stargazing in Oakland

Sunday was another Spare the Air day, so we tried to minimize travel as much as possible. Fortunately, Chabot Space & Science Center is not far from our house, as we'd already made plans to visit there again. This trip was to hear a talk on exoplanets by Dr. Alex Filippenko, an astronomy professor at Cal. You may have seen him quoted in various astronomy articles, or on the PBS science show Nova. We found the talk extremely interesting and well-presented (he's won numerous teaching awards, including 'best professor' at Cal.)

One of the few upsides to the recent weather is that the hills weren't socked in with fog like they've been much of the summer. So after hors d'oeuvres from local favorite Italian Colors and then the talk, we got to enjoy viewing the heavens through the Chabot telescopes as well as various smaller ones belonging to volunteers. Besides a clear view of Jupiter and the Galilean moons, we got to see the Ring Nebula; a globular cluster (i.e., a big cloud of stars); and a couple of binary star pairs.

Then this morning I read about Chabot in a nice Oakland article in New York magazine. Besides Chabot and various other local favorites from the Fox Theater to Bakesale Betty's, it also mentioned local blogs The Oakbook and 38th Notes.