February 2021 Meeting Notes
Bartlesville Astronomical Society Meeting Minutes
February 1, 2021
• Opening and Welcome
• Thank you to Denise for Zoom setup
• 10 people were in attendance tonight, with no new visitors (apart from Danny MacDonald, our main speaker!)
• Announcements
• Library still unavailable for meetings. We will continue to have meetings via Zoom, through April at least
• Thanks to John Grismore, John Blaesi, Mike Woods, and others for the Shut-in Newsletter and our regular newsletter
• Minutes of previous meeting are posted online by Denise were approved
• Treasurer’s Report - Evan:
• Ending balance Dec. 31, 2020: $5041.94
• Check written to John Blaesi for purchase of a laser pointer for the Club, $26.11
• Ending balance January 31, 2021: $5015.83
• Dues are due for 2021 if you would like to pay!
• Volunteer hours for 2021 grants—keep track of your hours if you are eligible to apply for these, depending on the company you work for or are retired from
• Committee Reports
• Astronomical League news and activities – Denise: No new Astronomical League updates, but Denise reminded everyone that if you wish to apply for the special Jupiter-Saturn Conjunction Observing Challenge award, your application is due by February 21. (Denise sent an email with all details to Club members on December 20, 2020.)
• Youth club (BYA) news - Rick Bryant—Rick was not in attendance this evening. Andrew and Gianna received Sky Puppy awards – congratulations!! Listed in the December Reflector magazine.
• Library Display – Update: We are still on track for the library display in April. Setup will take place at the end of March. We should be notified around the middle of March on what date the current display will be taken down. We will need to practice good social distancing and use of masks when we do set it up—considering that we haven’t even had a meeting indoors in almost a year! We will need people to help transport the display items from the First Christian Church to the library, and to set up the display. We figure that just one person will be in a display case at a time during actual setup, in order to have proper social distancing . Abby has said that she will be able to help. Denise will schedule a Zoom meeting this month and invite all Club members who may be interested to participate. If you need anything from the storage room at First Christian Church in the meantime, let Craig know.
• Dark Sky committee - John Blaesi: We made sky quality measurements at OHSP in January, with readings 21.3 or better. Osage Hills will get a new Park Manager in February. We need volunteers to take dark sky measurements each month. Email bvilleastro+darksky@gmail.com if willing to help.
• New Business
• Need Astronomical League coordinator to replace Kristi; Denise is filling in.
• Need web wizard and social media wrangler to replace Derek; Denise is filling in.
• Denise has written a manual/cookbook for web administration - Thanks!
• Need someone with Facebook and Twitter skills
• Website migration from classic Google Sites to New Google Sites: Denise will begin work on this soon. If you would like to help with this, please contact Denise.
• Dues for 2021: We extended memberships until 2021 but will welcome dues if you would like to pay them!
• Adult $25
Student $10
Family $30 for 2, $40 for 3 or more
• Make checks payable to the Bartlesville Astronomical Society and mail them to:
• Bartlesville Astronomical Society
PO Box 302
Bartlesville, OK 74005
• Astronomy News and Events
• Astronomy News – Abby Bollenbach: Abby was not present this evening but she is continuing to make presentations for Astronomy magazine. Latest is “When Venus Turned Inside Out” - View at http://astronomy.com select the Videos tab
• Perseverance landing on Mars:
• February 18 2:30pm at Jezero Crater (west of the InSight lander)
• https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020 starting at 1:15
• Northern lights live display cam from Churchill, Manitoba, Canada: https://www.explore.org/livecams/aurora-borealis-northern-lights/northern-lights-cam
• Astronomy Club of Tulsa – next meeting is February 16 at 7:00. Meeting program is “You Can Almost Touch the Sky – Real-Time Spectroscopy” by Tom Field. Their club website is https://astrotulsa.com
• Cosmosphere: Apollo 13: Saying “Yes, And” to collaboration event took place virtually on January 21. This event featured NASA’s Gerry Griffin and a replay is online https://cosmo.org
• Kalamazoo Astronomical Society Zoom meetings - kasonline.org
• Their next meeting is on February 5. Program topic is “Truth is Stranger than (Science) Fiction” with Dr. Jessie Christiansen of CalTech as the featured speaker.
• February 6 is their next virtual viewing session using their 20” PlaneWave telescope in Arizona. This will be the last one until autumn.
• Introduction to Amateur Astronomy - 5 sessions, one every 2 weeks. These began on January 23, and their next session is on February 20. Need to register online at kasonline.org.
• Meteor showers: Not much until April - Lyrids
• AlCor 2021 August 4 in Albuquerque
• Club Events
• Star parties: Rick Buck
• Star Party for Dewey School - TBA
• St. Lukes - TBA
• Wayside school - TBA
• Osage Hills First Light - Next year!
• John Blaesi – report on recent events
• Jupiter Saturn Mercury - Jan 11
• Moon joins them in a line on Jan 14
• Uranus ceases retrograde motion Jan 14 (retro since mid-August) Mag 5.7
• Saw Uranus with binoculars at OHSP
• Moon Mars Uranus conjunction Jan 20.
• Observing reports
• On January 12 at Osage Hills State Park, the skies were incredibly dark.
• Our best measurement was 21.5 on SQM
• This measurement equates to magnitude 6.5 for naked-eye viewing.
• Those who went to Osage Hills saw 25-30 Messier objects. In M33 - could see arms! In the Rosette nebula, we could see some nebulosity in binoculars, something that is unusual to view when using binoculars. Could see the Uranus-Mars conjunction in the same binocular view.
• Events coming up:
• Vesta opposition the night of March 3 in Leo (actually at 6 a.m. on March 4). Magnitude 6.2? 99.8% illuminated, should be a good view in binoculars. It should also be visible the week prior. Is there any interest in observing at Osage Hills State Park?
• Member photos – Denise showed two recent images taken of Uranus
• Tonight’s Program: Get the Most Out of Stellarium by Danny MacDonald with the Oklahoma City Astronomy Club
• Danny gave an excellent presentation to our Club! Stellarium is a planetarium software program that Danny has been using for some years. It is free to download, open source, from stellarium.org. There is also a web and a mobile version. When you first download Stellarium, it may think your physical location is in Paris, France by default, so check it!
• Danny reviewed the basic setup of Stellarium, including how you use clicking, dragging and the spacebar to control it, and how you can customize it for yourself with multiple settings in the bottom, left-hand panels and top panels. There is a manual for Stellarium that you can use as a guide. It runs some 200 pages, so Danny doesn’t recommend printing it, but you can use it to look up various topics as you set it up and customize it for yourself.
• Danny has been a member of the Oklahoma City Astronomy Club since 2013. He began editing the Club’s newsletter in 2014 and now runs the Club’s live-stream events as well. He also runs the speaker presentations at Okie-Tex.
• The next Oklahoma City Astronomy Club meeting is February 12. A recent exoplanet discovery will be on the program.
• Next meeting - March 1 - Program by Robbin Jones with the Astronomy Club of Tulsa on Electronically Assisted Astronomy
• Volunteers needed for upcoming meetings – see Bob Young. Thanks!
• Motion to adjourn
• Ice cream at virtual Braum’s!