July 2022 Board Meeting Notes

BAS Board Meeting Minutes July 28, 2022

This meeting was held via Zoom. In attendance:

Craig Brockmeier

Rick Buck

Evan Zorn

Denise Gregg

John Blaesi

Not in attendance:

Duane Perkins

Rick Bryant

Daryl Doughty

Mike Woods

Library display for 2023:

Denise received a letter this week about volunteering to do a library display in 2023. Applications must be submitted by September 15. We discussed requesting first choice month May (since that tied so well into Sunfest this year in June), and second choice April. We can list a third choice but we decided not to put one. Same theme as this year. We will review this at Club meeting August 1 and then Denise will submit the form to the library.

MSRAL Tulsa June 9-11, 2023:

John Land with the Tulsa club has asked if we would like to participate in organizing MSRAL for next year. Likely event venues will be the Tulsa Air and Space Museum, the Jenks Planetarium and their observatory in Mounds. Craig will call John and say we would be interested in attending the initial planning sessions at least. We don’t know how many people typically attend MSRAL.

First Christian Church storage update:

Evan called Mike Bailey’s office before the meeting. He’s on vacation and will be back next week. Evan spoke with his assistant, Elaine, who will ask Mike to call Evan next week. Elaine said that Mike met with their consultant July 6, but no decision was made on the FCC at that time. Nothing has changed so far. They plan to have another meeting to discuss this, but a date has not yet been set.

What to do with our Club telescopes and other equipment in our two storage rooms:

John Blaesi said that the Bartlesville History Museum can keep our historical (paper) records, and we can have access to them. We could also donate our Club historical telescope to the museum.

John also said that the Oklahoma City club will take any telescope equipment that we would like to donate to them, and would send a truck to come get it! We also discussed donating equipment to people in town. Denise mentioned that donating to the Oklahoma City club might be a good idea, as the equipment in our storage room is older, and if we donated to the Oklahoma City club, we wouldn’t get calls from people in town here reporting problems with equipment.

Some things we still need to have room for in storage, such as our banners, equipment used at Sunfest, and active loaner telescopes.

Denise recapped that she contacted Acorn Storage recently and they don’t do tours. Larger air-conditioned units, when they become available, are typically rented within a couple of days.

Girl Scout event at Camp Wah-Shah-She Sunday, July 31:

Hopefully we can do things outside. Rick Buck and Evan won’t be able to participate because of scheduling conflicts, and John Blaesi has concerns with rising COVID cases. Denise also has those concerns and doesn’t want to participate if the event will be held indoors. We will participate from 8:30-10 p.m. Some of the Scouts participating will be elementary-school age and some will be older. It will be more of a learning- about-telescopes event rather than an observing event since it is still summer and observing begins later in the evening. Denise will supply the Club laminated sheets about different types of telescopes and mounts and print five copies of the August star chart.

Woolaroc event in the fall:

We discussed doing it on October 1, the fall Astronomy Day. Will review with the Club at our meeting on Monday.

Night Sky Network request a speaker for free:

We can invite OWU through Brian Turner, and the Tulsa Club to participate.

First choice will be October, second November, at our Club meeting. Start at 7 p.m., present till 7:45, then time for Q and A—an hour total. The NSN offers presentations on a variety of topics. We discussed asking for one of two types of presentations:

· A presentation combining their topics of Solar System Astronomy and Exoplanets and Exoplanet Formation into one on our own solar system, and is their life out there?

· Large Scale Structure of the Universe—but with an emphasis on Cosmology

BYA update: Craig reported that Rick Bryant intends to do a “reset” of the youth group in September. He won’t plan a meeting in August, but he will start afresh in September. Few have been attending meetings since COVID, some have started college or moved away, so he would like to make a new start for the Club.

Club visit to the TASM:

Craig will talk to them about doing something maybe next January or February, after the Christmas holidays. Denise mentioned that unless we start getting better attendance at Club meetings, it may be hard to get enough people to attend something at the TASM.

Tri County Tech:

We had a star party at Tri County Tech July 9. We discovered that east area parking lot, where we were, is much more lit than it used to be. The lights went off at 11 pm but they went back on soon—they seem to be motion-activated. One advantage of Tri County is we can stay past 11 p.m. (unlike city parks). We can ask them if they can arrange for the lights to be turned off.