November 2025 Meeting Notes

Bartlesville Astronomical Society Meeting Notes

November 3, 2025

Attendance: 

We had 13 members (including two who rejoined this evening!) and 2 visitors in attendance, in person and on Zoom.

Astro Quiz--Evan:

·   What are the three main comets visible now (including telescope only)?

o   C/2025 A6 (Lemmon)

o   I3/ATLAS

o   C/2025 R2 (SWAN)

·   What are some facts about I3/ATLAS?  It’s estimated to be 7 billion years old; it’s 3.5 miles across in diameter; and it’s traveling at 138,000 mph!

·   What interstellar objects were discovered before Atlas?

o   1I/‘Oumuamua

o   2I/Borisov

10-minute Astronomy—Denise—Comet Nomenclature

Her presentation can be summarized by how these three sample comets are named:

•        Comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE): 

o   C:  a non-periodic comet.  This could be a comet with a hyperbolic (open) path that doesn’t orbit the Sun; a long-period comet, a comet with an orbital period longer than 200 years; or a comet that has been observed to pass by the Sun only once.

o   2020:  Discovered in 2020

o   F3:  The “F” means that the comet was discovered in the second half of March.  Non-periodic comets are identified by the half-month they were discovered in.  A = first two weeks of January, B = last two weeks of January, and so on.  The letter I is not used to denote a half-month.  The “3” means that it is the third comet discovered that year, in that half-month.

o   (NEOWISE):  The comet was discovered by the Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, the asteroid-hunting component of NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission.   

•        Comet 1P/Halley: 

o   P = A periodic comet (orbits around the Sun in 200 years or less, or is confirmed to have passed by the Sun more than once) 

o   1:  The first comet to be classified as periodic, by

o   Halley:  Edmund Halley, 1656-1742, an English astronomer, mathematician and physicist.  He computed the periodicity of this already well-known comet in 1705.  (It had been recorded since at least 240 B.C.)

•        Comet 3I/ATLAS: 

o   I = Interstellar object  (could be something besides a comet)

o   3 = the third confirmed interstellar object

o   ATLAS:  Discovered by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, a survey telescope in Rio Hurtado, Chile, on July 1, 2025 

·       There are several other comet categories.   

o   X = comet with no known or meaningful orbit, usually known from historical records

o   D = Periodic comet that has been lost, broken up, or disappeared

o   A = Object previously identified as a comet that has been re-classified as a minor planet

Recent Club Events:

·       Boys and Girls Club of Dewey event on October 23, 4:00-6:30 p.m.  Thanks to Luann for coordinating this event, and to Craig, Evan, John G, John B, Pat and Denise who participated.  We had 67 visitors!  We had current star charts and moon maps to hand out.  We also had the NASA lithographs that were sent to us recently by the Night Sky Network and we gave out some of those.  It was cloudy much of the time, but Craig propped up at a distance one of the NASA lithographs of planets, so that youth could look at it through a telescope.  Luann did have her Seestar with solar filter, for when the Sun was out.

·       Stargazing at Woolaroc on October 30 for Woolaroc members.  We had a delicious chili and cornbread dinner (supplied by Woolaroc) at 6 p.m. and then did Moon- and stargazing till a little after 8 p.m.  There were about 100 Woolaroc members in attendance.  Thanks go to Brian T who started initial discussions with doing this at Woolaroc months ago, and to Luann who did the final coordination.  Thanks also to Evan, John B, Pat, Craig, Eugene and Denise who participated on the night.  We had nine telescopes set up—seven optical, two Seestar.  Some of the objects viewed were the Moon, the Andromeda Galaxy and Saturn with edge-on rings.

Upcoming Club events:

·       None scheduled right now; we are coming into the holiday season when we typically don’t schedule evening star parties, since there are so many events planned around the holidays.

·       Denise mentioned that we have the library display coming up in April 2026.  She said she would send out an email about maybe having lunch to start planning for this, although basically all the work is done since we have the posters Craig made for our exhibit in March!

Upcoming Astronomical Events:

·       November 5—Full Moon/Hunter’s Moon, biggest Supermoon of 2025

·       November 9—Moon near Jupiter, low in E before midnight

·       November 17-18—Leonid meteor shower, minimal Moon interference, possibly 10 meteors/hour

·       November 20—New Moon

·       November 29—Moon and Saturn about three degrees apart in SW during evening

Treasurer’s Report – Luann:

Ending balance September 30, 2025:  $17,406.68

Expenses:

Rice Creek Storage $86.00

Denise Gregg for supplies  $69.10

Leveler for club SeeStar $41.37

Income:

Blackbaud $320.00

Dues $55.00

Transfer from PayPal (dues and donations) $100.00

Truity interest $46.38

Ending balance October 31, 2025: $17731.59

Main presentation:  “How a Harem Opened the Universe”, by Brian T

·       Brian showed a picture of the “Harem” at Harvard University—a team of women who unlocked secrets of the universe without using telescopes!

·       In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, women weren’t allowed to use telescopes. But they were allowed to study glass photographic plates!

·       Brian profiled the careers of a number of women who were part of “Pickering’s Harem”. Edward C. Pickering was the director of the Harvard College Observatory from 1877-1919.  The women in “Pickering’s Harem” studied and catalogued glass photographic plates of astronomical objects.     

·       Mary Anna Draper helped to found the Mount Wilson Observatory and created an award for astronomical research, the Henry Draper Medal of the National Academy of Sciences.  Her husband Henry, using a daguerreotype camera, took the first picture of the Moon in 1840.  He established Harvard’s Southern Station in Arequipa, Peru. 

·       Williamina Fleming, from Scotland, became the maid of Edward Pickering and e a “Harvard Computer”.  She discovered the Horsehead Nebula on a photographic plate.  She is the first American woman to be an honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society in the UK and published a Photographic Study of Variable Stars, which described more than 200 variable stars that she discovered.  She became Curator of Astronomical Photographs at the Harvard Observatory. 

·       Henrietta Leavitt discovered more than 840 variable stars. While studying at Radcliffe College she developed an illness that led to her becoming deaf.  She took a volunteer position at the Harvard College Observatory to work with Pickering and eventually became a member of the Harvard staff.  She was hired as a “computer” to analyze photographic plates.  She published her findings on the period-luminosity relationship for variable stars in the Magellanic Clouds, which allowed astronomers to measure distances to stars and galaxies.  Her period-luminosity relationship studies were used to prove the existence of galaxies and the expansion of the universe. 

·       Annie Cannon catalogued over 400,000 stars and classified about 350,000 by hand.  She discovered 300 variable stars, five novae, and one spectroscopic binary, and developed the stellar classification system that we use.  Annie too became deaf, after graduating from what is now Wellesley College with a degree in physics and astronomy.  She was hired by Pickering as an assistant at the Harvard College Observatory.  After receiving an M.A. from Wellesley, she      was named Curator of Astronomical Photographs at the Harvard Observatory, succeeding Williamina Fleming.  She was the first woman to receive an honorary doctorate from Oxford. 

·       80 woman “computers” worked for Pickering from 1877 to 1919.  They worked 6 days a week, for 25 to 50 cents an hour, performing clerical astronomy calculations.  They classified nearly 400,000 stars, discovering new stellar objects, revolutionizing how we classify stars, and unlocked “Leavitt’s Law” to measure faraway distances.

·       Some 500,000 of these glass plates are still at Harvard and are being digitized.

December meeting topics:  

Main presentation--A Year’s Worth of Meteor Showers by Denise

10-minute Astronomy--Cosmology by Daryl