We will be meeting this month on our usual day, the second Friday, July 12th, at the Party Palace/Bigelow Gulch location, general meeting to start at 7:30pm. The program for this meeting will be a virtual presentation by Greg Jones, a Rose City Astronomer, instrument maker, and collaborator on the FlexSpec project team. FlexSpec1 is a high performance spectrograph for the analysis of astronomical spectra and the team has decided not to commercialize their efforts, instead releasing the design as an open source project, with CAD files, 3D printing .STL files, great documentation, and more, freely available. The FlexSpec1 is exciting in that it brings high performance spectrography within reach of much broader user base of potential investigators by extensive use of 3D printed structural elements, and use of primarily off-the-shelf optics and electronics. The potential for FlexSpec to dramatically increase the possibilities for citizen science and Pro/Am (professional/amateur) collaboration are enormous! Myself and the SAS board are excited to help spread the word about this capable and accessible instrument.

Thank you to all who brought potluck items to share at the June meeting, it’s these little acts of participation and engagement that can help build our astro community into something special. Hope you can join us for the pre-meeting BBQ and Potluck July 12th at 6:30pm.