San Juan Stargazers to help telescope owners

Posted
By Joan Mieritz

Special to The PREVIEW

The San Juan Stargazers will hold a regular educational meeting at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 25, in the Pagosa Springs Visitor Center conference room. Coffee will be served.

Patrick Hasenbuhler will be leading the program and will be showing the three different types of telescopes. After his overview, we will break into groups to look at the telescopes people have brought. If a part is missing, hopefully we can tell you what to order and we will be figuring out each problem as it presents. When all telescopes are working, we will go outside to see what we can see.

If you have an interest in astronomy, but have no telescope, we can teach you on one of the Chimney Rock Interpretive Association-owned telescopes. There is plenty of time this winter to get ready for next summer’s viewing.

We have been getting good-sized crowds at our summer Chimney Rock Star Parties and need more volunteers. We need telescope operators, but also people to manage and help the visitors. You don’t have to know a lot about astronomy, but you will learn much as you help. The neat thing about astronomy is that everyone has a lot to learn.

The San Juan Stargazers are part of the Astronomical League, which includes clubs from all over the U.S. We have a great website, www.SanJuanStargazers.com, as well as an email address, sjstargazers@gmail.com, and a club phone number, 335-8286, to help communicate with the public.

Anyone interested in learning more about astronomy is invited to come. I hope to see you there.