July 2021 Meeting Notes
Bartlesville Astronomical Society Meeting Minutes July 5, 2021
• Opening and Welcome
• Thank you to Denise Gregg for Zoom setup
• 12 in attendance this evening, including charter Club member Ronald and new visitor Sreeram whom we met at Osage Hills State Park
• Announcements
• Happy Aphelion Day!
• Earth farthest from the sun - 94,510,878 miles at 5:27pm
• Library still unavailable for meetings.
• We will continue to have meetings via Zoom until such time as the library is open in the evenings.
• They are currently allowing meetings of 10 or fewer people until library closes at 7:00
• Thanks to John Grismore, John Blaesi, Mike Woods, and others for the Shut-in Newsletter and our regular newsletter
• Minutes of previous meeting as posted online by Denise Gregg were approved
• Treasurer’s Report - Evan Zorn
• Beginning balance June 1, 2021: $4948.74
• Received $120.00 in dues
• Check to Craig for $361.14 for star diagonal for Club telescope and for digital photo frame used in library display
• Ending balance June 30, 2021: $4707.60
• Committee Reports
• Astronomical League news and activities - Denise Gregg:
• Denise and Craig attended the virtual MSRAL annual business meeting June 26. A new MSRAL website is being worked on. It was announced also that the astronomy club in St. Louis will host MSRAL next year.
• The annual Astronomical League virtual convention is August 19-21. Registration for the virtual convention is now open at the following link:
• https://www.alconvirtual.org/
• The convention is free and you can pay a small charge if you would like to get a pin. There will be virtual tours, professional and youth speakers, a Slooh presentation, all 2020 and 2021 youth and general award presentations, over $3,000 in door prizes donated by member clubs, the League business meeting, an international star party, and a keynote address by Dr. Jocelyn Bell Burnell, discoverer of pulsars. Also speaking are David Levy, David Eicher, and others.
• Youth club (BYA) news - Rick Bryant. Rick was not in attendance this evening. The BYA is taking a summer break and expects to start meeting again in August when school starts.
• Library Display: If you had items on display that you haven’t picked up yet, plan to pick them up at the First Christian Church at some point.
• Dark Sky committee - John Blaesi
• We made sky quality measurements July 2 and 3 at OHSP. A number of them were above 21.4 and one was 21.6!
• We had two measuring and observing sessions July 2 and 3. July 2 was exceptionally clear and we were able to view some objects naked-eye that typically are binoculars-only! The Milky Way was exceptional. That night we took a number of dark-sky measurements that were over 21.4. July 3 it wasn’t quite as clear but John Blaesi took one measurement at the park entrance after midnight that was 21.60!
• Need volunteers to take measurements ongoing
• 21.5 on SQM means magnitude 6.5 to naked eye
• bvilleastro+darksky@gmail.com
• New Business
• iPad to control new telescope? Trying to get a donation of an iPad.
• Need Astronomical League coordinator - Kristi Herrman. Denise Gregg is filling in
• Need web wizard and social media wrangler - Derek Herrman. Denise Gregg is filling in. Need someone with Facebook and Twitter skills
• Website migration from classic to new google sites is underway. John Grismore, Denise Gregg, and Craig are working on this
• Astronomy News and Events
• Astronomy News - Abby Bollenbach
• Abby is making presentations for Astronomy magazine. She’s been doing this for one year now!
• Latest are “What are Quasars?” and “The Science of Star Wars”
• View at http://astronomy.com select the Videos tab
• IDA - Capture the Dark contest
• Enter by July 23 - http://darksky.org
• Astronomy Club of Tulsa - July
• July 9 - Members only observing event at ACT observatory
• Also July 30
• They are working on restoring an observatory dome
• OKC Astronomy Club July 9 - in person meeting?
• Okie-Tex registration now open at http://www.okie-tex.com. October 1-9
• Cosmosphere
• Liberty Bell will not be heading to Sao Paulo, Brazil in the fall
• July 15 9:00 a.m. - Coffee at the Cosmo (view on their Facebook page)
• The Peril and Promise of Space Exploration: Celebrating the 60th Anniversary of Liberty Bell 7
• July 18 - 55th Anniversary of Gemini X
• July 20 - 52nd Anniversary of Apollo 11
• Celebrating the 60th Anniversary of Liberty Bell 7
• July 21 - 9:00 - 5:00 at the Cosmosphere
• Special Liberty Bell exhibit
• Free admission for current military members until Labor Day
• http://www.cosmo.org
• Kalamazoo Astronomical Society Zoom meetings - kasonline.org
• Meeting is July 9 - Gadget night - in-person event
• Astrophotography Special Interest group forming in September?
• Meteor showers
• Nothing of note - Delta Aquarids - July 28-29 - 10/hour
• Perseids - August 11-12 - 50/hour
• Upcoming astronomical events:
• Possibility of watching Jupiter’s moons eclipsing each other August 9 and/or 19 after sunset
• Possibility of going to Osage Hills to view Perseids
• Club Events
• Star parties: Rick Buck
• Star Party for Dewey School - TBA
• St. Lukes - TBA
• Wayside school - TBA
• Osage Hills First Light - Next year!
• Upcoming Club events:
• Do we want to have a Jupiter’s lunar eclipses star party on August 9 and 19?
• Member photos:
• New visitor Sreeram, whom Craig and Denise met July 2 at the Osage Hills tennis courts, showed stunning pictures of the Milky Way that he took at Osage Hills.
• Tonight’s Program: John Blaesi – “Dark Skies, Meteorites and Moon Shots”
• Osage Hills State Park:
• John recapped ongoing work at Osage Hills State Park toward dark-sky-park certification. The Park is dark sky Bortle class 3, and John Blaesi and John Grismore made a brochure for visitors to the park last year.
• We consistently measure dark skies at levels 21.2 and above at Osage Hills.
• Tim Hollenbaugh is the new Osage Hills park manager and Justin Copeland is assistant manager. Tim wants to review the IDA dark sky park application materials to make sure they still fit in with long-term Osage Hills park interests. We are still one-two years away from dark sky park certification.
• Official Park hours are 8 a.m.-10 p.m. If you will be there after 10 p.m., don’t travel around the park outside of our regular observing areas.
• All Club visitors should get an annual parking pass for their cars.
• If we want to have an event there, we’d need to contact the Park office to fill out a form, and possibly pay an event fee.
• New casinos planned for west of Bartlesville and in the Pawhuska area could possibly affect the darkness at Osage Hills.
• Jo Allyn Lowe Park Star Garden:
• John Blaesi and John Grismore are working on this with Lisa Beeman, who works with Bartlesville parks.
• John and John met with the Park Board in June and 8 people on the board all thought the idea of a star garden was a good one!
• If this is approved by the Park Board, we would use an already-mowed area in the park and we would want to install shields on entrance lights. Park maintenance doesn’t want to take on mowing more areas in the park than they are doing right now, and we would have to see how much light shields would cost. We would also make a path to the parking lot.
• The area that comprises Jo Allyn Lowe Park was deeded to the city of Bartlesville by the Price family. It was specified in the deed that no new structures would be built in the park. Because of the deed specifications, putting in an observatory isn’t an option. However, we might be able to put in a labyrinth and/or sundial!
• If we observe there, we need to notify the park if we intend to stay after 11 p.m.
• There is the possibility that in the future we might be able to get annual permits to stay at Jo Allyn Lowe after 11 p.m. If we do this, we might need to have name badges for Club members. We might need to also register our cars.
• Sooner Park has too many lights to really be used as a dark-sky observation area.
• The city is recommending use of dark-sky-amenable lighting in general, in areas where this is feasible. The city is trying to work on better lighting.
• Paragould Meteorite:
• John recently saw this in Fayetteville, Arkansas at the Arkansas Center for Space and Planetary Sciences.
• It measures 41 inches by 24 inches by 16 inches and weighs 820 pounds. It is classed as a stony iron meteorite. It fell to Earth about 4:08 a.m. on Feb. 17, 1930. At the time, it was the largest meteorite to fall in North America that was ever recovered. (Now, it’s the second-largest.) When it fell there were three sonic booms, resulting in three large meteorite chunks. The fireball it caused was seen as far away as Illinois and North Dakota!
• Strawberry Moons Forever: John showed us an image he took through a telescope of the June 24 Strawberry Moon and did post-processing on.
• Adjournment
• Next meeting - August 2
• TBD - Betty Keim interested in another meeting (in person or Zoom) this fall
• Volunteers needed for upcoming meetings - Bob Young
• Motion to adjourn