Attendance: 18 people

Financials:

Feb 1 opening balance $2316.27.

5 renewals totaling $100.00

Evan’s P66 donation match for projector $15.00

Ending balance $2341.27

Abby’s Astronomy News highlights:

• Space X wants to fly tourists to the Moon but its 2018 deadline is ambitious. Two people have paid large sums to get a seat!

• A strange burst of radio waves originated from FRB 121102· NASA found 7 “Earthlike” planets just under 40 light years away

• NASA has detected a gamma-ray signal from the core of Andromeda. Pulsars? Dark matter?

• A black hole in Phoenix Cluster is blowing large plasma bubbles. Forming over 1000 stars a year—are the black holes recycling some gases?

• Neat images:

  • Westerland 1, bright young star cluster

  • Spiral galaxy NGC 1055 head on

  • Nasa Juno craft image of Jupiter: Monet or science? Beautiful coral and blue-gray swirls—streams of clouds

  • Color mosaic of the ice cap on Mars taken by the European Space Agency using 32 orbit strips from 2004-2010. The ice cap is 30% CO2.

  • Alluring Cat's Eye nebula, three thousand light-years from Earth. Looks like a rose made of rhodochrosite. Taken by Chandra. Silicon, sulfur, neon.

  • Deep blue and gold image of N49, a supernova remnant located in the Large Magellanic Cloud

  • The deepest X-ray image ever obtained, with over 7 million seconds observing

  • Calabash nebula—“Rotten Egg” nebula with lots of Sulphur. Taken by the Hubble.

  • Butterfly Nebula taken by the Hubble with reprocessed colors. 4000 light years away

• Pinterest site: youthbastro@gmail.com, password astronomy

Sidewalk astronomy: Want to do this! Ideas for venues-

• • By the Community Center (have to coordinate with BCC)

  • At the mall in the field by Staples

  • In front of Billy Sim’s at the mall

  • By Hideaway downtown

  • YMCA

  • Kiddie park

  • High school? But do have sports games in evenings according to the season

• Possible upcoming good dates:

  • April 21 would be a good date as far as the moon is concerned (35%).

  • New moon April 28

Joe Berry has a Meade scope for sale—call him if interested.

Warren Neff plans events for the STEM lab at high school. Rich has been in contact with him to have one of our group come and speak.

Youth Astronomy club had 25 youth last week, including 10 first timers and 3 new families. The age range of the group is 8-16 with average age 10.8. They meet 3^rd Monday of the month at the library.

Main presentation—Daryl on winter stars:

• He showed beautiful images taken with 8 mm fish-eye lens and stacked of Orion, Taurus, Auriga, Canis Manor and Minor and others, taken 1 ½ years ago at Hulah Lake

• Orion’s nebula using 35 mm focal length. 45 3 min-exposures, stacked.

• Canis major open star cluster in middle

• Auriga open cluster

• Pleides in Taurus

• Aldebaran

• Gemini