[The background above is part of an image by the Hubble Space Telescope of the Crescent Nebula.]

WHERE: AT EXPLORIT Science Center, 3141 5th Street, Davis.

Join us Saturday night, October 27th at 8:00 when we will discuss the SOHO project. SOHO is an orbiting Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. In 1995 it was launched into orbit a million miles sunward of Earth. It carries 12 instruments developed by European and American scientists. After 5 years of continuous observing, the SOHO has ac-cumulated an unprecedented array of pictures and data on the sun. Primary discoveries from the mission have concerned the internal structure of the Sun, the heating of the Sun's large outer atmosphere, and the origin of the solar wind. We will have a slide show on what SOHO has discovered. If weather permits, we will observe the evening sky after the presentation.

You can get a preview of the topic of our next meeting on SOHO at http://soho.nascom.nasa.gov/

In addition to the usual program, we will have a number of posters, stickers, CD-ROMs and pamphlets on the SOHO project, courtesy of NASA and the European Space Agency. We hope we'll see you there!

We had a good group of approximately 20 amateurs at our meeting September 29th. The topic was multiple star systems: double stars, triple stars, and more. We had a slide show on examples of star systems, and how they might appear from hypothetical nearby planets. We later saw a variety of double stars and other astronomical objects, courtesy of Larry Snyder and Jane Smith, whose large telescopes afforded some spectacular views. Thanks Larry and Jane!

WHAT'S UP FOR OCTOBER?

On the weekend of the 13th from 5:00 to 6:00 a.m., see the Moon and Venus above the eastern horizon. Sunset on Monday the 22nd and 23rd finds the Moon and Mars close together low in the south southwest. Saturn rises around 8:30 p.m. and Jupiter appears a couple of hours later. The month closes with a spectacular pairing of Mercury and Venus between 6:00 a.m. and 6:30 a.m above the east southeast horizon (October 30). Good viewing!

Let's hope a current prediction of a Leonid meteor storm on November 17/18 proves to be correct. Peter Jenniskens of NASA Ames has done wonders with shower predictions in recent years based on airborne observation of the trails left by different comet passes. According to his current calculations, it look as if the night of the 17-18th at 2am might be spectacular from the countryside around here with as many as 2000/hour! The moon is only 3 days old that night, so this could be one of the best shows for us locals in a long time, depending (as always) on the weather, of course. Thanks to Larry Snyder for this "heads up"!