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| Anyone from the eastern side of NC here? Unfortunately there's not really any clubs in my area. I'm in the Albemarle area. |
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Well I'm not close to you - but I'm in Cary - outside of Raleigh. We have a number of folks who participate in the Raleigh Astronomy Club (RAC) who are not from the immediate area. We have a very active Imaging group - and we generally do almost all of our meetings via Zoom - so you could participate in most meetings and workshops . Yearly dues are only $25 - website is: https://raleighastro.org/. We'd love to have you join and participate! John Davis |
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| Seconding John. The Raleigh Astronomy Club is now one of the biggest in the US, with nearly, if not more than, 500 members. We have a large group of enthusiastic and expert imagers and others with knowledge in all aspects of amateur astronomy, observing, imaging, buying and building equipment, software use and development, and pretty much anything else one might need. Lots of outreach, live and via Zoom. |
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| Thanks for the invite gents, but I was honestly looking for folks in my area for networking. I already have a pretty strong grasp of equipment and processing. The coast here has a couple potential dark sites (B1\B2) that I'd like to try and bring folks together at. |
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Well good luck to you... when you said the "Albemarle " area - at first I thought you meant the town of Albemarle east of Charlotte - guess you mean the Albemarle Sound area. I had some friends who owned a river house on the Pungo river east of Belhaven for a while... it was great to go down there and image! Such dark skies, when the weather would cooperate. But you gotta keep an eye out at night for the occasional bear or two!! |
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JD: Ah yeah, I gotta remember that, names are shared around here lol. My backyard is B4, but I've been eyeballing probably the only truly dark sites on the east coast about an hour south of me, and yep, like you said, right smack dab in the middle of bear country. So far my experience with them tells me they're skittish enough to keep their distance. I did visit down there a week or so ago, it's beautiful at night. Just snapping a quick cell phone pic was pretty amazing. Pungo is pretty close to where I visited, maybe 45 mins away to the east. |
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Well, the bears are skittish - unless you surprise one, or unless they are protecting their babies. Last time we were down there, we went on a "bear hunt" over into the Pocosin Lakes national wildlife refuge. In a little over an hour - at dusk - we saw something in the neighborhood of 16 bears. Got pretty close to one of them (about 20 ft - from the sunroof of a Highlander): https://www.flickr.com/photos/137023460@N07/51355936437/in/album-72157719633558158/ Only reason she was right there by the road is that her baby had climbed the tree right by the road, instead of heading off into the woods as he/she was supposed to: https://www.flickr.com/photos/137023460@N07/51356907398/in/album-72157719633558158/ Whole album is here (with most of the bears we saw): https://www.flickr.com/photos/137023460@N07/albums/72157719633558158 I'm jealous of you being over there that close to the dark sky. I do believe that I've heard of people from the Raleigh area going over to Pettigrew State Park to do imaging, but I don't remember any details. Best of luck... look forward to those images! |
