Continued from previous message.

    The Open House New York tours are so numerous I could only list
the places and hours. Note that you can visit only a couple on each
day due to overlapping hours and geographic dispersion. Pick those
grouped together or along a transit line. Some tours run on only one
of the two days. Details and contacts for each place are at
www.ohny.org. It helps to have street and transit maps in hand.
    American Association of Variable Star Observers resumes, on
October 13-15, its traditional and fabled autumn conference in
Massachusetts. It dropped these after the meeting in 2002 to keep just
a spring session elsewhere in the world. I give a talk on 'Station at
the center of the universe', Grand Central Terminal's astronomy
features. There's more to this place than the Sky Ceiling. Lots more.
The AAVSO meeting is in Newton, near Boston, a lazy train ride there
and back for a low-cost high-content astronomy conference.
    Amateur Astronomer Association Inc sticks to its despotic ways,
elaborated in the companion article 'AAA news'. Thus, certain of its
activities carry the risk of harassment and bullying, as marked in
the index and annotated in the listings.

Sky News
 ------
    Weather generally was cleear enough for routine stargazing in
September, with a few extra clear nights. In fact, on Thursday the
29th the City scored its first Milky Way sighting of the fall season!
Reports describe the brightest reach in mid Cygnus and a thick
peppering of tiny stars elsewhere along the Milky Way path. Friday the
30th seemed as dark as, or a bit darker than, the 29th but so far
there are no Milky Way sightings reported.
    Mars is in easy view in October. He is THE good and bright
orange star in Aries. With bright stars around him, you can more
comfortably trace his retrograde loop. He entered the loop on the 1st
and rounds proximity on the 29th.
    Be careful! Proximity is NOT opposition!! The two events are
geometricly quite different. Opposition comes on November 7th. Check
out the timetable for Mars under September 1st.

NYSkies
 -----
    Astronomers are exploiting NYSkies as a quick, handy, friendly,
and potent source of astronomy news relating to the City. And there is
LOTS of astronomy stuff going on around New York! Since it revived on
28 September 2001 (it was interrupted by World Trade Center) NYSkies
became the definitive forum and public record for matters bearing on
home astronomy in and around New York.
    Joining NYSkies is easy. Send an empty email to this Yahoogroup
maillist at 'nysky-subscribe{at}yahoogroups.com'. Its posts are sent to
you in your email and you post to it by email. It's that simple!
    Or you may go to 'groups.yahoo.com/group/nysky'. If you are
already signed up with Yahoo, you go and sign in and then 'join'
NYSkies. If not, you have to go thru a silly 'registration' that's a
one shot chore, valid for all groups you may eventually join. The
files area of NYSkies are accessible only thru the website.


[end of part 2 of 2]

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