Jan 2018

Financials:

Beginning balance Dec. 1 2017 $2648.31

1 new member and renewals $276.75.

$70.00 donation in memory of Steve Plank. She gave tax receipts to the donors.

Ending balance Dec. 31 2017 $2995.06.

Steve Plank, former President and member of the Club since 2009, passed away December 8. The Club grew significantly during his presidency and the Bartian Youth Astronomers was launched. Steve was the organizer of most of our star parties and activities and he will be greatly missed.

Rick said that the youth astronomy group likes to have a stargazing event once a month, and the adult BAS group could be included! We discussed trying to schedule these. Of course, weather is a factor. One idea was brought up to plan to do one, say, on the Friday night after each adult BAS meeting. (By Friday we would hope to have a good idea of what the weather would be.) Rick said that for youth groups, bathroom facilities are essential. Bob Young said we might be able to have star

parties at his Lutheran church in Park Hill; we did have an event there a couple years ago and visibility was good. The church does have weeks when they host Family Promise for homeless families, but we could perhaps work around that.

Tulsa Central Library event put on by Sidewalk Astronomy: March 5-9. We have been invited to participate again this year. We decided on participating March 6. This will be an evening event to which we will bring telescopes and have hands-on craft activities for youth, aged anywhere from pre-school through high school senior. Last year (we participated last year) there were 60-80 youth. Each child has a caretaker. Total attendance would be 200-250 people. We discussed bringing or making star wheels and making comet necklaces, which we did at a school event in Bartlesville last year. Denise has the instructions for making the necklaces; we would need to buy supplies and do prep in advance.

Will schedule board meeting soon.

Bartian Youth Astronomers year in review by Rick:

1 2/3 years old!

Open to youth age 7 through high school. Now have active members age 7 through 16; average age about 10. Between half and 2/3 of the youth are home-schooled.

Attendees don’t have to join but membership lets you attend BAS Star Parties and earn Astronomical League and Bartian Youth Astronomers Awards.

In the last year—11 monthly get-togethers, 22+ avg. attendance, 38 highest attendance. 31 presentations by 10 people, half of them youth. 5 arts/crafts/creative activities meetings and 4 workshops and special activities. And one Solar Eclipse tour!

Comparison 2016 to 2017:

8>>11 monthly get-togethers

16+>> 22+ avg. attendance

21>>38 highest attendance

16>>31 presentations

10>>15 youth presentations

1>>5 arts/crafts/creative activities meetings

1>>4 workshops/special activities

0>>1 Solar Eclipse tour

4>>0 Transit Parties (Mercury, ISS)

Of special note: the average attendance in 2017 was greater than the highest attendance in 2016!

Meeting topics rotate between science and technology; observational astronomy; creativity; and workshops.

Many of the presentations are done to help fulfill requirements for awards. To get an award, must complete a worksheet and/or demonstrate ability to complete an activity without assistance.

Some of the special activities in 2017 included making solar filters and red flashlights and attending the High Frontier Rocket Launch.

Have also started a “Constellation of the Month” program.

Rick has been working on this program pretty intensely for the last couple of years, doing the initial planning and preparation and then launching it and driving it forward. He has been spending over 20 hours a week on it. Over the next six months or so he is going to want to start transitioning some of the work that he does to others, including youth leaders—we already have Abby and Derek as group leaders—and to some of the youth parents; Christie, Rick the second and LaShawn have already been active parents in the club.

Abby’s astronomical news highlights:

Images of Crescent Nebula; Orion Nebula; Saturn Great Northern Storm; artist’s conception of the most distant supernova black hole ever discovered, in a quasar formed just 690 million years after the Big Bang; radar images of the near-Earth asteroid 3200 Phaethon

Main Program—Derek Herrman on Binocular Observation

Advantages of binoculars over telescopes: lightweight, portable, easy to set up and use, have a wide field of view—and provide a right-side-up image. Also, viewing with both eyes increases contrast and color perception by up to 40%. (Derek had images that proved this!)

Objects that lend themselves to viewing with binoculars include double stars, star clusters, nebulae, Jupiter (Derek showed an image taken through binoculars that included 4 of Jupiter’s moons) and the Moon. Derek said that the Moon in particular lends itself well to viewing through binoculars; the shadows of mountain valleys and craters can show up better in binoculars over a more-powerful telescope. Good objects to view in winter include M37, M39, µ Cephei, M42, the double cluster of Perseus and M31. With a good pair of binoculars on a dark, clear night, you should be able to view hundreds of thousands of objects!

Binoculars have a number of components: objective lenses, prisms, eyepiece lenses, diopter focuser and a central focusing wheel.

Numbers such as 10 X 50 are used to describe binoculars. In a 10 X 50 example, 10 = magnification and 50 = diameter of objective.

Derek also reviewed the history of binocular development. Key developers:

Lippershey—objective lens

Galileo—eyepiece lens, concave

Porro—Porro prisms

Zeiss—applied Porro prisms

Daubresse—roof prisms

Leitz—applied roof prisms

Cierva—lens stabilization

Derek then went into more detail about prisms in binoculars. Prisms flip the image right side up. Porro prisms have two triangles of glass facing each other. Roof prisms have 2 wedge-shaped pieces of glass, the upper one heavier than the lower one. Abbe-Koenig roof prisms have 2 trapezoid glass pieces and Schmidt-Pechan prisms have 2 triangles facing each other with air in between.

10 X 50 binoculars are a good size for beginners. Porro prism binoculars are more common than roof prism binoculars. Derek reviewed various types of binoculars that you can buy. Roof-prism binoculars are lighter and more comfortable while Porro-prism binoculars are more affordable and have larger lenses.

Derek also reviewed how to care for binoculars.

Derek also discussed binocular stabilization—monopod, pan and tilt tripod and parallelogram tripod. He had several types of binoculars and tripods for us to look at.

He also discussed how to focus binoculars.

Two recommended books for binocular astronomy, which he brought to show us:

Touring the Universe through Binoculars by Philip S. Harrington and Binocular Highlights by Gary Seronik.