June 2020 Meeting Notes

Bartlesville Astronomical Society Members’ Zoom Meeting Minutes

June 1, 2020

15 people in attendance by Zoom

Thanks to John Blaesi, Betty Keim, John Grismore and others for setting up this Zoom meeting and testing it beforehand!

And thanks to everyone attending! (You may wish to mute yourself)

Minutes of previous meeting are posted online by Denise Gregg – Approved

Treasurer’s Report - Evan Zorn:

Ending balance February 29: $3,678.31.

$155.00 in dues deposited in March.

One check to Denise in March for printing for the library display $102.73 and for the Sunfest fee $20.00

Ending balance March 31: $3,730.58

$40.00 in dues deposited in April.

One check to LaShawn Bollenbach of $67.37 for Library display items.

One check to Abby B. of $46.24 for Library display items.

Ending balance April 30: $3,656.97

One deposit from Denise in May--$20.00 back to the Club as Sunfest cancelled and Denise had already been reimbursed.

No expenses in May.

Ending balance May 31: $3,676.97.

Library update on meetings in general from Craig:

• • The Library is still unavailable for meetings and we don’t know at this point if we will be able to have a Club meeting in July at the library.

  • Thanks go to John Grismore, John Blaesi, Mike Woods, and others for developing, writing, and sending out our new Shut-in Supplement as well as our regular newsletter

    • Abby’s planetarium show, “From Earth to Saturn”, will be shown at the Jenks Planetarium on June 8 at 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. Tickets are $5.00 and available in advance at

https://www.jenkscommunityed.com/class-calendar&a=view&class_id=2337

Cash will not be accepted at the door; debit cards will be accepted at the door.

Committee Reports:

• • Astronomical League news and activities - Rick Buck was not in attendance. Craig announced that there will be a regional AlCor virtual meeting on June 13.

  • Youth club (BYA) news - Rick Bryant was not in attendance.

  • Library Display – Update from Craig:

  • Trial setup at Our Savior church on March 14 went really well! Thanks!!!

  • Craig is trying to reschedule it with the Library for April 2021. The current exhibit on display will stay through July, and other groups have already booked the display cases through the end of the year.

  • The items that will be in the exhibit are in one of our storage rooms at the First Christian Church. If anyone needs to get anything of theirs out of the storage area, we can probably arrange that now.

  • Thanks to everyone who helped set up the display!

    • No other old business was discussed

    • New Business

  • Board meeting postponed

  • Need Astronomical League coordinator to replace Kristi Herrmann. Rick Buck, who is already Club Vice President and Observing Program Coordinator, is filling in. Need someone to step up to handle this position.

  • Need web wizard and social media wrangler to replace Derek. Denise Gregg, who is already Secretary and does some other functions for the Club, is filling in. Need someone to step up to handle this position. We especially need someone with Facebook and Twitter skills to do at least the social media wrangler part of Web Wizard, as Denise does not do Facebook and Twitter on her own. To help the Club with the Web Wizard position, Denise has written a comprehensive Web Wizard Manual that documents how to do everything that she has learned to date about being a Web Wizard.

    • Astronomy News and Events

  • Abby’s Astronomy News highlights:

  • Successful launch of SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft, named Endeavour, atop a Falcon 9 rocket on May 30 and subsequent docking with the ISS on May 31. The launch took place from Pad 39-A at the Kennedy Space Center, the same launch pad that was used by the Apollo missions to the Moon. This is the first U.S. manned launch since 2011, and the first on a commercially-built rocket.

  • There may be a future movie with Tom Cruise filmed in space, in conjunction with SpaceX and NASA

  • A massive, rotating disk galaxy that formed just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang has been discovered.

  • The Hubble Space Telescope celebrated its 30^th birthday on April 24! It has done some 1.4 million observations to date.

  • Comet Atlas has disintegrated but has two striking dust tails, as seen by the Hubble

  • With data from the Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey, (DECaLS), astronomers have discovered 335 new candidate strong lensing systems

  • Astronomers using NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) have detected pulsation patterns in the so-called Delta Scuti stars, a large group of pulsating stars of intermediate mass.

• • Member photos—no new member photos this evening

  • Upcoming astronomical events

  • MSRAL – Cancelled. Possibly rescheduled for June 4-7, 2021

  • Bright ISS pass tonight at 22:24, Magnitude -4.2, starting in NW near Gemini through Bootes

    • Club Events:

  • Sunfest – Cancelled. June 2021 Sunfest dates are June 4-6 (which overlaps with the proposed dates for MSRAL in Tulsa).

  • Star parties: Rick Buck

  • Do we want to do a summer solstice event on June 20? This was not discussed as Rick wasn’t in attendance.

  • We are keeping these events listed in our meeting agendas, even though we don’t know when we’ll be able to think about scheduling them:

    • Star Party for Dewey School - TBA

    • St. Lukes - TBA

    • Wayside school - TBA

      • Tonight’s Program: Native American Moons by Betty Keim with the Bartlesville History Museum

      • Betty taught school for many years and is now the Education Coordinator at the Bartlesville History Museum. She gave us a great presentation on Native American Moons. She drew on the illustrated stories from the book Thirteen Moons on Turtle’s Back, a Native American Year of Moons, by Joseph Bruchac ad Jonathan London, and illustrated by Thomas Locker. In addition to telling us the stories in this book—and showing us its illustrations—she also told us other names of all the different North American Moons as used by other tribes. Names of moons vary among tribes; this is partly due to their different geographic locations around the country, and the resulting differences in fauna, flora and climate.

      • There are 13 moons during the course of a year, which correspond to the 13 plates on a turtle’s back. The year is told on the turtle’s back by following the plates down the turtle’s left side, around up the right side, and then going down the center of the turtle’s back.

      • Next meeting - July 6. Upcoming program and meeting format to be determined

      • Volunteers needed for upcoming meetings - Bob Young