November 2017

Meeting Notes for November 6, 2017

14 people in attendance

Financials:

Dues due now!

Beginning balance Oct. 1 $2278.31

8 renewals, $180.00

Ending balance Oct. 31 $2458.31

Election of officers for 2018: Incumbents were all re-elected.

President--Karen Cruce

Vice President--Evan Zorn

Treasurer--Vicky Travalgini

Secretary--Denise Gregg

ALCOR league correspondent for our club--Kristi Herman agreed to assume this duty from Karen. Thanks Kristi!!

This job includes sending to the Astronomical League a list of club members every quarter. Dues will also need to be paid once a year in the spring. From time to time she will receive emails from the League with news items that she can forward to the membership.

Report from Daryl on Cornerstone Classical Academy star party at Tri County Tech October 27:

6-7 BAS members were in attendance with 3-4 telescopes. Students attending were in grades K-5, and only about 1/3 to 1/2 of the anticipated number of students attended due to it being much colder than it had been. The attention span of the students was not great, but the parents enjoyed looking through the scopes! Saw Saturn and a number of star clusters.

Daryl’s presentation to Bartlesville high school STEM class(es): Will be on Planetary Navigation. Date of presentation will be some time January/February; working on that.

Daryl's current astronomical viewing updates for November:

  • Best galaxy for viewing--Andromeda M31. Good seen with a six-inch telescope.

  • Best star cluster--the Pleiades M45. An open star cluster. Good seen with 50mm + binoculars.

  • Conjunction--Venus and Jupiter before dawn Nov. 13, early morning. They will be 0.3 degrees apart. Good seen with a big pair of binoculars.

  • Leonid meteor shower--Best night is November 17 into 18; best time is in early hours of November 18. Constellation Leo comes up at midnight. The Leonids come from debris of the Temple-Tuttle comet.

  • Best constellation--Orion. Best seen with 50mm + binoculars or telescope. Look for the Orion Nebula, M42.

Daryl showed images of:

  • Pleiades Oct. 24 with a 2 1/2 minute exposure. Can see nebulosity.

  • Andromeda, taken Oct. 18-23. A beautiful, creamy-yellow stacked image. Can see two elliptical satellite galaxies; one of them has 200,000,000 + stars.

  • Two open star clusters side by side, the double cluster in Perseus, NGC 884 and NGC 869, 7000-8000 light years away.

  • Dark-sky tests--M33 east of Andromeda; try to see with naked eye. Also try to spot the Veil Nebula on the east side of Cygnus.

  • His cute, furry, cuddly-looking "pet" groundhog. The groundhog is busy preparing his (or her?) nest for winter. Daryl and his wife feed him apples. He will eat red ones outside but green Granny Smiths he takes into his den. The groundhog won't let them touch him but he does eat the food they bring him!

Abby's astronomy news highlights:

  • SpaceX is gearing up to launch its awesome Falcon Heavy rocket, described as "the most powerful rocket in the world by a factor of two."

  • Juno, the Jupiter orbiter that arrived at the massive planet in July of last year, sent to us a fantastic new image of Jupiter along with its two largest satellites, Io and Europa, all bathed in sunlight.

  • Honeycomb Nebula--two supernova combined

  • Image of asteroid 2012 TC4, a dot at the center of composite image of 37 individual 50-second exposures obtained with the FORS2 instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope in 2012.

  • On August 17, scientists detected gravitational waves from the collision between two neutron stars. Within 12 hours observatories had identified the source of the event within the lenticular galaxy NGC 4993, shown in an image from Hubble. The associated stellar flare, a kilonova, is clearly visible in the image. This is the first time the optical counterpart of a gravitational wave event was observed.

  • NGC 2623 in Cancer

  • The third-largest dwarf planet in the Kuyper belt, after Pluto and Aries. It rotates very fast (every 4 hours) and has at least 2 moons.

  • Google Maps is coming out with images of the solar system taken by Cassini. Venus, Mercury, Mars, Europa, Titan included.

  • ESA and NASA are studying hot spots at the poles of Jupiter. Each hot spot is larger than Earth!

  • Dark matter comprises 28% of the mass of the universe

  • For more info see the Pinterest site--youthbastro@gmail.com, password astronomy

Bob Young guided us through setting up programs for next year:

  • January--Derek, topic TBA

  • February--Abby, topic Cassini

  • March--Daryl, topic Planetary Navigation

  • April/May/June--still open. May try to get the lady in Tulsa who presented on meteors a year or two back; she is working on her dissertation now and could present from that

  • July--Evan, topic Voyager

  • August--Denise, topic meteor showers