Latest News and Posts

  • The Higgs

    FAS Astronomers Blog, Volume 30, Number 9. It has been ten years since July 4, 2012. Yes, ten years since that massive discovery. With this discovery a weight was lifted off all of physics. (Puns intended). It was the discovery of the Higgs. The underlying structure of the universe is described by the standard model…

  • July 2022 FAS Meeting

    The Best of the James Webb Space Telescope Forsyth Astronomical Society July 2022 Meeting Wednesday, July 13 @ 7:30 pm Kaleideum North (formerly SciWorks) 400 West Hanes Mill Road Winston-Salem, NC https://north.kaleideum.org/visit/directions/ Last December after many years of planning, the James Web Space Telescope (JWST) launched into space. The first images from the JWST will…

  • The Deep Sky

    FAS Astronomers Blog, Volume 30, Number 8. When most of us start out in astronomy, we usually focus first on learning the Night Sky. This is followed by the purchase of a telescope and a few backyard sessions spent looking at the Moon and planets. Then we might follow by observing a few stars. However,…

  • Sagittarius A* and the Event Horizon Telescope

    FAS Astronomers Blog, Volume 30, Number 7. Some 26,000 light years away, between the constellations Sagittarius and Scorpius, is the center of the Milky Way galaxy. Our galactic center is extremely dense with stars packed in much tighter than here in the galactic outskirts. The editors of EarthSky note that it would outshine a full…

  • June 2022 FAS Meeting

    The Best of Hubble Forsyth Astronomical Society June 2022 Meeting Wednesday, June 8 @ 7:30 pm Kaleideum North (formerly SciWorks) 400 West Hanes Mill Road Winston-Salem, NC https://north.kaleideum.org/visit/directions/ Last December after many years of planning, the James Web Space Telescope (JWST) launched into space. It will start observing the universe sometime this summer. But Webb’s…

  • The History of the Universe

    FAS Astronomers Blog, Volume 30, Number 6. This is a story of the Universe. The Universe is big, really big. It also has an interesting history, although one where lots of things happened in the first three minutes or so before everything settled down to a 13.8-billion-year timeline stretching up to the present. I guess…

  • Lunar Eclipse

    Lunar Eclipse Sunday Night/Monday Morning, May 15/16, 2022 9:32 pm to 2:50 am Kaleideum North (formerly SciWorks) 400 West Hanes Mill Road Winston-Salem, NC https://north.kaleideum.org/visit/directions/ Update: Sunday May 15 @ 2:30 pm – The weather is looking good. This observation is on! On the evening of Sunday May 15 at 9:32 pm, The Earth will…

  • May 2022 FAS Meeting

    Moons, moons, and more moons Forsyth Astronomical Society May Meeting Wednesday, May 11 @ 7:30 pm Kaleideum North (formerly SciWorks) 400 West Hanes Mill Road Winston-Salem, NC https://north.kaleideum.org/visit/directions/ Most of us are familiar with the planets of the Solar System; All eight of them … okay maybe nine. How about moons? We often look up…

  • Stars

    FAS Astronomers Blog, Volume 30, Number 5. Stars are huge balls of hydrogen plasma powered by nuclear fusion reactions at their core. Stellar Distances Except for the Sun, which is 93 million miles away, stars are a vast distance from us. Therefore, it isn’t always practical to measure these distances in miles, so astronomers use…