George Mason Observatory’s ‘Evenings Under the Stars’ series (where you’ll also get to look at awesome galaxies, stars, planets and more through our 0.8 meter telescope!) is back for Spring 2014!  The dates for all the events are on the google calendar and there will be posts with information about each session and talk as its date approaches.  Click on the title above for the full schedule!  As always the events are free and everyone is invited!  We hope you can come out and join us!

There are a few changes to this semester’s schedule.  First there will only be one talk given during each observing session so make sure you don’t miss it!  Also we have an especially exciting all astronomy/physics lecture packed schedule for this semester!  One thing will remain the same.  Our schedule is set up so that if we have poor weather on the day of the scheduled talk we can postpone the talk to the following monday.  In that case we’ll have the postponement notice up on our website and twitter by the afternoon at latest.  If there is poor weather on the new date as well the event will not be postponed and we will just have the talk.

Here’s the basic schedule with dates and times listed as well as some of the speakers and lecture topics.  We’ll be adding speakers and topics for all of the talks over the next couple weeks.  Click on the title of this post to access the full schedule. Information on future talks will be added soon:

Update: The Jan 27 2014 is postponed due to poor weather.  The new date for the talk is Feb 3 2014: Event was cancelled due to poor weather.

Feb 10 2014 Talk at 6pm.  Observing from 6:30 – 8:30pm    Speaker: Prof. Jessica Rosenberg  Topic: Cosmic Collisions

Feb 24 2014 Talk at 6pm.  Observing from 6:30 – 8:30pm    Speaker:  Topic: Darryl Wilson   Topic: Observing Jupiter with a Telescope

Mar 10 2014 Talk at 7pm. Observing from 7:30 – 9:30pm    Speaker: Darryl Wilson  Topic: Observing Lunar Phases

Mar 24 2014 Talk at 7:30pm. Observing from 8 – 10pm    Speaker: Greg Redfern  Topic: The Sky is Falling – Space Rocks and You

Update: April 14 2014 Talk at 7:30pm. Observing from 8 – 10pm    Speaker: Prof. Joe Weingartner   Topic: Kepler Mission Results: Detecting Exoplanets

April 21 2014 Talk at 8pm. Observing from 8:30 – 10:30pm    Speaker: Korey Haynes  Topic: The Search for Water on Alien Worlds

Update: May  12 2014 Talk at 8pm. Observing from 8:30 – 10:30pm    Speaker: Greg Redfern  Topic: A Cosmic Detective Story – The Chesapeake Bay Impact Crater

How to get here – Directions to GMU and Research Hall here: http://eagle.gmu.edu/map/fairfax.php   Zoom in to find Research Hall next to engineering building and York River Rd.  Just keep an eye out for weather – talks and observing may be postponed to a back up date because of weather – updates will be available here – Observatory Twitter