Kalamazoo Astronomical Society

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.

The Comet PanSTARRS has been within view for about a week now, but the Kalamazoo Astronomical Society has been waiting for a weekend to plan their public watch party. K.A.S. President Richard Bell says a comet is basically a piece of ice and rock leftover from when the planets were formed.