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[Charlie]

I live in New York City and do most of my observing under the dark dark skies of central park. So that means I know about six stars in the sky each season and none of them are anywhere near Times Square. Most of my observing is done with 15x50 IS binoculars.

I will be arriving in Chicago on 1Feb05 for the boat show and am wondering if there will be any astronomy events going on while I am there other than the CAS monthly meeting. I will be staying somewhere in downtown Chicago and traveling on public transportation without any observing equipment.

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Charlie,

A great welcome to the Chicago Astronomer family and thank you for your first post.

If your are still in Chicago on the night of the 4th of February, The Adler Planetarium will be conducting it's monthly "Far Out Friday" open public observational session. I will be there as an Adler Telescope Operator...and if it's clear, aim our scopes into the "Great Chicago Nebula" that is our skies. Even if it's not clear, people stop by, bring their scopes for instruction or just enjoy discussing astronomy. Check out the Adler Board here in this forum for more detail and link.

Tell us a bit about yourself, your interest in astronomy and how you found us.

It will be great to meet you and share with each other our "dark dark" skies...as we both probably share the same six stars in common.

[Charlie]

I am a member of the Meetup astronomy group here so searched for a Chicago group in Meetup and found your link in your membership information there.

I have only been seriously observing for the past year or so when I got my good binoculars. Since I travel by subway and wanted to learn the sky I went with binoculars for my initial investment. I used them in the morning of 15th to bag all five visible planets from my elevated subway platform before going to the Hayden Planetarium to hear about Titan.

On almost any night it is clear and not frigid I and a few friends can be found at The Great Lawn in Central Park until the police run us off. On good nights it is just shy of Mag 5 there. Unfortunately there haven't been many good nights lately.

I am interested in grazing occultations and observed a great one here a year ago when Dschubba was occulted one cold December morning. And this December I went down to Florida keys to watch the graze of Jupiter.