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a 501-C3 non-profit educational organization EIN 85-0475488
Currently the club has about 40 paid up members, ranging in age from 10 to 90. We have members with a wide range of experience, but we have more members with less than 2 years experience than we have members with more than 10.
We are registered as a 501-C3 not for profit educational organization with the IRS.
We are predominantly visually based, but some members like to do Astrophotography.
Running from about March through October we usually have two main sorts of events each month (weather permitting):
Public Star parties: These events are open to anyone who wants to come, member or not, scope or not, newbie or expert. We publicize them on our Facebook page and website and through word of mouth and sometimes on the local radio station – especially if we’re holding the event in Dixon at the Ball field. We also hold public star parties at Wild Rivers recreation area (near Cerro, just north of Questa), we do that a couple of times a year and we usually take a small group to Capulin Volcano’s Dark sky party in September. In the past we’ve also done star parties at Bandelier national monument and other local areas.
Club sessions: These are advertised only to club members, though some non-members come if they hear about it from someone and members sometimes bring guests. These are held in different locations, but most frequently at our VP’s House which is on Las Cordovas road near the Golf course – Roy (our VP) has an 18” dob in a dome observatory so we use that and some of us bring our scopes too and set them up outside the dome.
We normally release our annual Star Party Calendar in February.
The Club doesn’t usually have any business meetings, except for an Annual Meeting which is usually held in January via Zoom.
We have agreed to partner with the BLM to assist them in their process to earn a Dark Sky Park certification for the Rio Grande Del Norte National monument.
Club membership costs $20/year and for that you get membership of both the club and the Astronomical League (https://www.astroleague.org/) , which, if you don’t know, has some wonderful observing programs and a pretty good quarterly magazine. Club members often do their own thing in addition by getting together with one or two of their buddies and setting up somewhere (their yard, some public land, etc.) and some of us are working on the AL observing programs. (So far I’ve done Messier List, Binocular Messier list, and Double stars.
My current project (I’m about 1/3 way through) is the Herschel 400 list – that’s really hunting the faint fuzzies).
If you want to be a member you need to send me your name, mailing address , Phone number (so that we call you if we need to cancel events due to weather) and the 20$ which you can send via PayPal (paypal address elvalleastronomers@gmail.com) or with cash/Check.If you want to pay by check send it to the club’s registered address: El Valle Astronomers, 403, Valverde Commons Drive, Taos, NM 87571. Alternatively you can give me a check at the next star party you come to.
The club owns several scopes – a 30” dobsonian with Stellar Cat goto system, a 17” dobsonian, an 8” reflector on an Alt/Az mount and a 72mm ED Refractor. (No mount for that yet), plus we have two pairs of large (15×70) binoculars, one of them on a parallelogram mount. All of these are used at Star parties.
We have an agreement with UNM-Taos whereby we will get their 36” Dob up and running and help in the staffing of the Observatory & Outreach center; that will start basic operations in September of 2026, though they still don’t have a permanent Observatory structure yet. In exchange for our help, UNM Taos will let us use the observatory and 36” scope if they are not using it. We also act as agents for UNM-Taos by receiving donations of Astro gear and holding them until the Observatory is built. (Donations so far include a 6” Achro refractor on a mount, an 8” Ritchey Chretien on a Losmandy G11 and a pier, an 8” F4 reflector on a mount, a 12” goto Dob, an 8” SCT…..).
You will get announcements of events via email and we also post announcements on the club Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1560009417678336
You can always send us emails at the club email address (elvalleastronomers@gmail.com).