Feb 2019

Attendance: 25 people, including several guests.

Treasurer's Report:

Beginning balance January 1 $2,907.81

Received $355.00 in dues

Received $95.00 from BYA Silent Auction Jan. 26

Ending balance January 31 $3,357.81

Annual dues are due if not yet paid.

Email Notifications: If you didn't fill out a current email sheet for Derek last month so we can verify that we have current email addresses on file, do that now!

Committee Reports:

Astronomical League News--Kristi Herrman: No updates for this month.

BYA News--Rick Bryant:

The solar eclipse glasses sorting event on January 25-26 was successful! We sorted some 50,000 pairs of glasses and reduced to 10,700 which were good. It was good that we did this sorting when we did, as Astronomers Without Borders has to ship the good glasses out sooner than expected! Some silent auction items are still available for sale, including a telescope eyepiece. (Bidding will close tonight.) Items that were sold included two paintings.

The next BYA meeting will focus on constellation and lunar feature identification catchup, or if cloudy, have games for parents vs. kids!

Observing Program News--Rick Buck: Star party at Bolinger's Feb. 2: This didn't take place due to inclement weather. Another event will be scheduled, date TBD.

March 8 Evening at Tulsa Air and Space Museum Planetarium: Craig has been working on this event. It will take place 6-8 pm. Address is 3624 N 74th E Ave. Take 36th St N exit off US 75 and head east toward the airport, about 3 miles. It is across from Mohawk Park. The normal charge for such an event would be $250.00 but the Planetarium is scheduling this for us for FREE! There is seating for 100 people. The Planetarium is looking forward to hosting this for us--and putting their time into planning an interesting show--so we would like to have a good attendance.

St. John's School event: Rick Buck and Denise will work with the school on this.

Potential new event: Another evening at the Planetarium in conjunction with the Astronomy Club of Tulsa

Potential new event: Craig has been contacted by the Central Library in Tulsa, who would like us to participate in an event they are having June 17, 7-8:30 pm on "Space". Contact at the library is Tatiana Godinez. Craig took an informal poll to see who might be interested, and there was not a strong showing of hands.

Abby's astronomy news highlights:

She has received a silver coin carried on Apollo 14 to the Moon!

Video of Martian wind. Sounds just like home!

Uranus was slammed by an object twice the size of Earth

NASA had a big year in 2018 with several bold new missions to study various features of our Solar System, and one of the most exciting was the launch of the Parker Solar Probe which will study the Sun in more detail than has ever been possible before. The probe has already broken several records and proven that it’s capable of enduring the intensity of our star, and it’s starting out 2019 by adding another notch to its belt.

NASA's mission Touch the Sun just had a major milestone: The probe, which launched in August of last year, recently completed its first full orbit of the Sun on January 19th. It’s a feat that the spacecraft will repeat many times over the next several years, but completing the first full loop is obviously cause for celebration.

NASA's Juno snapped a picture of twin storms on Jupiter. Big storms here on Earth are capable of tearing down power lines and even toppling structures, but no weather pattern you’ve experienced this planet holds a candle to the colossal storms of Jupiter. The gas giant is well known for its incredible swirling vortexes that last centuries, and a new photo captured by NASA’s Juno spacecraft shows off a pair of the largest Jupiter storms getting very close. The image features Jupiter’s iconic Great Red Spot as well as a smaller but still massive storm called Oval BA, which has been going through a series of dramatic changes over the past couple of decades.

Earth's oldest rock is found on Moon! Houston, TX and Columbia, MD—January 24, 2019. Scientists discover what may be Earth’s oldest rock in a lunar sample returned by the Apollo 14 astronauts. The research about this possible relic from the Hadean Earth is published today in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

First lunar far side panorama shown from Chang'e-4 lander, which made a soft landing on January 2.

A meteor exploded mid-air over western Cuba on February 1. A sonic boom was heard. It shattered windows but no one was hurt. It was seen above Florida before it hit. The meteor exploded near the town of Viñales, in the Pinar del Río province, Friday, with witnesses reporting hearing two loud blasts as it disintegrated.

Total lunar eclipse party Jan. 20-21: A great success! Derek, John Blaesi, and Barry Selke showed beautiful images that they took of the eclipse in its various stages. Some of John's even showed stars, the "lunar corona" (coming from diffused light from ice crystals high in the atmosphere, as the moon emerged from totality) and two spectacular rings around the moon at the end.

ISS solar transit event January 28: It was clouded out, but we are grateful to John Blaesi for making his workshop available for it! Five people including John were there to see it, if it had happened, with telescopes with solar filters.

Main program: PixInsight Astrophotography--Rick Buck:

Astrophotography has been a very rewarding hobby for Rick. Rick credited Rick Bryant, John Grismore, John Blaesi, Daryl Doughty, Abby and other BAS/BYA members with fostering his interest in astrophotography. He also mentioned Jonathan Talbot, who taught the PixInsight class at the Okie-Tex Star Party last fall.

Rick's presentation slides are available for viewing here. His presentation covered the PixInsight user interface and examples of its functions and learning resources. Rick pointed out that this program is complementary to PhotoShop. It can catch errors, has Windows controls and has lots of functions and parameters which gives the user a great deal of flexibility, and you can experiment very easily with it. PhotoShop uses layers; PixInsight uses masks. You can combine images with PixInsight in different ways. PixInsight features photometric calibration and dark structure enhancing. As of now, the program costs $264 and once you have bought the product for yourself, you can use it on other computers you get later.

Next meeting March 4: Milky Way photography--John Blaesi