Who are we, what do we do?Westminster Astronomical Society was founded in 1984, in the town of Westminster, Maryland. The first meeting consisted of 5 persons (notice the numbers Officers?) at the Westminster Public Library. Since then, we have grown to 85+ members.When Carroll County opened Bear Branch Nature Center, WAS pitched in to help build the Bear Branch Planetarium. Today we continue to operate and provide shows for the Nature Center as well as many other star parties around the community. In 2003, Westminster Astronomical Society became Incorporated. Westminster Astronomical Society serves as THE Astronomical Resource for Carroll County. We have public star parties all around Carroll and Surrounding Counties as well as other communtiy service work to furthter educate the citizens of Carroll County about the great overhead nightly resource, our Milky Way. Astronomy is looking up! To quote a club member describing the club to the MERAL Vice-Chair, We have over 85 members, and we will be celebrating 20 yrs this May [2004]. I would guess that we have done programs for >2000 people last year. If you go to our web site you will see that we do 2-3 public programs (some with planetarium shows) a month. What are not listed are the ones we do for school groups (public, private and home school), boy scouts, girl scouts and private groups. Two years ago when we had a booth at the Reisterstown festival we had over 1500 people over two days look through our scopes. We regularly have programs at the Reisterstown festival, Sykesville fall fest, Earthworks, Piney Run Applefest, the nature camps at Hashahwa and Piney Run parks. Non-Profit StatusWe have been granted Non-profit Status under IRS section 501(c)(3). We are described under section 509(a)(2) as a "publicly supported foundation". Which means a majority of our funding comes from you. See our acceptance to exemption letter (requires Adobe Acrobat). |