Identity Card	Divulgation	Internal activity	Instruments
The C.A.N.A. on the WWW	Where and when to find us	Organization	Write us

The Centro Astronomico "Neil Armstrong" is one of the 150 italian associations of amateur, not professional, astronomers.
C.A.N.A was born in Salerno, Italy, in 1982 due to the passion for Astronomy of ten youngsters; now it is an Association with about 30 people
of every age and degree.

At the beginning, our Association was created to bring together all the people who have this passion, but very soon the divulgation of Astronomy became one of the main activities.
So we started getting in touch with High Schools in Salerno, and still now C.A.N.A. organizes meetings with them. Since we believe that 30 seconds of watching Saturn's rings will stay in an observer's mind more than 30 minutes of lecture on this topic, any our theoretic lesson in always followed by practical observations with our telescopes.
C.A.N.A. also organizes meetings for the people of Salerno, mostly in occasion of particular astronomical events, such as eclipses of the Moon, passing of comets and so on.
The most important meeting is "Walking on the Moon" (webpage in italian only), in which we yearly give people the chance of observing the Moon and any visible planets through our telescopes.
Since January 1990, C.A.N.A. has published a three-monthly Astronomy magazine called "Zenith", started with the aim of spreading abroad Astronomy with articles written by the members themselves. Thanks to the Internet, now we have a new version of this magazine "Zenith on line" (available in italian only).
We wish to state that our Association is not a close group, as a matter of fact lots of its members come without a basic knowledge, but, because of their great passion, they can gain a foundational understanding.
However, C.A.N.A. organizes yearly a beginner's course on Astronomy; the course, as every other C.A.N.A. divulgating activity, is free and has always had a large and attentive audience.

C.A.N.A. carries out an intensive, internal activity of study, observation and research.
It is associated to the U.A.I. (Unione Astrofili Italiani), the corporation that brings together all the italian amateur astronomers and which entrusted to C.A.N.A. the organizing of the National Congress in 1995. The Congress is once a year and it is the most important moment of the social activity of the U.A.I. Receiving this charge has been one of the greatest honours for us.
C.A.N.A. is interested in asteroidal occultations, supernovae research and variable stars.
Particularly close is the group of astrophotography.
The most exciting moment of the internal activity of the Centro is the Astrocamp, the astronomic camp that is organized every summer: lots of people, telescopes, CCDs and computers crowd a camping area on the slopes of a mountain far from the city. This camp is great for studying, learning, socializing and obviously for the observation under a very dark sky.
An Italian Astronomy magazine, "l'Astronomia", has published a long article about the 1994 edition of our Astrocamp.

C.A.N.A. owns some good instruments for observation like a 20 cm Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and a 30 cm Newton telescope - the latter was assembled by some of the C.A.N.A. members who set up also the systems of motorization for both of them - , but the true resource of the center is the telescopes of the members.
C.A.N.A. has been one of the first associations in Italy to get a CCD camera, that helps us to achieve many important studies; for example, one of them was the setting up of a new way to evaluate asteroidal occultations. C.A.N.A. received an award for this achievement by the E.A.O.N. (European Asteroidal Occultation Network).
The real problem of the center is that we do not have an observatory so we are bound to go out of the city; nevertheless our passion for this science has allowed us to overlook this problem and we are now performing a small observatory at Lat.40°40'53.8"N, Long.14°46'48.7"E.

Thanks to an Internet Provider in Salerno, the Centro Astronomico "Neil Armstrong" was already online in 1994, and, since September 2001, has its own domain.
The members Andrea Mattei and Pierpaolo Pappacena write all the pages with the collaboration of all other fellows.
Get in touch with us to tell us your ideas about graphic project and contents: your ideas are welcome!!!

Our center is in the historic centre of Salerno, south Italy, not far from the Cathedral. The address is: 17, Via Canali. Look at this map to find us easier!
The meetings take place every Saturday at 7 pm.