The monthly meeting of the San Juan Stargazers will be on May 1.
Our amazing topic of study will be asteroids, near-earth asteroids and the asteroid belt.
We will meet at the regular time of 6 p.m. for our social time.
We will meet at our regular location — the Community United Methodist Church at 434 Lewis St. Please use the convenient parking lot and side door that leads into the kitchen and fellowship hall. We keep the front doors locked.
Also, from 6 to 7 p.m. we will be working on our new lending library. To be able to use books you must contribute a few books of your own. Bring a few with you, register them and you will be eligible to start checking out a book.
At 7 p.m., our Great Courses Program will begin, and it will be one of the best ones so far. Asteroids are one of the biggest threats to our planet, next to our fellow inhabitants. We can look at and thank the dinosaurs for what happened to them, which made way for us mammals. But, hopefully, we have made big enough advancements in science and rocketry to avert another catastrophe.
We will take time for questions and plenty of discussion so we can all sleep after the meeting.
Earth day celebration
Don’t you love Colorado weather? The snow last Saturday made me smile most of the day to celebrate a great Earth Day for us. Snow was a true gift to our part of the earth.
But we will try again next Saturday, April 26, with mostly sunny skies for our Earth Day celebration.
I’m asking all Stargazers to stop at our table for about an hour to interact with visitors. We will have the two volume notebooks made from three years of past Space Mysteries Calendars to educate everyone. Those calendars are such a fabulous educational experience.
Visitors will have the opportunity to order a 2026 calendar to be delivered in the fall. You don’t need to pay now, but as always it will be cash when you get your calendar, and they make great holiday gifts. I still use them as topics when we talk on the phone. We will also have our three volumes of the history of the San Juan Stargazers. I know that members will enjoy remembering past meetings and how much they learned. We also will have an update on discoveries of the James Webb Space Telescope.
There is just so much to learn. We hope to see you there.
Upcoming
Our meeting on June 5 will be very special. NASA is celebrating the 50th anniversary of Apollo 13, and our most well-known club member, Tom Hanchett, will be in Houston for the festivities.
He worked for every Apollo mission and has many exciting stories. He will share with us what NASA is doing to celebrate.
I would like to personally invite every student in Pagosa Springs to come to the June 5 meeting.
Hanchett spoke to all the astronauts while they were in space, and he has wonderful words of wisdom for our young people starting out their careers. Please come to be inspired.
About the Stargazers
If you would like to join the San Juan Stargazers, you will also receive Reflector Magazine, which is the publication of the National Astronomical League of which you automatically become a member. To join both groups and get an excellent astronomy magazine, annual membership is only $25 per family.
You can join the club at any of our events or you can join using PayPal on our website, sanjuanstargazers.org.
Check out our continuously changing website with new information and spectacular photos. We can be your helpful connection to exploring our extraordinary universe.
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