January 2025 Meeting Notes

Bartlesville Astronomical Society Meeting Notes

January 6, 2025

Attendance: 

We had 13 members and one visitor in attendance this evening, in person and on Zoom.

Astronomical trivia—John G:

December trivia question—how many sunspots on Christmas Day?  There were 245—Brian T had guessed 181, so that was the closest answer!

This evening’s trivia was naming some constellations.

Astronomy basics—Brian T:

Astronomy 101, Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram, commonly known as the H-R Diagram--

The H-R diagram can be thought of as a graphical plot of the typical life cycle of stars.  It is sometimes referred to as the Rosetta Stone of astronomy!  It was developed by Enjar Hertzsprung and Henry Norris Russell. 

The H-R diagram plots the relationship between a star’s temperature and its brightness.  On the X axis is a star’s temperature and spectral class.  This is done by color, with blue for hotter stars at one end, to yellow and red, cooler stars on the other.  On the Y axis is a star’s brightness or absolute magnitude.

Most stars are mapped on a diagonal going from upper left (brighter and blue) to lower right (cooler and red). 

White dwarfs are classed by themselves at the lower left of the spectrum, while red giants—reddish but very bright—are classed by themselves at the upper right of the spectrum. 

The H-R diagram is used to help determine the mass and expected lifetime of a star.  The more massive a star is, the shorter its lifespan is.  The H-R diagram is also used to identify the stage of a star’s typical life that it’s in, as well as the age of a star cluster. 

Recent Club Events:

·       December 5 - Cornerstone Classical Academy:  Gil Greenwood and Daryl Doughty gave a presentation on astronomy and marine navigation to high school and middle school students at Cornerstone Classical Academy.  Denise Gregg showed pictures of the Royal Observatory and the Greenwich Meridian.

·       The Club decided in advance not to have a star party at Jo Allyn Lowe on December 14 due to competing activities during the busy holiday season.

Upcoming Club Events:

·       January 11, star party at Jo Allyn Lowe, weather permitting:  John B and Pat, along with John G (if he’s in town) volunteered to bring optical telescopes to the star party, if the weather is conducive to having a star party.  We will delay a final decision on the star party until later in the week and put an update on the Club home page.

·       January 18 - Library display meeting to work on our March display.  The meeting will be in meeting room C at the library from 10:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m.

·       February 3 - BAS Meeting - “The Copernicus Method” by Dan Zielinski - Director, Jenks Planetarium

·       February 15 - Public stargazing at Jo Allyn Lowe

·       February 28 - Special public stargazing event for full planetary alignment.  Luann mentioned possibly having an event on the back (north) side of Washington Park Mall.

Upcoming Astronomical Events:

·       Jan 3 - Venus and the Moon will be close together in the southwestern evening sky.

·       Jan 4 - Earth at perihelion, closest to the Sun for the year.

·       Jan 10 - Venus at Greatest Eastern Elongation, visible during evening in the west.

·       Jan 13 - Full Moon / Wolf Moon

·       Jan 13 - The Moon occults Mars (disappearance ~7:56 p.m., reappearance ~9:04 p.m.).  We discussed having a Club event for this but decided not to.

·       Jan 15 - Mars at opposition.  Mars will rise around sunset and set around sunrise.  It will reach its highest point in the sky (78°) near midnight. Since Mars will be closest to Earth at this time and also its biggest and brightest (-1.4 magnitude), this is an excellent time to observe it.

·       Jan 18 - Venus and Saturn will be within 2° of each other in the southwest at dusk

·       Jan 29 - New Moon

·       Feb 6 - Moon passes in front of Pleiades in early morning hours, temporarily occulting many stars.

·       Feb 12 - Full Moon / Snow Moon

·       Feb 14 - Venus at its brightest (-4.6) in the western evening sky.

Treasurer’s Report – Evan Z:

·       Ending balance November 30, 2024:  $16561.45

·       No expenses in December

·       Deposit $250.00 in dues

·       Deposit $160.00 in donations

·       Deposit Truity interest $49.53

·       Ending balance December 31, 2024:  $17020.98

January 6 - BAS Meeting - “Got a telescope for Christmas? Wondering what to do next?” 

John B did a demo of an optical telescope and Luann, an astrophotography telescope.

John B demonstrated a PowerSeeker 114EQ Telescope.  He showed how to point it to the North Star and how it can be kept in focus as the star moves.  A PowerSeeker 114EQ Telescope is a manual German equatorial telescope. The 114EQ provides bright, clear images of the Moon, planets, star clusters, and more for great nighttime viewing. The PowerSeeker mount comes with two slow motion control knobs that allow you to make fine pointing adjustments to the telescope in both Right Ascension and Declination axes, also referred to as RA and DEC.  Accessories include a 20mm and 4mm eyepiece, a finderscope, and a Barlow lens. The two eyepieces offer different magnifications for low and high powered views.  The 3x Barlow lens triples the magnifying power of each eyepiece.

Luann demonstrated her ZWO Seestar S50.  She tried to show some of the features built into it while Zoomed into the meeting but wasn’t able to share her screen, so she wasn’t able to demonstrate it as she had wanted, although the tech team tried to make it work!  She mentioned the demo of the Seestar that she’d done at our August meeting last year.  The Seestar is an astrophotography telescope, as opposed the one John B demonstrated.  It’s controlled using an app on a smart device.  Images are displayed on your device, and you can save images and stack them over a period of time.  Luann said that with the app, you can see information about an object, such as when it rises and sets.  The Seestar has different modes, including a scenic mode.  You can also change the Seestar’s brightness level.  The Seestar now offers framing—it can be used in a horizontal mode and can be tilted toward a target box.  You can experiment with images sizes also, so you can fit an object into the screen better.  She showed various images she has taken with her Seestar, including a Strawberry Moon!

BAS needs volunteers:

Each monthly meeting includes a 5 to 10 minutes “Astronomy Basics” segment by a member about an astronomy topic they are interested in.  It doesn’t require expert knowledge, but rather a simple discussion of some aspect of astronomy.  Such a short segment is easy to research - Google and Wikipedia are your friends - easy to prepare and easy to discuss.  Please consider giving one of these presentations.  Maybe there is a topic that interests you, or something you’d like to learn more about.  One of the best ways to learn something is to teach it to someone else.  Once you’ve decided on a topic, contact one of the Club officers and let them know what you’d like to do. You will be contributing your knowledge and enthusiasm to the other members of BAS!

Reminders:

BAS has equipment, books, educational materials and scopes available for loan to qualifying members.