding is only the latest to question dark matter's existence—last week, for instance, astronomers announced that they'd failed to detect dark matter in the sun's neighborhood, even though the substance should be there, according to accepted theory.

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Astronomers have discovered more than 700 alien planets beyond the solar system, and the count is rising all the time. Some are large and hot, and others are smaller and cooler, but scientists are still on the lookout for an Earth twin.

They just got closer, with the announcement Dec. 5 of a planet found by NASA's Kepler space telescope to lie in the habitable zone around its star where liquid water, and perhaps life, could exist.

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Well.....Mother Nature decided to be coy last night! We had a great crowd of young and old, too bad we couldn't use the scopes. Using the computer and projector screen, Galina gave a presentation on the size of things in our universe. It really is amazing to see how small our sun is compared to the blue-white of Sirius or the glowing reds of Betelguese and Antares.
We also did a little "virtual stargazing" with the Stellarium program.

Angela was there with some of her volunteers. She is trying her hand at astrophotography. I think she needs to share some of her photos on our website. What do you all think?

Hopefully our next event on May 19th at Mustang Island State Park will have better luck and clearer skies.

Till then, don't forget to look up and wonder!!!!

Tonight the Corpus Christi Astronomical Society will be in the Night Sky Observatory at Padre Island National Seashore. Viewing will start around 8:30pm. So, bring your binoculars and questions!! Weather is predicted to be slightly cloudy and very windy, so you might want to bring an anchor!
Fortunately we will be in a fenced enclosure which should help to keep the wind down a bit.

The Night Sky Observatory is located just inside the entrance to the parking lot of the visitors pavillion.

Hope to see you there!!

Clear Skies, Stargazers!!

A star about 127 light-years from Earth may have even more planets than the sun, which would make the planetary system the most populated yet found.

According to a new study, HD 10180—a sunlike star in the southern constellation Hydrus—may have as many as nine orbiting planets, besting the eight official planets in our solar system.

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If you think life on Earth moves too fast, imagine being perched on a planet that's hurtling through space 400 times faster than our home world.

According to a new study, astronomers predict that "hypervelocity planets" are streaking through our Milky Way galaxy at up to 30 million miles (48 million kilometers) an hour—flung from the center of our galaxy by so-called gravitational slingshots.
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[img width=300]http://i.space.com/images/i/16912/original/saturn-f-ring.
Mysterious objects appear to be doing some damage to Saturn's "weirdest ring," scientists say.

The discovery comes from detailed photos taken of the Saturn system by NASA's Cassini orbiter. In these images, researchers spotted strange objects about a half-mile (kilometer) wide tearing through Saturn's F ring, the thin outermost discrete ring around the planet.

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