Aug 2018

  • Attendance: 21 people in attendance. Two visitors: Bill Schmidt and Derek Herrman’s dad, Will Herrman. One second-time visitor, also 1 new member.

  • Statement of Financial Activities: Fiscal Year July 1, 2017 - June 30, 2018

Beginning balance July 1, 2017: $2,018.77

Income:

Membership dues (38 total, incl. 8 family, 3 student) $840.00

Donations from solar eclipse glasses August 2017: $649.54

Collected for T-shirt pass through for Rick Bryant Sept. 2017: $32.00

Donations in memory of Steve Plank, Past President, Dec. 2017: $70.00

Total income: $1,591.54

No budget change between July 2018 and August 2018—no new items

Expenses:

Bartlesville Public Schools Foundation, donation 7-13-17 school solar eclipse glasses $100.00

Mercer Consumer 8-25-17 for New Hampshire Ins. Liability $320.00

Rick Bryant pass through for T-shirt $32.00

Reimburse LaShawn Bollenbach, 2-10-18 craft supplies for Astronomy night at Tulsa Library $81.21

OK Sec of State 2-21-18 Charitable Organization Registration $15.00

Reimburse Rick Bryant, 5-1-18 Bartian Youth Astronomers Notebooks and Supplies $122.86

Astronomical League Annual Dues, 6-22-18, 38 memberships $200.00

Total expenses $871.07

Ending balance June 30, 2018: $2,739.24

    • Derek received a well-deserved first-level outreach award from the Astronomical League.

    • Rick Bryant received a first-level outreach award for 10 hours + work, also 2nd level for 50 hours + and an outstanding master level award for 100 + hours.

  • Star party organized by John Grismore at Civitan Park August 3: 20+ people participated, perfect weather. Saw a number of planets, star clusters, nebulae. Visibility quite good. Even saw one early Perseid meteor—was looking at the right place at the right time, with binoculars even! The site has restrooms! Standard park departure policy though is 11 pm; will see if can get an exception for Club activities. The site also has a playground and there was plenty of parking, at least to handle our group.

  • Woolaroc Astronomy Day and Star Party August 18: Starts at 1 pm, setup before then, we will start packing up by 9 pm to be out by 10 pm. Collected additional names of club participants who will get free entry plus the pizza dinner before the evening star party.

    • Daryl Doughty is out right now for knee surgery.

    • Next meeting Sept. 6 in downstairs meeting room C.

Abby’s astronomy news highlights:

    • NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has begun its search for planets around stars within 300 light-years of the Sun.

    • Neptune Viewed By MUSE: The Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) has achieved the first light with a new adaptive optics mode called laser tomography and captured super-sharp images of Neptune and other objects.

    • In summer 2018 Mars and Saturn are, one after the other, in opposition to Earth. Around the time of opposition, a planet is at its closest distance to Earth for a given year. Because of the close proximity, a planet also appears brightest in the sky. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope took advantage of this preferred configuration and imaged both Mars and Saturn to continue its observation of the outer planets in our Solar System.

    • Mars polar ice cap has liquid water

    • Botswana Meteorite: We have swarms of scientists searching the skies for space oddities, but it’s rare that they actually find one in the act of plunging to Earth. Botswana Meteorite: We have swarms of scientists searching the skies for space oddities, but it’s rare that they actually find one in the act of plunging to Earth. On June 23, a group of international geoscientists discovered a meteorite in Botswana that had been dwelling in space just weeks earlier. The fresh fragment broke off of asteroid 2018 LA as it plummeted to Earth on June 2, turning into a fiery meteor and exploding as it entered our atmosphere.

    • Binary Asteroid 2018 YE5: New observations by NASA’s Goldstone Solar System Radar in California, Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico and Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia have revealed that the recently-discovered near-Earth asteroid 2017 YE5 is actually two objects -- each about 3,000 feet (900 m) in size -- orbiting each other

Main presentation—Evan Zorn on Voyager:

    • He brought with him an excellent book on Voyager he checked out of the library, Journeys of Voyager by Robin Kerrod. He also brought a DVD from 2017 that runs 1 hr 40 min (longer than we could show during Club meeting).

    • He did show an excellent DVD on Voyager, 40 years of discovery.

    • Project work started 1972.

    • Voyager I launched Sept 5, 1977; Voyager II August 20 1977.

    • Voyager is the size of a small school bus. Didn’t have solar panels; runs on plutonium.

    • Voyager initially targeted to observe Jupiter and Saturn, to be reached using the forces of gravity assist; Uranus and Neptune were “bonus” observations!

    • Voyager observed 9 volcanoes on Jupiter and went up to 300 km into its atmosphere.

    • Voyager discovered 2 new rings on Saturn.

    • Voyager’s flyby of Neptune came off within 1 second of when it was planned. Considering the distance involved, that was incredible!

    • Voyager photographed a hurricane on Neptune the size of Earth.

    • In 1990 a photo was taken looking at the solar system. At first there was a stray pixel—dust maybe? On further examination, it turned out to be Earth!

    • Voyager II is now traveling 35,000 miles/hr toward Sagittarius. In some 6100 years it will pass beyond the Oort Cloud.

    • Voyager I is heading toward star AC+79 3888, 17.6 light years from Earth, at 35,000 miles/hour. In 2013 it crossed the heliosphere into interstellar space. In 5600 years it will exit the Oort Cloud.