Hello Ventura County Astronomical Society Membership,
Happy New Year to All. I am looking forward to representing our society this year as your new 2024 Society President.
With a new year we begin a new chapter into the VCAS, and I am looking forward to re-energizing our society into the future. We have had a slow but progressive last couple of years, and our membership has grown quite substantially. Unfortunately since the end of the Pandemic we have had little opportunity to spend more time enjoying Member Only Events.
Thanks to Jerry Thompson our Vice President of Programs, and Julie Niblett our Treasurer, we were able to put together a few Mount Wilson field trips for our membership. I am hoping to plan more field trips to Mount Wilson this year, and we are hoping to possibly get a reservation in for the 100 inch telescope viewing.
My goal for this year is to provide more outings for our Membership, Member Only Events. I would like to spend more time enjoying the dark night skies with our members at a number of Member Only Star Parties, like the upcoming Messier Marathon. I would also like our membership to get more involved in volunteering at viewing events with our local schools, and community outreach. I want to get back to how our society was four, or five years ago providing exceptional community outreach programs.
Of course our goal will always be to provide Public Programs / Public Star Parties during the Summer months, the challenge may be that we have to find another location to hold these events, I am not ruling out Moorpark College Observatory, but the possibility of a new venue may be required.
If you have not recently noticed, the VCAS Web Page has been updated to a newer version / format. Please be patient as we are working hard at getting the page updated with information, and links that will benefit our members, and anyone that visits our page. I want to thank our newest Board of Director member, and Webmaster Lindsey Diloreto for getting our new web page built and up online for all to enjoy. Thank you for all your hard work and effort for helping the VCAS move forward into the future.
We are still having a slight issue with finding Speakers for our Membership Meetings, it is not that we do not have enough resources to pull from, but more that many speaker presenters are still leary of large group gatherings, and Covid issues. We will be working hard to schedule speaker presentations from our Space Science Community, but may have to resort to other topics if a speaker can not be scheduled. If any of our membership has connections, or suggestions for a speaker, please don't hesitate to contact myself, or our VP of Programs with your ideas, or suggestions.
In closing, I want to reiterate that we are an all volunteer society, and it takes the "Society" to make it happen. We all need to be ready to provide as much volunteer support as possible to make this a successful year for the Ventura County Astronomical Society, and our future Outreach efforts.
Looking forward to communicating with all of you at our next Membership Meeting, or Member Event.
Regards,
Nowell Niblett
VCAS President & Membership Coordinator