July 2012

Business Meeting

Treasurer's Report, June, 2012

Beginning Balance - 6/1/12: $1294.16

Expenses:

Astronomical League Annual Dues, 38 members: $200.00

Ending Balance - 6/30/12: $1094.16

Club Bylaws Rewrite

Arden Strycker gave a brief presentation about his recently completed rewrite of the Society’s by-laws. Plans were discussed to have a board meeting in the next month to finalize this rewrite so we can present the new by-laws to the general membership for adoption at the October meeting.

Sunfest 2012 Report

Steve Plank gave a report on our Sunfest booth and activities. He reported that we had about 75 people sign up as having interest in our club and most of them gave us their email and contact information. He also reported that NASA’s Night Sky Network supplied him with a poster, and sun model and many 3D pictures of the Sun which were handed out to those who signed up at our booth. He thanked the members who volunteered to man the booth during the three days it was active.

Public Transit Viewing

Arden gave a report on our club’s public Venus transit viewing event. Many club members had telescopes and binoculars available for the public to safely view the event. Arden reported that the event was well attended with probably over 200 visitors over the viewing time.

Annular Eclipse, May 20, 2012 by Rick Bryant

Rick Bryant gave a good report on his family trip to Albuquerque, New Mexico to view the recent annular eclipse of the Sun. He reported that The Albuquerque Astronomical Society, TAAS, did a great job coordinating possible viewing sites that would be available to the public. Rick and family ended up at a site in the SE part of the city that was right on the centerline of the eclipse path. He reported that there were over 5000 viewers there with many types of equipment. He had some excellent pictures and video of the eclipse and gave a good flavor of the local excitement for those viewers who had never seen such an event before.

Venus Transit, June 5, 2012

Several club members showed pictures they took of the Transit of Venus. Most of the pictures were taken from the site of the club public viewing session at Arvest Bank, East Side Branch. Rick Bryant had a series of excellent pictures.

Mike Woods showed some he took during the public session, and Bob Young showed a composite picture showing the Sun with the positions of Venus at various times. He took these using his daughter’s point-and-shoot digital camera using afocal projection at the eyepiece of his telescope. Daryl had assembled most of his pictures into a video showing the complete transit as viewed from near Ochelata.

Next Meeting

Monday, August 6, in the Bartlesville Public Library Meeting Room, Fred Frey will talk about his experiences making and figuring telescope mirrors complete with demonstrations of what a figured mirror would look like through a Foucault tester. For more information, see the meeting announcement on our website home page at <http://sites.google.com/site/bartlesvilleastronomyclub/> .

BAS Public Website: http://sites.google.com/site/bartlesvilleastronomyclub/

BAS Yahoo Group: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/BvilleAstro/

If you want to have your email address removed from the Bartlesville Astronomical Society mailing list, please send an email requesting removal to bvilleastro@gmail.com .