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Regular Monthly Meeting, Carlisle Visitors Center

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Regular Monthly Meeting, Carlisle Visitors Center Lorain County, Ohio January 2014 Website: blackriverastro.org Newsletter submissions: Newsletter Editor * * * * * * * * * * * Wednesday, January 8, 7 p.m.: Regular monthly meeting, Carlisle Visitors Center. “Galactic Collisions” by Logan Maddock * * ** ** * * * * Thursday, January 16, 7 p.m.: Board meeting, Blue Sky Restaurant, Amherst, Ohio * * * * * ** Friday, January 24, 7-9 p.m.: Public observing, Nielsen Observatory * ** * * * * * Saturday, January 25, 7-9 p.m.: Cloud backup public observing ** * * Sunday, February 2, 6:30-8:00 p.m.: Crescent Moon Walk, Wellington Reservation * * * * * ** * * * * * * * * ** * January Meeting Dates Changes The January 2014 regular monthly meeting will be held, contrary to the usual first Wednesday of the month, on the SECOND Wednesday, i.e., January 8, 2014, as January 1st is a holiday. The January 2014 board meeting is rescheduled to be January 16, so that there's a bit of breathing room between it and the rescheduled regular meeting of January 8. * Submissions for the Guidescope Sought If you have something that would be of interest to the local amateur astronomic community--articles, photographs, wanted/for sale, etc.--please feel free to send them to your Guidescope editor for inclusion in the next issue. * Club Dues To ensure that you remain a member in good standing--or to become one if you currently aren't--please remember to bring cash, check or equivalent wampum to the next meeting of the club and give it to our treasurer, Dan Walker. Or, if you prefer, you can send it to Dan along with the membership form, confirming your current address, phone number, etc. The membership form, and Dan's contact info, is found here: http://www.blackriverastro.org/BRASform.pdf Thanks for your membership and support. PRESIDENT'S BOARD SUMMARY, DECEMBER 12, 2013 The December meeting of the BRAS Board of Directors opened at 7:10 p.m., with 11 Directors present. The minutes from the November meeting were examined and approved as was the Treasurer's report. Under committee reports, the Guidescope editor reported that everything was status quo. However, more submissions are requested. Any member who would like to submit an article, a photo, or an item for sale, should contact editor Bill Ruth. The Website committee stated that the website is going well. The committee will meet in January to discuss making the home page of the website more dynamic, and to possibly include a voice message. Instrumentation committee reported that the observatory is operating well. We had a report at the last Board meeting that the Telrad finder on the orange tube C-14 needed new batteries; however, at the last star party, the Telrad was found to be working well. The OTAA committee reported that we are considering either September 20th or the 27th for our OTAA depending on when the church in Birmingham will host its big craft show. Schauer will check on the date of the craft show and report back to the Board. The MetroParks liaison reported that the Parks has fixed the light on the northeast concrete pad so it is properly placed on its post and is operating. Programming is set through May with a program being planned for either June or July. The January program will be Logan Maddock discussing “Galactic Collisions”, while February will be John Reising on the upcoming Mars opposition. Kelly Ricks will speak in March, and in April John O'Neal will give a program called “40 Comets in 40 Years”. Tim Kreja will present a program in May. Any member who wishes to present a program for one of our general meetings should contact any of the officers or Board members. Under Old Business, the Directors were reminded that Kelly Ricks is joining LCMP naturalist Becky Bode on another night walk at the Wellington Reservation. This will be on Sunday, February 2nd at 6:30 p.m. These walks end at an observing mound where members will have telescopes set up for public use. Any BRAS members who want to participate should contact Kelly Ricks. There was continued discussion about a membership drive some time in the spring. For this event, we want to make more use of social media and also center the drive around an astronomical event of some kind that will engage the public. John O'Neal, Kelly Ricks and others spoke on using more frequent posts on our Facebook page to increase awareness. John O'Neal also posted some astrophotos on the Amherst city home page and had several people contact him commenting that they had no idea that there was an astronomy club in the area. This suggests to us that we can use Facebook to get the word out about the club. Any members who have Facebook pages are asked to 'Like' our FB page and ask their friends to do the same. Lee Lumpkin also reported on progress that has been made in getting our archives back on line. He has made a test site using several hundred of the photos in our archives, and this was briefly viewed by the Directors on Schauer's iPad. Our archives consist of almost 1,000 photos taken by members and many hundreds of newspaper articles, digitized copies of the Guidescope and other documents that were on the old website. These exist on DVDs in the possession of several Board members and are waiting to be placed back online in a uniform manner that can be easily searched. This is another item the website committee will discuss when it meets in January. There was discussion about the purchase of several items to be used by the club at public star parties. It was decided to buy a 2-inch Baader Planetarium O III filter for use with the C- 14s and to also purchase two green laser pointers. The club will buy a Starfinder pointer from Scope Stuff and a Z-Bolt laser pointer as well. Both of these are Class IIIa pointers which are legal to own without filling out any forms and are less potentially dangerous that other more powerful laser pointers. Class IIIa pointers produce less that 5 mW of power. While many green lasers produce much less than 5mW, these two lasers are individually tested and guaranteed to produce between 4 and 5mW. Schauer will order the lasers and the Oxygen III filter and the club will reimburse him. There was also considerable discussion about laser safety stemming from an article in the latest issue of Air and Space Smithsonian magazine. There are hundreds of reports from pilots of commercial aircraft about green lasers being pointed at them, especially as they are coming in to land. The number of reports is growing monthly at an alarming rate and arrests, fines and visits from Homeland Security are resulting. Green lasers pointed at a digital camera can also permanently damage the sensor of the camera rendering it useless which is another potential problem. We are going to discuss laser safety further and anticipate doing a Guidescope article on the topic as well as creating guidelines for the use of laser pointers at club events. We need to use care as several of our members have very expensive cameras that we do not want damaged and we need to remember that the Nielsen Observatory is on the Cleveland Hopkins Airport glide path. A laser pointer is a valuable tool for helping the public see the objects that we display and we wish to continue using them. However, we must assure that we use them responsibly and safely. Under New Business, past President Tim Kreja provided President Schauer with a handout used by the Riverside Astronomical Society at their public events. This is a two-page document that explains why their club was doing the event and what types of things can normally be seen at a public star party. The second page lists information about the club, a calendar of every event the club has for the entire year, and a copy of the membership form people could use to join the club. Directors have copies of this handout and will peruse it so that we can discuss the advisability of doing something similar if we feel it will be beneficial. The final discussion was about the Clear Sky Clock that is part of our website and is used to predict viewing conditions at club events. It was pointed out that organizations who donate to the maintenance of the site get the Clock updated for their location much more often. The website committee will discuss this and will probably make a small donation to help maintain a valuable resource that we use often. Dates for January were read. PLEASE NOTE THAT THE JANUARY GENERAL MEETING WILL NOT BE ON THE FIRST WEDNESDAY OF JANUARY WHICH WOULD BE JAN. 1st AND IS THUS A HOLIDAY. THE JANUARY GENERAL MEETING WILL BE MOVED TO WEDNESDAY JAN. 8 th AND THE BOARD MEETING WILL BE MOVED TO THURSDAY JAN. 16 th . Members are asked to note this as the Visitors Center will be closed on January 1st. General Meeting: Wednesday January 8th 7:00 p.m. Carlisle Visitors Center Board Meeting: Thursday January 16th 7:00 p.m. Blue Sky Restaurant, Amherst Public Observing: Fri/Sat. January 24/25 7:00-9:00 p.m. at the Nielsen Observatory The meeting was adjourned at 9:15 p.m. ~Steve Schauer The Ten Brightest Comets of All Time Last month, Comet ISON was supposed to have burst into dazzling brightness, possibly even becoming visible in daylight, following perihelion in late November. Problem: 'Comet of the Century' ISON disintegrated instead. If it had survived to be visible in daylight, it would have joined a very exclusive club of daylight comets, which, to date, has only had ten members.
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