Star Gazing Party - West Portland

CANCELED DUE TO WEATHER RESCHEDULE IN SEPTEMBER

This year is The Year of Astronomy. Come join us watch the Perseid Meteor Shower as we celebrate how our knowledge of the universe has increased dramatically over the past 400 years.

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FOR WEST SIDE RESIDENTS (But I'm East Side (https://www.meetup.com/cfiportland/calendar/10698609/))
The Stub Stewart State Park viewing area is at the "Hilltop Day-use Area".

From beginners to experts of all ages, here's your opportunity to view the stars and other celestial objects up close and personal through telescopes. Viewing highlights includes the planets Venus and Saturn, deep sky objects including the Orion Nebula, Beehive star cluster and more! As added bonus, will have two sighting opportunities of the space shuttle Discovery docked with International Space Station.

There is no formal registration for the event itself, just show up and enjoy the evening. You don't even need a telescope to participate; other members are enthusiastic to share their views. This is a good opportunity for beginners to get acquainted.

Come and observe your favorite objects and spend a wonderful evening with friends, and friends you haven't met yet.

Note that there is a $3 Day-Use charge for this park, except on the Star Party night if you are an RCA Volunteer and have a telescope with you.

https://www.rca-omsi.o... (https://www.rca-omsi.org/sp/stub_stewart.htm)

https://www.omsi.edu/i... (https://www.omsi.edu/index.php/starparties)

I swear that I have always believed, I believe now, and with God's help in the future believe all which the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church doth hold, preach and teach... Having been admonished by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion that the Sun was the center of the universe and immovable, and that the Earth was not the center of the same and that it moved... I have been... suspected of heresy, that is, of having held and believed that the Sun is the center of the universe and immovable, and that the earth is not the center of the same, and that is not the center of same, and that it does move... I abjure with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith, I curse and detest the said errors and heresies, and generally all and every error and sect contrary to the Holy Catholic Chruch
~ Galileo Galileo (1564 - 1642) Forced Recantation, June 22, 1633

What he really said and believed:

It is surely harmful to souls to make it a heresy to believe what is proved.
~ Galileo, "The Authority of the Scripture in Philosophical Controversies" (Condemned by the Inquisition)

To command the professors of astronomy to confute their own observations is to enjoin an impossibility, for it is to command them not to see what they do see, and not to understand what they do understand, and to find what they do not discover.
~ Galileo, "The Authority of the Scripture in Philosophical Controversies" (Condemned by the Inquisition)

By denying scientific principles, one may maintain any paradox
~ Galileo

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
~ Galileo

It vexes me when they would constrain science by the authority of Scriptures, and yet do not consider themselves bound to answer reason and experiment
~ Galileo

Nothing physical which sense-experience sets before our eyes, or which necessary demonstrations prove to us, ought to be called into question (much less condemned) upon the testimony of biblical passages
~ Galileo

I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the Scriptures, but with experiments and demonstrations
~ Galileo

It took the church until 1832 to remove Galileo's work from a list of books which Catholics were forbidden to read at the risk of dire punishment of their immortal souls.~ Carl Sagan, "Pale Blue Dot"

If it is just us, seems like an awful waste of space.
~ Movie "Contact"

On 31 October 1992, Pope John Paul II expressed regret for how the Galileo affair was handled, and officially conceded that the Earth was not stationary, as the result of a study conducted by the Pontifical Council for Culture. In March 2008 the Vatican proposed to complete its rehabilitation of Galileo by erecting a statue of him inside the Vatican walls.
~ Wikipedia