UPDATE: The Observing session and lecture has been postponed due to poor weather to Monday, May 12th.  Talk at 8:00 PM and observing from 8:30 to 10 PM.

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 next event will be Monday, May 12th and will feature a talk by Greg Redfern on ‘A Cosmic Detective Story – The Chesapeake Bay Impact Crater’! Talk at 8:00 PM. Observing starts at 8:30PM until 10:00PM. Arrive at the lobby of Research Hall. As always the event is free and everyone is invited!  We hope you can come out and join us!

Remember that there will only be one talk given during each observing session so make sure you don’t miss it!  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.  Keep an eye on twitter for updates – because the event has already been postponed once we’ll be holding the talk and event regardless of the weather – updates will be available here –

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 next event will be Monday, April 21st and will feature a talk by Korey Haynes on ‘Characterizing Exoplanets – The Next Frontier’! Talk at 8:00 PM. Observing starts at 8:30PM until 10:00PM. Arrive at the lobby of Research Hall. As always the event is free and everyone is invited!  We hope you can come out and join us!

Remember that there will only be one talk given during each observing session so make sure you don’t miss it!  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.  Keep an eye on twitter for updates – Just keep an eye out for weather – the event may be postponed or cancelled due to bad conditions – updates will be available here – Observatory Twitter

About the talk:

One of the most exciting fields in astronomy right now is exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system. Kepler and other missions have found well over a thousand …

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 next event will be Monday, April 14th and will feature a talk by Prof. Joe Weingartner on ‘Kepler Observatory Results – Finding Exoplanets’! Talk at 7:30 PM. Observing starts at 8:00PM until 9:30PM. Arrive at the lobby of Research Hall. As always the event is free and everyone is invited!  We hope you can come out and join us!

Remember that there will only be one talk given during each observing session so make sure you don’t miss it!  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.  Keep an eye on twitter for updates – Just keep an eye out for weather – the event may be postponed or cancelled due to bad conditions – updates will be available here – Observatory Twitter

About the talk:

The Kepler observatory is a space based telescope that has been looking for planets orbiting stars outside of our solar system since its launch in March 2009.  …

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 next event will be Monday, March 24th and will feature a talk by Greg Redfern on ‘The Sky is Falling – Space Rocks and You’! Talk at 7:30 PM. Observing starts at 8:00PM until 9:30PM. Arrive at the lobby of Research Hall. As always the event is free and everyone is invited!  We hope you can come out and join us!

Remember that there will only be one talk given during each observing session so make sure you don’t miss it!  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.  Keep an eye on twitter for updates – Just keep an eye out for weather – the event may be postponed or cancelled due to bad conditions – updates will be available here – Observatory Twitter

About the talk:

Meteorites are pieces of debris from space that impact the Earth’s surface.  They vary in size, appearance composition and origin and can be fascinating pieces …

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 next event will be Monday, March 10th and will feature a talk by Darryl Wilson on ‘Lunar Phases’! Talk at 7:00 PM. Observing starts at 7:30PM until 9:30PM. Arrive at the lobby of Research Hall. As always the event is free and everyone is invited!  We hope you can come out and join us!

Remember that there will only be one talk given during each observing session so make sure you don’t miss it!  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.  Keep an eye on twitter for updates – Just keep an eye out for weather – the event may be postponed or cancelled due to bad conditions – updates will be available here – Observatory Twitter

About the talk:

The moon is one of the brightest and most stunning objects in the night sky.  It is large enough to show recognizable detail with almost any size telescope.  This talk will describe …

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 next event will be Monday, February 10th and will feature a talk by Prof. Jessica Rosenberg on ‘Cosmic Collisions’! Talk at 6:00 PM. Observing starts at 6:30PM until 8:30PM. Arrive at the lobby of Research Hall. As always the event is free and everyone is invited!  We hope you can come out and join us!

Remember that there will only be one talk given during each observing session so make sure you don’t miss it!  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.  Keep an eye on twitter for updates – Just keep an eye out for weather – the event may be postponed or cancelled due to bad conditions – updates will be available here – Observatory Twitter

Cosmic Collisions will look at the role of collisions in galaxy evolution.  Attendees will learn about the structure of galaxies, how far they are from us and what we know and want to …

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 next event will be Monday, February 24th and will feature a talk by Darryl Wilson on ‘Observing Jupiter with a Telescope’! Talk at 6:00 PM. Observing starts at 6:30PM until 8:30PM. Arrive at the lobby of Research Hall. As always the event is free and everyone is invited!  We hope you can come out and join us!

Remember that there will only be one talk given during each observing session so make sure you don’t miss it!  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.  Keep an eye on twitter for updates – Just keep an eye out for weather – the event may be postponed or cancelled due to bad conditions – updates will be available here – Observatory Twitter

About the talk:

The moon is  in the night sky.  It is also large enough to show recognizable detail with almost any size telescope.  This talk will describe Jupiter and its Galilean …

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 …

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 Fall 2013!  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!

Here’s the basic schedule with some extra talk details about the first 2 talks.  Click on the title of this post to access the full schedule. Information on future talks will be added soon:

Monday 26 August 2013: Dr. Harold Geller will speak about the expectations associated with future visits of extraterrestrial intelligent civilizations in a talk titled How will the Kanamits serve mankind? Shall we expect extraterrestrial altruism or extraterrestrial malevolence? Talk at 8 PM. Same talk at 8:45PM   Observing starts at 8:30PM until 10PM

UPDATE: Monday Sept 9 talk Postponed due to cloudiness to Monday 16 September 2013: Darryl Wilson will talk about Observing Saturn. 1st talk at 8PM, same talk at 8:45PM, observing starts at 8:30PM until 10PM

Monday 23 September 2013: Prof. Chris Clarke will talk …

UPDATE:  It looks like we finally have good weather (crossing our fingers) and will have a public observing session on Wednesday, August 14th.  Please come to the lobby of Research Hall at 8:30 pm at George Mason for the start of the session.

George Mason Observatory will be holding two summer observing sessions open to the public (where you’ll get to look at awesome galaxies, stars, planets and more through our 0.8 meter telescope!).  The events are open to anyone and are free however there will be a 40 person cap on each event due to limited resources and to ensure that the audience can observe multiple objects in a night.  We ask anybody interested in attending to RSVP to the observatory email address at GMUObservatory@gmail.com.  The observing dates are as follows:

July 24 2013: Observing starts at 8:30PM until 10:00PM. Arrive at the lobby of Research Hall.  Backup date 07/31/13, 08/07/13

August 14 2013: Observing starts at 8:30PM until 10:00PM. Arrive at the lobby of Research Hall.  Backup date 08/21/13

If poor weather cancels observing on that day the observing session will be moved one week back – updates will be available here – Observatory Twitter

Directions to GMU and Research Hall here: