The next Kartchner Caverns State Park astronomy program will be Saturday, March 12, 2016.  Weather permitting, there will be solar telescopes set up starting at about 1 pm.  At 5:30 pm, there will be a talk in the Discovery Center Auditorium. The guest speaker will be University of Arizona and Steward Observatory Astronomer Dr. Kevin Hainline, and his talk is titled, “Hunting for Supermassive Black Holes.”  Black holes – objects so massive that not even light that gets caught inside their reach can escape – are not just a theoretical prospect. In this talk, Dr. Hainline will describe how astronomers have been finding black holes with a variety of cutting edge techniques, with a focus on his own work searching for supermassive black holes. The intense gravity from these objects can serve as an engine for a powerful light source that can have a significant impact on the stars and gas throughout the galaxies that host them. Dr. Hainline will also discuss his work on the James Webb Space Telescope, which is currently being built for launch in 2018, with a focus on what we will learn from this telescope about the history of the growth of black holes across cosmic time.

After the program, we will look through the telescopes of the Huachuca Astronomy Club of Southeastern Arizona.    Don’t miss the close-up views of the great planet Jupiter, craters and mountains of the moon, the star formation region of the Great Orion Nebula, distant galaxies, and many other wonders of the night sky.  Sunset will be at about 6:30 pm, and bring your jackets.  For more information about Kartchner, visit their website at: http://azstateparks.com/Parks/KACA/

Dr. Kevin Hainline is a postdoctoral researcher on the James Webb Space Telescope NIRCam science team at Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona. His research explores active galaxies and quasars both nearby and at large cosmic distances. He received his PhD from UCLA in 2012 and had a three year position at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire prior to moving to Tucson. He has a passion for science outreach education, with many years of experience through the UCLA Planetarium and the Montshire Museum of Science in Norwich, Vermont. 

The Huachuca Astronomy Club will hold their March meeting in the Community Room of the Student Union Building, Cochise College Sierra Vista campus on March 18, 2016 at 7 PM.

Our speaker will be Maxwell Moe. Max received his PhD from Harvard University in 2015 and is currently a Post Doctoral Fellow at the University of Arizona’s Department of Astronomy and Steward Observatory. His presentation is titled “The Cosmic Tango of Binary Stars”.

Continue reading→

The 2016 Youth Engineering & Science (YES) Fair was held at the Windemere Hotel & Convention Center in Sierra Vista on February 23-26, 2016. Students in grades 5 through 12 in Sulphur Springs Valley Electric Cooperative’s service area and schools in Bisbee, Douglas, Nogales, and Tombstone are elegible to enter. HAC member Bob Gent volunteered to help judge the event and was especially interested in projects that involved Space Science.  This year there were 2 projects that qualified in that area.

Congratulations to Dennis Yusufoff and Camden Miller for their outstanding project on Mars botany (photo below).  Among other awards, they each won a $50 check from the Huachuca Astronomy Club and certificates of achievement. They also won one-year family memberships in the Huachuca Astronomy Club.

Congratulations, also, to Miriam Allen of Joyce Clark Middle School (photos of project and award below).  Among other awards, she won the 2016 awards from the Huachuca Astronomy Club and the Planetary Science Institute.   She completed an excellent project on star brightness vs distance (see photos below).  She won a $50 check from HAC, certificates of achievement from HAC and PSI, a PSI backpack, a signed book about Mars, a PSI hat, and a PSI 32GB flash drive.   She also won a one-year family membership in the Huachuca Astronomy Club.

The February 2016 edition of the Huachuca Astronomy Club newsletter, Nightfall, is now available for download. Submissions for next month’s issue can be sent to , our Nightfall editor.

The Huachuca Astronomy Club will hold their February meeting in the Community Room of the Student Union Building, Cochise College Sierra Vista campus on February 19, 2016 at 7 PM.

Our speaker will be HAC member Tom Kaye.

Tom is an advanced amateur astronomer that moved from Chicago to Sierra Vista to take advantage of the clear skies. He runs a wide field telescope nightly in search of exoplanets and records data on other unusual stellar targets. He is also the caretaker of the famous Junk Bond Observatory 32” telescope one of the largest in southern Arizona. His projects can be seen at www.spectrashift.com

His talk is titled: White Dwarf Eats Asteroids for LunchContinue reading→

The January 2016 edition of the Huachuca Astronomy Club newsletter, Nightfall, is now available for download. Submissions for next month’s issue can be sent to , our Nightfall editor.

The Huachuca Astronomy Club will hold their January meeting in the Community Room of the Student Union Building, Cochise College Sierra Vista campus on January 15, 2016 at 7 PM.  Our speaker will be Danielle Adams, a PhD student at the University of Arizona. The meeting is FREE and open to the public.

Danielle is a PhD student and 2015-2016 NASA Space Grant fellow at the University of Arizona’s School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies and the School of Anthropology. Fluent in Arabic, she is translating 1200-year-old Arabic astronomical texts that have never before been accessible to English-speaking scholars. She lived in the Middle East for 3 years and has been an amateur astronomer and astrophotographer for more than 30 years. She has spoken on related topics at international conferences around the world.Continue reading→

The December 2015 edition of the Huachuca Astronomy Club newsletter, Nightfall, is now available for download. Submissions for next month’s issue can be sent to , our Nightfall editor.

The November 2015 edition of the Huachuca Astronomy Club newsletter, Nightfall, is now available for download. Submissions for next month’s issue can be sent to , our Nightfall editor.