January 2016

Financials:

Dec. 1, 2015: balance $1829.67

Three renewals $51.67

Ending balance Dec. 31, 2015: $1881.34

24 people attended including 1 new member

Daryl’s astronomy update:

He got a new F3.5 fish-eye Bauer camera over the holidays.

There were some sunspots on Sunday; a fairly strong solar storm but not sure that it actually did very much

He showed an image of the nearly full moon taken Dec. 24 with his new camera, and another taken Dec. 25 at 6 am of the full moon

He showed another image of the moon and constellations taken with the new camera on December 23 with a 30-secone exposure

He showed yet another image of the pole of the ecliptic, Bootes and Arcturus

New comet Catalina: non-periodic comet, coming from the south in a hyperbolic orbit, leaving to the north. January 14 this comet will be close to the end of the Big Dipper.

He showed an image of the comet taken Dec. 21 with its forked tail. Used 25 stacked pictures.

He went out west of Hula Dam to the entrance to Wah-Shah-Shee to take more pictures. He showed one of zodiacal light after sunset, with dust in the plane of the ecliptic reflecting sunlight. Single 30-second exposure taken about 30 minutes after sunset. Used F3.5 lens and “some processing” to get this fabulous image.

He showed a picture taken by the Hubble of 2 galaxies colliding.

The Andromeda galaxy is moving toward the Milky Way.

• Daryl is teaching a basic astronomy class at Tri County Tech starting January 28 for 6 weeks. Two hours per class.

• Followup from Rich Kowalczyk on his and his daughter Jewel Ann’s presentation about getting into the schools at the December meeting: He will follow through with the schools and get back to us at the next meeting. He made copies of an article in the February issue of Astronomy by Bob Berman about the Moon.

• Tulsa Astronomy Club: John Land with the Club is looking for a dark sky site just as we are. They have an established site south of Tulsa which has been gradually getting lighter at night over the years. Perhaps we could collaborate on this. We did collaborate with them in 2010 with an astronomy day at Woolaroc.

• Denise talked to the Sutton Aviary Research Center about a possible dark sky location and they said they have gates that would need to be opened and later closed which would preclude a “last minute” location like we are looking for. Although the site is dark, there are quite a few trees around.

• Star party for Mutual Girls Club coming up Jan 29: Rick Bryant is working on this. Would take place, weather permitting, at the group’s sponsor’s house in Ochelata near Hwy 75. There would be up to 30 kids attending (grades 6-8) but likely would have about 15-18 come. Volunteers to help with this welcome!

Main program—Introduction to Lunar Stratigraphy by Bob Young

Stratigraphy is stacked rocks, usually deposited as sediments

Cross cutting is displacement of previously laid-down sedimentary layers, causing faults. Motion can be along north/south axes or east/west, as with a right lateral fault.

In the early 1800s Smith and Lyell and their contemporaries developed principles of geology which can be applied to both the Earth and the Moon.

Our “lab work” for the evening was focused on the Mare Imbrium. Mare Imbrium is one of the first lunar basins formed. This area (and the surrounding area) features both the “flatter” mare and the more heavily-cratered highlands.

Four stages of initial lunar geological development:

Form crust (accretion)

Some cooling and forming of layers

Magma upwelling going into craters to form seas (mare)

Crater impacts coming from space

Then stage 5, covering numerous billions of years

In 1962 came the first attempt at lunar chronology.

For our “lab”, Bob showed us various images taken in the area of Mare Imbrium and he asked us to identify which parts were formed or laid down first, middle and last! We looked for examples of sedimentation and cross-cutting; rays from meteoric impacts superimposed on mare basalts; basalts superimposed on highland material. One image illustrated the original crust; then craters; then overlay of basalt molten material; then more craters, with several generations of impacts onto the mare basalts.

We can do radiocarbon dating on the lunar rocks brought back to earth. You can get layers of rock from multiple different lava flows, each with its own chemical signature.

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