Feb 2018
Financials:
Beginning balance Jan. 1 $2995.06
2 members joined
Ending balance Jan 31. $3018.31
19 people at the meeting
A board meeting was held Jan. 18.
We discussed need to raise single adult member dues from 20.00/year to 25.00/year in order to accommodate needs for storage of equipment.
Effective date for dues change would be November 1, 2018.
We need to go through the scopes we have and the see what the cost of a storage facility unit would be.
Steve also has at least 7 Night Sky Network kits to store. The kits aren't all identical--perhaps the program at a future Club meeting would be to bring the kits and look at them.
Astronomy Night at Tulsa Central Library March 6:
Crafts--comet necklace and planet hat
Telescopes for viewing
Denise will send an email asking for volunteers to help.
Star parties:
Since Steve's passing, we need someone willing to coordinate star parties. Would like to set up quarterly star parties for members only and public star parties on an ad-hoc, occasional basis (when interesting things come up, like asteroids, transits, etc.) Karen will send out an email to see if anyone would like to volunteer for this.
Astronomy night at Woolaroc in August:
John Hand with the Tulsa Astronomy Club would like to plan an astronomy night at Woolaroc. He is targeting August 18. We could have stations at the visitors' center and then after-dark stargazing.
Derek will take over Steve's coordination on behalf of the Club with the Night Sky Network.
Abby's astronomy news highlights:
Orion Nebula and other nebulae
Ordovician fossils on Mars? NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has found intriguing structures on Mars that look like tiny, fossilized worm burrows — but mission team members aren't claiming that the finds are evidence of life.
Super blue blood moon eclipse
Sharpest image ever taken of the Cartwheel Galaxy, a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Sculptor.
Using a quasar microlensing technique, astronomers claim to have found a large population of unbound planets -- with masses ranging from Moon to Jupiter mass -- in the foreground galaxy of the strong lensing system RXJ 1131-1231.
Abby's site: youthbastro@gmail.com, password astronomy
Daryl's photography:
Image taken several years ago showing Orion, Pleiades, Taurus, Auriga, Gemini, Canis Major,
Image of Horsehead Flame Nebula taken with 90 3-minute exposures over several months and stacked. Used 600 mm focal length and 80 mm aperture.
Image of M42 Orion Nebula
Jan 28 moon before eclipse
Total (really couldn't see because of clouds, but total) lunar eclipse Jan 31. He took images beginning 5:40 am until 6:48 am (total by then, but disappearing into clouds).
Feb 5 5:20 am Saturn/Mars/Jupiter
Main presentation--Daryl Doughty on "So You Want to Go to Mars?"
His presentation was on the physics of interplanetary space travel.
Jules Verne, physicist in 1800's, wrote a book From the Earth to the Moon in 1865.
Daryl defined a number of laws, such as Newton's law of gravity, Newton's first, second and third laws of motion, the definition in physics of work to derive equations that would govern the calculations of how to get to Mars, considering that the Earth and Mars are in constant motion.
Newton's law of universal gravitation states that a particle attracts every other particle in the universe with a force which is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their centers
Newton's laws of motion are three physical laws that, together, laid the foundation for classical mechanics. They describe the relationship between a body and the forces acting upon it, and its motion in response to those forces. More precisely, the first law defines the force qualitatively, the second law offers a quantitative measure of the force, and the third asserts that a single isolated force doesn't exist. These three laws have been expressed in several ways, over nearly three centuries,[1] and can be summarised as follows:
First law:
Second law:
Third law:
In an inertial frame of reference, an object either remains at rest or continues to move at a constant velocity, unless acted upon by a force.[2][3]
In an inertial reference frame, the vector sum of the forces F on an object is equal to the mass m of that object multiplied by the acceleration a of the object: F = ma. (It is assumed here that the mass m is constant – see below.)
When one body exerts a force on a second body, the second body simultaneously exerts a force equal in magnitude and opposite in direction on the first body.
Work, in physics, is the measure of energy transfer that occurs when an object is moved over a distance by an external force at least part of which is applied in the direction of the displacement. He also defined escape velocity, the lowest velocity that a body must have in order to escape the gravitational attraction of a particular planet or another object. He drew diagrams positing the trajectory needed to reach Mars, taking the physical laws and diagrams he put forth into account.