Westport Astronomical Society

Welcome to the Rolnick Observatory!

For 36 years the Westport Astronomical Society has been bringing the wonders of the night sky to the thousands that have visited the Rolnick Observatory. We’re a non-profit organization of all volunteers that’s free and open to the public all year every Wednesday night when the skies are clear from 8-10 pm. The Dome Observatory hosts a 12.5″ Newtonian telescope and on moonless nights, we take out the newly upgraded and HUGE 25″ Obsession telescope, the largest in Connecticut available to the public.

Our Next Public Meeting: February 21st at 8:00 pm.

After a demonstration of taking raw, web cam videos of Jupiter and combining them quickly and easily in Registax to make gorgeous, high resolution images at our January meeting,  Martin Hamar will host the second part of our fun classroom project with all new video for you to process.

Once again, if you have a laptop, bring it and learn how to hook up a web cam to our telescopes and process your own images of the Solar System! If you just want to watch, you don’t need a laptop and you’ll still get a lot out of Martin’s presentation. This is of course, completely for beginners!

Mark these big 2012 events in your calendar:

Dr. Jason Koglin: March 20

International Astronomy Day: April 28

Biggest Full Moon of 2012: May 5th

David L. Rabinowitz – May 15

Annular Eclipse of the Sun: May 20th

The Transit of Venus: June 5

Dr. Michael Inglis: July 17

The Perseid Meteor Shower: August 11

Professor Mark Swanson: August 21

The Geminid Meteor Shower: December 13th – 14th

The World Not Ending: December 21st

 

Once again, the ISS shows why it’s the coolest place in space!

Earth | Time Lapse View from Space | Fly Over | Nasa, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo. The video, compiled by Michael König, combines “photographs taken with a special low-light 4K-camera by the crew of expedition 28 & 29 onboard the International Space Station from August to October, 2011.” There’s no software gimmick that can match up to being slapped in the face with the Aurora Borealis in HD. This is the real deal—all the goods come straight from NASA.

The Known Universe

The Known Universe from AMNH on Vimeo. The Known Universe takes viewers from the Himalayas through our atmosphere and the inky black of space to the afterglow of the Big Bang. Every star, planet, and quasar seen in the film is possible because of the world’s most complete four-dimensional map of the universe, the Digital Universe Atlas that is maintained and updated by astrophysicists like our November 2011 speaker Dr. Ben R. Oppenheimer from the American Museum of Natural History.

Hours for the Rolnick Observatory

The Rolnick Observatory opens only on Wednesdays from 8-10 pm if the skies are clear.  Make sure to check our Twitter or Facebook feeds to see if we’ll open up the dome or give us a call at (203) 293-8759.

What’s this?

It’s the astronomer’s forecast. It shows when it will be cloudy or clear for up to the next two days. It’s a prediction of when The Rolnick Observatory will have good weather for astronomical observing. Hint: If you see white blocks at night near the red vertical line (midnight), there’s a good chance we’ll be closed.