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Bartlesville Astronomical Society Meeting Minutes
September 14, 2020
Thanks to Denise Gregg and Evan Zorn for Zoom setup, and thanks to everyone for their participation tonight! And thanks to John Blaesi for setting up the Zoom meetings these past few months!
11 people in attendance including one guest, Ron! Welcome Ron!
Announcements:
Library still unavailable for meetings, and this will likely continue through December. We will continue to have meetings via Zoom, probably through December and possibly into next year.
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 Gregg - Approved
Treasurer’s Report - Evan Zorn:
Ending balance July 31, 2020: $3993.76
Add donation received from Amazon Smile $60.50
Paid two checks to John Blaesi for $108.41 for Zoom meetings and 2 telescope eyepieces.
Ending balance August 31, 2020: $3945.85
Evan encouraged everyone to use the Amazon Smile website to order from Amazon. It’s just like Amazon except ½ percent of purchase price gets donated to the Club if you specify the Bartlesville Astronomical Society to receive donations from Amazon on the Amazon Smile website.
Volunteer grants: Awaiting payment on 3 volunteer grants from COP.
Committee Reports:
Astronomical League news and activities - Rick Buck—he was not in attendance
International Observe the Moon Night / Astronomy Day - September 26
https://moon.nasa.gov/observe-the-moon-night/
Big Astronomy Planetarium show from the Night Sky Network will debut September 26
https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm
Does everyone get emails from the NSN? (Members should be getting emails.)
Youth club (BYA) news - Rick Bryant—He was not in attendance. Karen did speak with him recently (as part of doing Club member survey) and she reported that Rick has been doing star parties at Our Savior Lutheran for small groups of people at a time, and these have worked well. He also said that three youth have qualified for the Sky Puppy award!
Library Display – Update: Rescheduled for April 2021. If you need anything from the storage room at First Christian Church in the meantime, let Craig know.
Will Abby be around next year? If not, we need a coordinator. Denise has volunteered to fill in, at least for the time being; she has received written confirmation that we have the large display case for April 2021.
Old Business:
We now have a debit card for the Club from Arvest bank—thanks Evan!
We now have a Club Zoom account, paid for a year. Thanks to Evan and Denise for setting this up!
We now have a P.O. box downtown! Thanks to Evan, Craig and Denise for setting this up. Contact Denise at bvilleastro+secretary@gmail.com to get the address, so that we are aware of who is sending to that address.
We now have a Club PayPal account—thanks Evan!
Evan is also working on a Venmo account.
We now have a Club loaner telescope, a Celestron Starsense DX 102AZ, which is a 4-inch refractor. Thanks to Craig for researching and ordering this! Craig gave a quick report on the “First Light” testing of the scope and did a live demo during virtual Braum’s for as much as we could see, considering there was quite a bit of cloud cover. We were able to get good views of Jupiter (with three moons) and Saturn, as well as M7 and a couple sets of double stars. Craig demonstrated how this telescope works with an iPhone using plate-solving to locate objects, and how easy it is to find them.
We now have a newsletter Google Group emailing list. Thanks to Denise for setting this up, and to Mike for managing the newsletter distribution list for all these years past!
New Business:
Need Astronomical League coordinator to replace Kristi Herrman; Rick Buck is filling in
Need web wizard and social media wrangler to replace Derek Herrman; Denise Gregg is filling in. Thanks to Denise for writing a manual/cookbook for web administration!
We especially need someone with Facebook and Twitter skills. Karen has put an interim message on the Club Facebook page to refer people to our website—thanks, Karen!
Board meeting: Need candidates for office for 2021. Craig proposed that current officers plan to continue for the coming year. If anyone would like to volunteer to be a Club officer, tell Craig.
Club Survey - John Grismore. John reported that Evan, John Blaesi, Karen and Denise volunteered to conduct surveys—thanks to all of them, and to John G and John B for putting together the survey. Six surveys not yet in; John G will try to get those soon and then report on survey results.
John Blaesi working with Nick at Osage Hills State Park:
He and John Grismore started meeting with Nick and Kyle at the park last year. There has been a lot of interest from visitors to the park who wanted to see meteor showers and Comet Neowise.
John has put together a fabulous trifold brochure with a map of Osage Hills night-sky viewing sites; QR codes to assist visitors in viewing the night sky; and the QR code for our Club.
He is also working on a design for signs to be displayed at several points in the Park, highlighting areas with fewer trees that lend themselves to night-sky viewing. The signs will also feature QR codes and a diagram of constellations around the North Star.
For the future:
A telescope loaner program? Right now, Osage Hills loans out binoculars and backpacks.
Loaning out planispheres and star charts?
Osage Hills is also looking into making more parking available, and installing timers to turn off lights at night in areas that would lend themselves to night-sky viewing.
The Civilian Conservation Corps camp is the darkest place at Osage Hills; they may build a road to that area of the park.
Astronomical League quarterly reports: We now have the ability to list more than one email address per membership. In addition, we can set it up that all email addresses listed per membership can get an email with a digital link to the Reflector. We will discuss this more when we pay dues in November.
General Astronomy News and Events:
International Observe the Moon Night - Saturday, Sept 26. http://moon.nasa.gov
Astronomy News - Abby Bollenbach: Abby was not present tonight, but she is making presentations for Astronomy magazine!! Latest one is on Flat Earth - View at http://astronomy.com Click on Videos to view.
Upcoming astronomical events:
Autumnal equinox, which is a good time to view Messier objects.
Club Events:
Star parties: Rick Buck
Star Party for Dewey School - TBA
St. Lukes - TBA
Wayside school - TBA
International Observe the Moon Night/Astronomy Day virtual event Saturday, Sept. 26 - John Blaesi has proposed a virtual star party, focusing on the Moon, at 9 pm.
Tonight’s Program: Circumpolar Navigation and International Observe the Moon - John Grismore and Bob Young
John showed a very interesting video he made highlighting the circumpolar constellations—the ones that rotate around the North Star and don’t set below the horizon—as seen from the equator all the way up to the North Pole. The circle of circumpolar constellations grows as you move toward the North Pole, where it then encompasses the entire sky. He showed how large the circle was in Alaska, for example, as compared to Honolulu, where the circle is very small.
John showed some of the first astrophotography images Bob Young took of the Moon in April 2004, and some lunar images that John Grismore and Craig have taken more recently. These highlighted the lunar X and V and the Golden Handle, as seen along the lunar terminator.
There is the possibility that we could have some interesting distance Zoom presentations for future meetings; for example, we might be able to get someone from the Arkansas Natural Sky Association to speak, or someone from the Cosmosphere. To do this, we would need to guarantee 15-20 people minimum who would attend these meetings!
We could also show Night Sky Network previously-recorded webcasts at meetings.
Several people have contacted the Club recently about dark-sky sites in our area of Oklahoma.
Adjournment:
Next meeting - October 5
Upcoming program to be determined
Volunteers needed for upcoming meetings - Bob Young – thanks!
Ice cream at virtual Braum’s!!!
Motion to adjourn
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