December 2025 Board Meeting Notes

Bartlesville Astronomical Society

Board Meeting Notes December 16, 2025

In attendance:

Officers--

Evan Zorn

Denise Gregg

Luann Wright

At-large Board Members--

John Grismore

Craig Brockmeier

Previous past president--

John Blaesi

Financial review for financial year July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025:

Luann and Evan reviewed last year’s financial report.  Here is a summary:

Beginning balance July 1, 2024:  $15471.40

Income—

Dues (27 paid memberships) $690.00

Volunteer grants (ConocoPhillips) $1000.00

Donations $3133.17 (from Blackbaud; Benevity; Girl Scout donation for Girl Scout camp talk.  Donations from Blackbaud come from people donating through ConocoPhillips, Phillips 66 and Chevron Phillips). 

Donations from members $25.00

Truity interest $537.88

Total income $5386.05

Expenses—

Checks $1508.68

Electronic debits $2646.49

Total expenses $4155.17

Detail on expenses:

Checks—

Astronomical League dues $196.00 for 2024, check cleared July 1

Astronomical League dues $178.00 for 2025

Tulsa Air and Space Museum for planetarium show $200.00

Oklahoma Secretary of State $15.00 for annual state fee

Ron Carman $348.80 for travel reimbursement for speaking to us including hotel, meals and fuel

Other checks to Club members to reimburse for supplies got—

Denise for Sunfest 2024 fee, supplies, printing $165.96

Evan for pizza for library display setup 2024 $47.72

Denise for library display and Sunfest supplies, 2024 $147.50

Luann for trivia prizes for fun meeting, 2024 $45.12

John B for thank-you cards, 2024 $10.86

Denise for library display supplies 2025 $27.08

Denise for library display supplies 2025 $63.72

Pat for two HDMI cables 2025 $20.31

Denise for printing and supplies 2025 $42.61

Debit card--

Zoom annual cost 2024 $79.95

State Farm insurance 2024 $450.00

Post Office box 2024 $182.00

Tuxedo Storage 2025  $39.38

Rice Creek Storage 2025  $67.22

Rice Creek Storage 2025 $86.00

Rice Creek Storage 2025 $86.00

Sunfest booth 2025 $50.00

Flickr annual fee 2025 $51.09

Tri County Tech room rental fee 2025 $95.00

Simple Simon’s Pizza star party dinner 2024 $65.66

Staples thumb drive 2025 $19.59

Staples printing for library display 2025 $278.78

Amazon leveler for SeeStar 2025 $38.98

B&H Photo, SeeStar 2025 $597.86

Home Depot storage shelves 2025 $151.37

Home Depot storage shelf wheels 2025 $35.92

Amazon camera for meetings 2025 $166.56

Amazon tripod and remote 2025 $105.13

Luann has started an Excel “checkbook” for the current fiscal year, beginning July 2025.

Revenue less expenses:  $1230.88

Ending balance June 30, 2025:  $16697.28

Quarterly rotation of hosting meetings (normally handled by Club President)

Evan will do January

Luann will do February, March and April

Denise will do May, June and July

Standard meeting agenda—this can be passed around to whomever is the host

2026 programs, long (main), and short (10-minute astronomy)

Right now, we don’t have a lot of volunteers for either long programs or 10-minute astronomy.

10-minute astronomy: 

Luann has volunteered to do something for February, topic TBA.

Denise pointed out that we don’t “have” to have 10-minute astronomy at our meetings, as we don’t have a lot of volunteers to do this.  We discussed having a 10-minute “sharing time” where people could present or talk about anything interesting that they had seen or studied recently.  We can still mention at meetings our list of possible topics for 10-minute astronomy, to encourage people to do this, but we won’t try to “force” anyone to do it. 

Craig mentioned the idea of doing Club book reports.

Main meetings:

February—Evan has arranged for Brad Young, the observing chair at the Tulsa club, to be our speaker.  Brad is on a 10-year-plus quest to observe and sketch every NGC object, including those in the Southern Hemisphere.  Evan has invited Brad to dinner that night.

March—Denise offered to present on Atmospheric and Optical Phenomena.  She’d  mentioned this at one of our recent meetings, when we didn’t have things lined up for 2026, as she had this ready to go, and we were in need of speakers.  Denise mentioned that March would be a good time to do this since winter is still in progress, and some phenomena tend to be viewed in winter; also, solar and lunar pollen coronae tend to happen at this time of year.  Evan asked Denise for a list of the topics she covers in this presentation and the number of slides and since she was attending this meeting via Zoom, she was able to give this (two dozen topics, 174 slides).  Evan did not want her to present this at our March meeting.  He wanted to find out if Club members would want to see this presentation first, and schedule it (if they wanted to see it) for May.  Evan also mentioned that Denise had presented several times recently and he didn’t want her to present again so soon after previous presentations.  Denise was quite taken aback—she’d never heard of anyone offering to speak on a topic to our Club that wasn’t gratefully accepted, and she’d been photographing these phenomena for years.  Denise said she could remove some things, such as mirages, that really didn’t have an astronomical aspect to them (although they do come from refracted light), and remove multiple pictures of the same phenomena, but Evan still wants to review this at a Club meeting before Denise presents it.  Luann asked if this presentation could be divided into several and Denise said, not really!  Denise also said that it is hard to get speakers for our Club—another reason she was very much surprised.

As of now, we do not have a presentation scheduled for our March meeting.

Denise mentioned that Fran Stallings told her that she could present again (with advance notice).

Denise also mentioned possibly seeing if Dan Bush, who posts frequently on spaceweather.com, might be interested in presenting, but he might expect to receive a payment for a presentation.  We decided to defer this until later.

Ideas for structured events like Woolaroc: 

When we have a number of optical telescopes for viewing—as we had recently at Woolaroc—Evan suggested designating telescopes in advance to look at particular astronomical objects, such as Andromeda, the Moon, Saturn, any visible comet, etc.  (Evan said that at Woolaroc, there were four telescopes on the Moon, and one on Saturn.)  We could make up small signs to put up next to the telescopes saying what a particular telescope would be looking at, such as the Andromeda galaxy, planets, etc.  One person at our meeting said that if the photographs on signs came from (say) the Hubble Telescope, people might be disappointed to see a much smaller object or fuzzball in a scope!  John G said we have tended to “go with the flow” at star parties, and not try to designate particular telescopes to look at particular objects in advance.  Denise mentioned that weather can also play a part—if a cloud covers something, then you can’t look at it!

Luann said she would work on some laminated signs that we could put next to telescopes.

We also discussed that if we have an evening event for Woolaroc members again, that we do a very brief presentation indoors first, to tell about our Club, what we might be looking at tonight, etc., before people go outside to look through the telescopes.  We talked about what Craig did at one event at Camp Wah-Shah-She when it was cloudy—he put up pictures of objects on the walls in their meeting room, and used telescopes set up by the opposite walls to look at them!  It was mentioned that the Girl Scouts now charge $150.00 for a star party, but Craig said that could also possibly depend on who you talk to…someone who has worked with us before, or someone who is new to us!

Quick setup sign - corrugated A-Frame or Flag type? 

This is still a work in progress.  Craig will go to the Print Shop and Staples with our latest designs and price them out.

Night Sky Network annual pins:

They aren’t mailing these to us for free anymore.  We decided to order 5 pins at $5.00 each and Luann will order them (since she has the Club credit card).  Evan mentioned giving these to people who (for example) logged into our NSN website, but Craig said these are given out more to recognize accomplishments—he had received one a few years ago for working hard on the MSRAL by-laws.

Solar system poster for library display:

The poster Denise had downloaded from the Night Sky Network didn’t have enough pixel strength to enlarge well.  Craig is working on one now.  He brought prototypes with him.  He is working on “legends” that tell about the sizes of the planets and how far they are from the Sun, both “for real” and to scale.  Denise also said that the anticipated printing sales for Black Friday at Staples didn’t actually include posters; the sales were more focused on items for Christmas gifts.

Google Analytics:

We received an email from Google Analytics about setting up a Google Analytics profile, but since this is intended more for commercial businesses, we decided not to do this.

Cosmosphere field trip:

We discussed possibly going there in the future, but didn’t plan to work on this in earnest at this time.

Telescope donation to a student for Christmas:

A gentleman wanted to donate a telescope to a Club youth as a Christmas gift.  He sent an email to the Club and called our voicemail.  Denise called him and said we would discuss at our meeting today.  She told him we only had one youth member, and that family was well supplied with telescopes.  She asked if he’d contacted the Boy Scouts and he said no.  Before our meeting, Evan looked up the kind of telescope he had and although it was a good telescope, it wasn’t a “go-to” kind.  We decided that Denise would call him after the meeting and thank him very much for his offer, but we don’t know of any students to give this telescope to, and suggest that he contact the Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts. (Denise did call him after our meeting.)