Since becoming director of the planetarium in 2007, I have met a lot of people who are amateur astronomers in Jackson and the surrounding area. However, there doesn’t seem to be an astronomy club in town!

So, I am trying to gauge interest in an astronomy club. If you are interested, please send me an e-mail at francis@lambuth.edu.  We’re going to try to have an organizational meeting sometime in the next few weeks, but here are my ideas:

• The primary purpose is for all of you to connect with each other.  It’s your club, not mine, although I will provide whatever help and resources I can, not least of which is our planetarium facility for meetings and activities.
• One past practice that we have discontinued is the observations after regular planetarium programs.  The major reason for that is that the roof of Hyde Hall is not really a safe location.  However, I would like to restart that activity, and I think members of the community could assist me a lot by helping set up telescopes and showing non-astronomers how to use them.  As a bonus, you would have access to our nice telescopes!
• And of course there could be outings to regional museums, other planetaria, group meetings with other clubs in the area, and far more than I can think of right now.

So, I look forward to hearing from you!

P.S. Also, if you’re on Facebook, we have a page and a group. Please feel free to join and/or drop me a line through that medium if you’d like.

Posted by Matthew R. Francis under Director's Notes |