🏛️ The Club is Moving Forward!

At our last meeting, we elected officers, formalized our bylaws, and discussed plans for the rest of the year:

Officers:

  • President: Kevin Marsh
  • Vice-President: Gareth Williams
  • Treasurer: Debbie Pavin
  • Secretary: Bob Donahue

🌐 Our Website Has Launched!

We’re really excited to announce our new website: https://nbasastro.org and hope it can be a regional “point of presence” for astronomy and educational outreach! The site offers:

  • Articles spanning the cosmos from asteroids in the Solar System, to supernovae in distant galaxies;
  • Tools to help you plan your night time observing;
  • Several ongoing series including “Planet Watch!”, quizzes, and observing challenges!

Our “Solar System Dashboard” has timely information on:

  • The locations of the Sun, Moon, and Planets;
  • Renderings showing the phases of the inner planets, and features on Mars;
  • Timings to see Jupiter’s Great Red Spot;
  • The orientation of the satellite systems of Jupiter and Saturn, and
  • Keeping tabs on upcoming (hopefully) bright comets.

And there’s even more - on the site you can find:

  • The current view of the constellations;
  • Up-to-date observing/weather conditions;
  • Upcoming passages of the International Space Station;
  • Aurora forecasting

Plus there’s NBAS calendar, with almanac, and regional events (if you know of any we should know about - let us know!)

🌞 Summer Solstice

June 21st the Summer Solstice, when Sun reaches its maximum northern declination (in Gemini). Nights are short (just under 9 hours) with even more limited “dark time” (just over 4 hours).

This is caused by the Earth’s axial tilt (23&12frac;°) - at summer solstice the North Pole is pointed in the direction of the Sun’s position: people above the Arctic Circle experience 24-hour days for several weeks on either side of the Solstice. The reverse is true for the Southern Hemsphere Antarctica: our Summer Solstice is their Winter Solstice, and in Antarctica, 24 hours of darkness.

📸 This Month’s Image

Bob Donahue, NBAS

The Lagoon Nebula in Sagittarius is one of the brighter emission nebulae, is dimly viewable in very dark skies with the naked eye. In binoculars, it appears as a greyish cloud-like patch with a brighter center.
Inside is the loose open cluster NGC 6550, and has a great deal of structure shaped by winds from the hot young stars forming there.

This stellar nursery is fairly large - spanning 110 x 50 light years and is ~5,000 light years away.

✨🔭 Monthly Starmap

To help you navigate the night sky this month, we’ve provided a high-resolution starmap. The PNG is great for quick viewing, while the PDF is optimized for sharp home printing.

Starmap Preview

June 2026 Starmap

Optimized for sharp home printing:

📥 Download PDF (Print Ready)