Club in Action

March 7, 2024

Outreach: Sharing our love of the night sky with the public

Sara Street told us about the very successful Sky Watch events she has been holding at Rider Park, near Williamsport, and about how several of our members have been major contributors.  We also heard from several of our members about how much fun it is to take part in CPO’s Sky Watches. They gave us lots of good insights about how to be successful and have a good time participating and showing the night sky with our community.

January 11, 2024

 Qur Annual Intro to Astronomy Meeting

CPO member Bill Arden will tell us to “Look Up,” in an introduction to the night sky and the fun of exploring the universe without telescopes or other equipment. There’s a lot to see in the sky overhead, and Bill will describe how to get your bearings and what to look for in the January sky.

August 18th Rider Park Star Party

Five members of CPO (Liz, Kelly, Bob, Steve, and Brandon) helped the First Community Foundation Partnership of PA host a start party at Rider Park north of Williamsport.  The weather looked like it was not going to cooperate, but 30 minutes before the start of the event the skies cleared and we had a great night.  Bob brought his EAA setup and displayed several deep sky objects for the public.  The rest of us gave guided tours of the sky and assisted attendees in looking through our telescopes.

August 3, 2023

Our speaker was Dr. Diana Hannikainen, the Observing Editor at Sky & Telescope.  She gave us a behind the scenes look at Sky & Telescope.

June 1, 2023

Our speaker was Dr. Macy Huston,  who just recently defended her thesis and graduated in May from Penn State with her PhD in Astronomy and Astrophysics.  She discussed SETI: How Astronomers Search for Technological Life in the Universe.

May 4, 2023

We had an excellent presentation by Dr. Michael Eracleous entitled “From cute binary stars to exotic gravitational wave sources”

March 7, 2023

Sky watch at Bernel Park.  The PSU stories under the sky group joined us for the event.

March 6, 2023

Bill Arden shared “The CPO Gets into Radio Telescopes”. He told us about the Radio Telescope that the CPO has purchased.

February 2023

One of our newest members from the Williamsport area on February 02. 2023 Bob Stoffregen gives a presentation on his astrophotography equipment

February 2020

Howard Bond, pictured on left talking with Wayne, talked about the recent fainting (yes, that’s a term) of Betelgeuse which has heightened interest in variable stars – and that one in particular. 

January 2020

We had a four member round table program. Jim Steamer gave a nice presentation on his growing up with Astronomy interests and visiting some noted telescopes and observatories.     
Jim Paine gave us a synopsis of the struggle to get permits to observe in our local parks.   
Steve Taylor gave us some insight to his latest projects and Bill Arden gave us a presentation about the Parker Solar Probe.

December 5, 2019

The CPO held an Open House for the public. Bill Arden gave a very nice talk about what to see in the sky and how the stars move. 

October 3, 2019

We had an excellent presentation by Källan Berglund entitled “Seeing the Invisible: Observing Black Holes”