BRAS Response to COVID-19 virus

     To comply with Governor DeWine's order to stay at home, the Black River Astronomical Society has cancelled all our public meetings for April and May. HOWEVER, our monthly General Meetings will be held online via the Zoom meeting app.  Zoom is available for Macs, PCs, iOS devices and Android devices as well as Linux. It is free to download and free to use. It will allow us to hold our monthly meeting just as if we were together, and will include our Observers Calendar, Constellation of the month, and the monthly program, which on April 1st will be on asteroid mining. All are welcome to join us. To do so, you need to download Zoom. For an iOS device (iPad or iPhone) find Zoom in the App Store. For an Android device, use the Google Play store. For an Apple laptop or desktop, use the Mac App store. For a Windows PC, go to Zoom us. com. Once you have Zoom, we suggest you practice with it by joining one of our afternoon practice sessions. These will be every afternoon from Saturday 3/28-Tuesday 3/31 at 3:30. When you click on "Join a Meeting" you will need to enter the meeting code 498 314 071 and click join. Once you are joined, you will want to click on "un-mute" so we can hear you, and "Start video" so we can see you.  PLEASE NOTE, the actual General Meeting at 7:00 PM on April 1st will require a different meeting code which Dave Lengyel will email to everyone on our mailing list.  If you are not on our mailing list, we will put a meeting code for the April 1st meeting here on this blog in a new post. Quick suggestion: Zoom works fine on a cell phone...but a tablet or laptop/desktop will work better.  The type on the Observers Calendar and on Power Point slides may be too small to read well on the small screen of a cellphone. My iPad and desktop computers work well.
     Like everyone else, we are playing this crisis by ear. It seems likely to me that we will be cancelling events in June as well. I hope I'm wrong and that this passes sooner. Please follow the Governor's order to stay home and to social distance. Please wash your hands. We care about our members and friends, and want everyone to be able to join us under the magnificence of the night sky again, once this is over. Please also remember that you can do astronomy alone from your back yard, even if it is light polluted. Check out the Black River Astronomical Facebook page for tips from Dave Lengyel on things to observe on clear nights, or join our daily Zoom sessions at 3:30 PM where Dave uses star maps to show us objects to observe.
     Stay Well!
Steve Schauer
President, BRAS