Astral Projections Online December 2025
Wishing all our members, family, and friends of ASTRA a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.
Check our Website for updated content at www.astra-nj.com
Club Presentations Wanted:
Does anyone have any astronomy items of interest to share with the membership?
Please let us know at Club Contacts.
Club dues and membership. If you renew after March 31 you will be renewed as a new member.
Membership renewal time and Elections
December is the time to start renewing your ASTRA membership for 2026.
Forms can be found on the website or here.
ASTRA Elections
It’s that time of year to start thinking about the ASTRA Board elections. Please let the current board members know if anyone is interested in running for any of the three positions: president, vice president, or treasurer. Elections will be at the December meeting. Unless there are no takers, the current board will remain in place.
President - Jim Webster
Vice-President - Vinny Illuzzi
Treasurer - Rosemarie Spedaliere
One week to go - Request to the ASTRA Membership.
If you have any old ASTRA photos or videos and are willing to share them, please send them to Jim Webster.
We are working on something for the December meeting.
ASTRAL PROJECTIONS ONLINE (APO for short) is an email-linked publication for members only. If you exit APO to the club website or other resources you will need to use the emailed link again to get back to it. If you wish to retain a copy please bookmark or refer back to the email. We will make all efforts to post by the first week of the month.
Submissions Welcome: Members are invited to submit articles, photos, news, or stories for inclusion with Astral Projections Online. Please contact the ASTRA Webmaster.
Event Calendar
Event Cancellations: Members will receive email notifications of event cancellations.
Upcoming December ASTRA Meeting
Friday, December 12, 2025, at 7:00 PM EST at Novins Planetarium
Upcoming Public Star Parties
February 21, 2026 - Jake’s Branch - 6:30 PM
Upcoming Public, County & State Park Presentations 2025
Public Outreach Presentations, if any member wishes to support ASTRA outreach efforts with the public, please let Vinny, Ro, or Jim know of any interest. Additional help for these events is always appreciated.
County and State Park presentations require a registration fee; call the hosting park to reserve.
None scheduled at this time.
Website Updates …
Please visit our club website. We continue to have additional updates, if some content would be useful to members please let us know.
Brochure changes to QR Code Card.
We have made a change to the public information for ASTRA.
We retired the old trifold brochures, replacing them with a QR Code business card. It represents a cost savings from printing the old trifold brochure.
The QR Code will take them to the ASTRA webpage and provide the same information as the old brochures. We can now make updates without printing new brochures.
DarkSky NJ has implemented this change. It was recently shared at the New Jersey League of Municipalities this past November in Atlantic City with the help of Save Barnegat Bay.
An added benefit is that members can keep one in their wallets to share the code with anyone interested in ASTRA.
Jim Webster will be reaching out to the planetarium about leaving the ASTRA QR Code Card in place of the old trifold brochures once we run out of them.
“When it is darkest, men see the stars.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A well-known astronomy quote is often referenced with the Winter Solstice.
ASTRA Meeting - December 12 at 7 PM
For our December meeting at the planetarium, we will meet in the meeting room at 7 PM. ASTRA member, Sharad Shroff, will be presenting this night on the Northern Lights in Yellowknife, Canada.
We will also have our end-of-year video wrap-up.
Please support Novins Planetarium, patranizing their shows, who has supported us since the begining of ASTRA.
We are asking members to support our ASTRA meetings by presenting astronomy items of interest.
Please let Jim, Ro, or Vinny know.
Event Reports
Shockingly, for November, the weather was good to us. We were able to hold two events: one for the Girl Scouts and the other at Jake’s Branch County Park, which also included additional Girl Scout participation.
Braving the cold, they had a good time exploring and learning the night sky with our telescopes and working on badge requirements. For both events, Rosemarie Spedaliere and Jim Webster, along with help from Gloria Webster, had some red lights and poster cards for them to take home.
The red lights were a good way of teaching them about night vision and the impact of light pollution.
We greatly appreciated the membership turnout we had for both events. Looking forward our luck changes in 2026 with the weather for more public outreach.
November ASTRA Meeting Summary
For November, we had a guest speaker, Marc Rogoff, who is an internationally recognized multi-award-winning Education Specialist with NJ Fish and Wildlife, within the NJ Dept. of Environmental Protection (NJDEP), and
Past-President of the Alliance for New Jersey Environmental Education (ANJEE). He is the current President of the New Jersey Earth Science Teachers Association (NJESTA) and a member of the National Environmental Education Advisory Council (NEEAC) with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA).
An educator for over 45 years, Marc provided his presentation on Meteors, Meteoroids, and Meteorites. He also provided the geological impact of these events worldwide.
There was a lot of interest and engagement from the membership in this event, and we took it all the way to 10 PM this night. We had some members bring their own samples to share as well.
ASTRA and Mark can be found at many of the environmental events in Ocean County. If anyone is interested, please let Jim Webster know.
Public Events and Presentations
Besides the Girl Scouts, we also had an event for the Cub Scouts on November 19. Jim and Gloria Webster, and Kevin Eak provided a general astronomy presentation for the Cub Scout Pack in Point Pleasant, New Jersey. With the scouts’ parents and siblings, this event had 80 +/- as we didn’t get an exact headcount.
This was an indoor event, so there was no observing. The selected area would not have worked. We told the troop leader they should bring them to a future star party at Jake’s Branch, as this would work out better for them.
Members Submitted Articles & Items
Whatever it is, how you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Contact: Jim Webster, ASTRA President and Webmaster, regarding submissions.
A Pleiades Discovery
By Vic Palmieri - November 20, 2025
Perhaps there are many ASTRA members who are acquainted with this discovery. I surely wasn’t. When we began to develop an interest in Astronomy and had acquired our first telescope, the next step was to become knowledgeable about the planets, stars, nebulae, etc. As we gained experience, we may have joined a club and used our earned experience to share our knowledge with the public at star parties.
However, many times the knowledge we have and share is the same knowledge learned years ago as novices. It is always helpful to keep up to date with current findings. Astronomy magazines are a good source of information.
Such is the situation with the Pleiades when I found an interesting article in the Science Section of a newspaper. I discovered that in Japan, the Pleiades are called Subaru. This explains the Pleiades usually shown on the grill of the company’s cars. This automotive connection is interesting, but not as interesting as the discovery in question.
Pleiades Image – Manfred Konrad via Getty Images
The Pleiades are 445 light-years from Earth. It is M45 in Messier’s catalog. In a recent report published in the Astrophysical Journal, astronomers announced that there are more stars in this open cluster than expected. Perhaps up to 3000 or more, and if they were visible to the unaided eye, they would be seen over the entire sky. The Pleiades should be considered the core of a larger and very diffuse network of stars.
Work continues to develop the scale of this network. Resources include NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, the EU’s Gaia satellite, and data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. After assessing age, motion, and chemistry, astronomers have a list of 3,091 stars spread across 2,000 light-years that have been named The Pleiades Complex.
I will never regard the Pleiades in the same way.
Sources:
Lost Sisters of the Pleiades Fill the Night Sky, The New York
New York Times, November 18, 2025
Sci Tech Daily, Astronomers Uncover a Massive Structure
Around Pleiades Star Cluster
Pleiades Image – Manfred Konrad via Getty Images
More on the Pleiades
In Greek mythology, Orion chases the Seven Sisters because he is captivated by their beauty and pursues them relentlessly. To save them from his advances, the god Zeus transformed the sisters into stars, forming the Pleiades cluster, but then placed Orion in the sky as a constellation, ensuring his eternal pursuit. This celestial chase is reflected in the apparent movement of the constellations across the night sky.
For more on the Pleiades, visit the November 11, 202,5, article at EarthSky.org.
AstroMag November 2025
A free online publication for Amateur Astrophotographers.
The Moon: Our Nearest Neighbor
Let’s explore some interesting features, facts, or myths about our nearest neighbor, the Moon. Without it, life on Earth would be totally different, if not at all.
Plato Crater and the Lunar Alps
Note: This article is AI-generated.
NASA APOD Image Credit: Richard Bosman
Plato is a prominent, dark-floored impact crater on the Moon, located at the western edge of the Montes Alpes, or Lunar Alps. The Montes Alpes is a mountain range that forms the northeastern border of the Mare Imbrium (Sea of Rains).
The Plato crater, has a dark, flat floor and is the result of being flooded with volcanic lava billions of years ago. The Alps formation on the Moon, or Montes Alpes, was created by a massive ancient impact that formed the Mare Imbrium basin; this collision uplifted concentric rings of mountains, which are the lunar Alps. A notable feature of the lunar Alps is the Alpine Valley, a long, prominent rille that cuts through the mountains, separating the Mare Imbrium from the Mare Frigoris.
Key facts about Plato crater and the Lunar Alps:
Plato Crater
It is about 101 kilometers (63 miles) in diameter and 1,468 meters (4,816 feet) deep.
The smooth, dark floor is the result of lava flows that filled the crater after the initial impact.
The irregular rim of the crater has jagged peaks up to 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) high.
The crater is situated on the northeastern shore of the Mare Imbrium and is at the western end of the Montes Alpes. It is easily visible with a small telescope.
Lunar Alps (Montes Alpes)
This range runs for about 280 kilometers along the northeastern edge of Mare Imbrium.
The highest peak in the range is Mont Blanc, rising to about 3,600 meters (12,000 feet).
The range is bisected by the Vallis Alpes (Alpine Valley), a rift valley that is about 166 kilometers long.
Relationship between Plato and the Alps
Plato crater sits at the western extremity of the Montes Alpes mountain range.
The crater and the mountains are separated by Mare Imbrium and Mare Frigoris, two vast lunar plains.
Outreach material below is distributed free for public outreach.
Astronomy for ASTRA Kids
NASA Science - Space Place - Science & Technology
For our young ASTRA members, NASA has online webpages for kids. An educational resource for fun learning and arts & crafts.
How Does NASA Communicate With Spacecraft?
Around The Web
Dark Sky News
Latest News:
DarkSky New Jersey Sample Ordnance for New Jersey towns has been approved and released.
DarkSky New Jersey is still reviewing the impact of street-lights on safety.
Light Pollution Exhibit
Work on the light pollution exhibit at Jake’s Branch County Park has begun. Light fixtures were removed, and the selected area has been painted black.
Looking forward to what comes next after the holidays.
On the lighter side of astronomy …
Dad Joke:
What happens when a microscope bangs into a telescope? … They Kaleidoscope!
Did you know …
The vintage Christmas color wheel is a classic mid-century holiday decoration used to light up aluminum Christmas trees. The device, which sits on the floor, features a spotlight shining through a slowly rotating, segmented plastic wheel with four colors—typically red, green, blue, and amber (or yellow).
Stringing electric lights on a metal tree posed a significant fire hazard; the reflective aluminum branches would capture and sparkle with the ever-changing projected colors from the stand-alone color wheel, creating a safe, unique, iconic visual effect.
Color wheels can still be found in vintage and new models today.
What’s Up:
Sky Watching Tips from NASA
Provided by NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Is usually updated anywhere from the first day of the month to the fifth day of the month. Check back to this linked image if it hasn’t been updated yet.
For more go to NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory webpage: What’s Up: Skywatching Tips From NASA
This article and images are distributed by NASA Night Sky Network
The Night Sky Network program supports astronomy clubs across the USA dedicated to astronomy outreach.
Visit nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov to find local clubs, events, and more!
NASA has confirmed over 6,000 exoplanets with thousands more awaiting confirmation. Each new discovery helps scientists understand how planets form, how common Earth-like worlds might be, and where to look for signs of life. With upcoming missions like the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and the Habitable Worlds Observatory, we are closer to answering the most haunting question of all: Are we truly alone in the universe?
To learn more, visit Universe - NASA Science
Did JWST Find an Exomoon or a Starspot?
Searching for exomoons - moons the orbit around another planet - was one of the most exciting capabilities expected of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) when it launched in late 2021. So, after four years of operation, why hasn’t it found one yet? Turns out it’s really, really hard to find a moon around a planet light-years away. A new paper available in pre-print on arXiv from David Kipping of Columbia University (and Cool Worlds YouTube Channel fame) shows why.
They used 60 hours of time on JWST’s NIRSpec instrument and weren't able to definitively confirm the existence of a possible exomoon. … To learn more visit Universe Today
Winter Stargazing Tips: Stay Warm and Cozy!
January 2024 Reposting … by Kat Toche
Some parts of the country feel as if the winter will never end. Massive snows, polar vortexes, arctic winds...it’s almost enough to make you forget that a spring thaw will eventually arrive! One thing guaranteed to warm an astronomer's heart on these cold winter nights: the beautiful, sparkling skies!
For more, visit NASA Night Sky Network
Let’s Explore Space
The Latest News on Astronomy and Sky Watching — By StarWalk Astronomy App - Sky Tonight
Tonight’s Sky: No longer posting
October 2024 was the last updated posting of Tonight’s Sky. It is still available via YouTube.
Linked is the twelve-month playlist on YouTube.
Any suggested replacements, let me know.
Visit the STScI which produces Hubblesite.org video overviews for Tonight’s Sky.
They can be found both on Facebook and stsci.edu.
Submissions Welcome
Members are invited to submit articles, photos, news, or stories for inclusion with Astral Projections Online. Please contact the ASTRA Webmaster.