Kalamazoo Astronomical Society

On August 21st, there will be a total solar eclipse - the first one visible in the United States in almost 40 years. Tyler Nordgren is a physics and astronomy professor at the University of Redlands in California and has written a book on eclipses called Sun Moon Earth: The History of Solar Eclipses from Omens of Doom to Einstein and Exoplanets. He’ll give a talk about eclipses on Saturday, April 29 at 11 a.m. during the Kalamazoo Astronomical Society’s Astronomy Day.

On Sunday, there will be a total eclipse of the harvest moon. It’s the last lunar eclipse we’ll see for another four years. The Kalamazoo Astronomical Society will be hosting a public watch party Sunday night at 8 p.m. at Richland Township Park.

Twenty five years ago, the Hubble Space telescope deployed into orbit around the Earth and changed the way we saw space. It got close up shots of planets and moons and peered into the deepest parts of the universe. To commemorate the occasion, the Kalamazoo Astronomical Society is bringing in astrophysicist Frank Summers of the Space Telescope Science Institute for a talk about the Hubble on April 25th at 7 p.m. at the Kalamazoo Nature Center. WMUK's Robbie Feinberg caught up with him from his office in Maryland.

UPDATE: Thanks to an Irving S. Gilmore Foundation grant, the Kalamazoo Astronomical Society has now funded 88 percent of the project.

The Kalamazoo Astronomical Society is raising money for a robotic telescope that will broadcast images of the night sky from one of the best star gazing sites in the country. 

This week, the Kalamazoo Astronomical Society was forced to cancel its watch party for Comet ISON. After the comet’s trip around the sun, it’s a lot less bright and barely visible.