Imaging/Observing Opportunity: Comet Siding Spring Near Miss with Mars October 19
The Astronomical League is working with NASA to bring you some special
observing opportunities and awards. The first of these is coming up very
soon. It is to celebrate the flyby of Mars by Comet Siding-Spring. The
target date is October 19, 2014. Submissions must be made to the NASA
website by December 19, 2014.
In brief, you need to take a picture of the comet and/or Mars and submit it
to the NASA website. You also need to do an outreach event related to this
event before December 19, 2014 and note it when you submit your
image. There is no pin, this does NOT count towards a Master Observer
Certification, but there is a certificate signed by NASA and the AL leaders.
The NASA website address is:
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/challenges.cfm
If you have questions, send them to Aaron Clevenson at aaron@clevenson.org.
Having been “bitten by the bug” as a young boy in the 1950s, Jim began his amateur astronomy “career” as a member of a “Junior Moon-Watch Team,” eagerly awaiting the launch of the first artificial Earth satellites during the International Geophysical Year toward the end of that decade. But, unlike the young man in Walt Whitman’s famous poem, he never tired of the “Learn’d Astronomer” and quickly grew tired of simply gazing up at the beauty of the stars. He wanted to “Do something to contribute.”
