Astro 101: Intro to Observing the Night Sky

This event provides an introduction to observing the night sky. During this event, you'll get an overview of the types of sky objects we observe (stars, planets, nebulae, galaxies and more), the tools we use to do so and how to evaluate locations for their observing conditions.

Using the planetarium software Stellarium, we'll take the first 15 minutes to show a preview of the night sky as you'll see it during the subsequent star party. The talk will start at 8:15.

This talk is free of charge. Just come and enjoy the show. After the talk, you can check out telescopes that will be set up as part of our In-Town Star Party. (See In Town Star Party event on Meetup: https://www.meetup.com/sj-astronomy/events/304995646/)

The talk will be presented by Carl Svensson. Carl is not a professional astronomer, but an avid star-gazer and astrophotographer. He joined SJAA in 2017 after receiving his first telescope (a Celestron NexStar 8SE) as a birthday gift from his wife. Since, then he's been involved with various volunteer astronomy events with SJAA, including Starry Nights and solar observing. You can see some of his astrophotos here: https://www.astrobin.com/users/csvensson/

Many of SJAA’s events, like this one, are public and free to attend, but if you’re enjoying what SJAA has to offer, consider becoming a paid member for only $20 per year: https://www.sjaa.net/membership/benefits-of-membership-2/

During this event, we will ask all visitors to sign in, so that we can report attendance numbers to the city of San Jose, as San Jose has made Houge Park facilities available to SJAA to serve the public. The sign-in form will ask for first name, home location (city and ZIP code) and approximate age.

(Photo: The Pleiades by Carl Svensson, https://app.astrobin.com/u/csvensson?i=g97qv2.)