March 2020 Meeting Notes

BAS Minutes March 2, 2020

13 members in attendance, no visitors

Financials:

Beginning balance Feb. 1: $3310.66

+ $240.00 in dues

+ $127.65 contribution. This came from the BYA from proceeds from a Pampered Chef party they had.

Ending balance Feb. 29: $3678.31

Dues are due. We make our annual membership report to the Astronomical League on March 15. If you have not yet paid, please see Evan as soon as possible.

Minutes of previous meeting are posted online by Denise Gregg were approved.

About 45-50 people attended the premiere of Abby’s planetarium show on the CassiniHuygens mission, “From Earth to Saturn”, on Feb. 18 at the Jenks Planetarium. About 17 BAS/BYA members and their families attended the event. The planetarium show was well received, and afterward some of the BAS/BYA contingent had dinner at Los Cabos in Jenks.

Committee Reports:

Astronomical League news and activities - Kristi. Kristi was not in attendance this evening; she sends us news in advance if there are any new items and there weren’t any for this month. Craig did remind everyone that the Astronomics Sketching Award deadline is March 31—youth preparing artwork for the library display may wish to enter this contest.

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

Library Display - Abby. Abby was not in attendance so Craig filled in. The planning team met Feb. 22 at Eggbert’s. The trial run setup is March 14 at noon at Our Savior Lutheran. Please bring to that meeting any physical items you would like to place in the display. Please put your name and phone number on them so we can make sure they are returned to you after the display is over. Plan to take them home with you on March 14 and bring them back on April 1 when we set up the display in the library. Lashawn is preparing a video loop with pictures submitted to her. We are also laminating individual pictures. Craig is working on banners. If you have any more pictures to submit, please send them to Lashawn as soon as possible. The youth have prepared artwork for the exhibit; Craig mentioned Gianna’s “rose” 3-D artwork of the Rose Nebula that she brought to Eggbert’s.

Old Business:

Letterhead and name badges - Rick Bryant. We took a vote on the designs that Rick has proposed for a name badge. The one we voted for was the third one down on the left- hand side of a selection of designs that he proposed. (A printout of the proposed designs was passed around at the December BAS meeting, and Denise had also sent these to the Board.) This design features Bartlesville Astronomical Society and Bartlesville Youth Astronomers at the top in blue, and a pale gray buffalo with light blue Milky Way and stars underneath. It was pointed out that by writing your name on top of the buffalo, it would help to cement the buffalo logo for people looking at your name badge!

New Business:

Need Astronomical League coordinator - Kristi

Need web wizard and social media wrangler - Derek

Derek will be leaving this summer to attend college. Kristi is not able to be our Astronomical Coordinator much longer. We need Club members to volunteer to assume both of these positions. (Kristi has also been Derek’s backup.) Derek will not be around very long now to train a new person—the sooner someone can volunteer, the better!

Astronomy News and Events:

Gary Nealis with our Club is giving an excellent OLLI course on NASA that began Feb. 11 and is running for 6 weeks. Takes place on Tuesdays from 1-3 p.m.

Astronomy News – In Abby’s absence, Craig discussed Earth’s new moon! It’s a small asteroid called 2020 CD3 and is estimated to be about the size of a small car. It will probably be in Earth orbit another couple of weeks.

Apollo 13 50th Anniversary celebration April 4 at the Cosmosphere--registration sold out in just a few minutes on February 24. Denise received the Cosmosphere’s Apollo 13 kit of information that she ordered recently. It describes an exhibit for which there is a charge, and which would be more suited to a museum than to our Club.

Member photos: Daryl did a presentation on “Adventures in H-Alpha Photography”. Daryl recently got a new 12nm H (hydrogen)-Alpha filter for his camera. It fits inside where the lens is mounted in his camera. His cost about $190; the narrower the bandwith of this type of filter that you buy, the higher the price. A filter with bandwidth 3nm would probably cost around $500-600. Images taken through this filter bring out red colors. He showed us an image taken of the Moon and the Horsehead Nebula. He also showed an image of the Horsehead Nebula taken last December without the new filter, and another of the image of the Horsehead Nebula taken last December overlaid with the one taken recently with the new filter. He also showed images taken with the new filter of M42 in Orion, and Orion’s belt and sword.

Upcoming astronomical events:

MSRAL - Tulsa June 12-14 - http://msral.org to register. This year there will be a special convention-within-a-convention for youth; Abby is involved in organizing this.

Club Events:

Star parties: Rick Buck. Rick was not in attendance but Craig filled in.

Do we want to do a summer solstice event on June 20? The consensus was yes.

Star Party for Dewey School - TBA

St. Lukes - TBA

Wayside school – Feb. 15 was clouded out so Rick Buck has rescheduled for March 27. Abby gave her presentation on winter constellations to 100+ fifth graders from Wayside on Feb. 14, in anticipation of having the star party Feb. 15. Her presentation was very well received and the students asked lots of good questions. She anticipates that attendance at the rescheduled star party will be high. Rick Buck will bring two telescopes but we probably need 5-6 more scopes, and volunteers to help out.

Betelgeuse dimming—now starting to get brighter again!

Zodiacal light hunt - John Blaesi. Denise was in favor of doing this; will see if more people indicate interest to John. Will need a dark site with good visibility to the west for viewing around the spring equinox.

Sunfest - May 29-31 – Save the date. Denise will bring sign-up sheets to the April meeting.

Allen Staib and Bruce McMath with the Arkansas Natural Sky Association will be attending MSRAL in Tulsa. John Grismore has offered to see if either or both of them would be interested in coming to speak to our Club. The group present were in favor of doing this.

Tonight’s Program: Corporate Volunteer Grants - John Blaesi. John presented on volunteer grants and matching donation programs for ConocoPhillips and Phillips 66 as it applies to both current employees and retirees. (He said that this presentation was not designed to give financial or tax advice; just describe the various programs for informational purposes.) There are volunteer grant programs with ConocoPhillips and Phillips 66 for both individuals and teams, and matching-donation programs for individuals. Here is a link to the presentation that Denise has posted:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sViiS8q1gsPcX5pCHoRbzn7ZVqPenzqN/view

John said that if you work for another company or are retired from another company, check into what they may have. John encourages everyone to look at the presentation and see how it might apply to you.

John said that it’s possible that, as far as ConocoPhillips and Phillips 66 volunteer grants go, tracking volunteer hours by individuals may work out better than tracking by teams, but this still remains to be seen, as we’re working on the library display now and Sunfest is coming up.

If you are doing volunteer work for the Club, start tracking your hours, such as making a note in your calendar of what you did and when you did it, i.e. volunteered for Sunfest 12-2 pm on May 30. Some behind-the-scenes work also qualifies for volunteer grants; see the presentation. If there would ever be an audit of grants that we have received, individual records of hours worked could be looked at.

John also discussed Amazon Smile. This is a program whereby Amazon donates 0.5% of the purchase price of eligible products to the charitable organization of your choice, and the Bartlesville Astronomical Society is registered. Evan reported that the Club is already receiving money through purchases on Amazon Smile.

Next meeting - April 6. Program will be Native American Moons by Betty Keim with the Bartlesville History Museum

Volunteers needed for upcoming meetings – see Bob Young

Ice cream at Braum’s!!!