What's the difference?

In short, official MHAA members pay yearly dues that support our mission's overhead costs and are our volunteers at outreach events. Official membership also grants them access to member only benefits and attendance to private MHAA events.

On the other hand, we use a website called Meetup to announce our events, attract new people, and handle event communication and RSVP's. You can find our Meetup group here: mhastro.

Meetup users can join our Meetup group and RSVP to and attend the public events we post there, for free. Our official members also join Meetup so they can RSVP to events, but the vast majority of our Meetup "members" are technically our mission's targets; they are the people we want to reach and share our knowledge and excitement for astronomy with. We are happy to have and reach as many of them as we can!

Unfortunately, Meetup frequently refers to users as "members" in emails and on its website. This leads some to incorrectly believe they are official MHAA members by simply joining our Meetup group.

Click here to become an official member today!

Click here to visit our Meetup group

Creating a Meetup account

In order to join any Meetup group or to RSVP to a group's events posted on Meetup, you must first create a Meetup account and login.

To create a new Meetup account:

1. Go to meetup.com
2. Click the Sign Up link in the upper right corner
3. Sign up using either
   1. your Facebook
   2. your Google account
   3. entering your email address and  a password
4. If it asks you about topics and hobbies of interest, select a few if you'd like. Meetup uses these to send you recommendations later about other groups you might be interested in.

Joining our Meetup group

By joining our Meetup group you'll be kept abreast of the new events we post.
To join our Meetup group:

1. Go to our Meetup group's page http://meetup.midhudsonastro.org
2. Click the Join button

RSVPing to an event on Meetup

RSVP-ing to our events is often mandatory. If there's a Zoom meeting, only guests who RSVP will receive the event URL. And for events like our Stargazing parties, RSVP-ing is mandatory because anyone not on the list and who hasn't provided the proper info can be kicked out of the park where we host them.

To RSVP to one of our events on Meetup:

1. On our Meetup group's page, look for the Upcoming events section by scrolling down or click the Events link just below the picture at the top of our Meetup page
2. Click the Attend button next to the event OR click elsewhere on the event to open the full details of the event first, and then click the Attend button on the event page
3. If a question pops up when you click Attend, be sure to answer it. For example, you will be asked for, and must provide, your vehicle's make, model, and license plate number in one of these questions when attending star parties. We have to give that info to the state park in order to be there after dark and anyone not on the list can technically be kicked out by the rangers.
   (You can ignore/skip the Meetup offers that sometimes pop up after you RSVP; we can't control those unfortunately).

Changing your RSVP or answers to the RSVP questions

If you need to change your RSVP or update your answers to the question you were prompted with:

1. Go to the event page
2. Click the Edit RSVP button or link. If doing this in a web browser on a computer, the link is in a bar across the bottom of the page, next to the Share button.

You can also download a Meetup app from the iOS and Android app stores that allows you to do all of this.