Richmond Astronomical Society
776th Consecutive Meeting
May 13, 2014
Greetings – approximately 24 in attendance at the meeting.
Jim Browder called our meeting to order in the Eureka meeting room.
Announcements / Share Table
- Information about technological experiments
- John displayed 2 of his photos of sunspots
- Several slightly old astronomy magazines and articles
Library Report — Virginia Eckert brought in several books. Her theme tonight was the sun.
- Sun and its Influences (1955)
- Our Sun (1949)
- Birth and Death of the Sun (1940)
- Our Turbulent Sun (1982)
- Our Sun (revised, 1959)
- The Sun (1953)
- Scientific American of Solar System (1975)
Events and Individual Observing — RAS members
- John reported seeing Mars between the clouds while he was at St. Francis
- Randy Tatum has a great photo of Mars last night. You can see the polar ice cap breaking up.
- The latest Belmead event was probably the best event there, so far. Jim Browder stayed until 4am
- Sarah Elizabeth Allen went to Hawaii and had photos to prove it. She talked about the large telescope being broken down to be shipped to Chile.
- Astronomy Day (3 days ago) was successful with many displays. Some of them were: maps and globes of the moon and planets; Shoot for the moon game; Sydney had her telescopes and science fair posters; International Dark Sky display; build a small model of the solar system; Betty had her meteorite exhibit; Randy, Bill and Brian displayed telescopes; space photos; CCD equipment; water bottle rocket launches, and Russ the astronaut. Very successful day. Thanks to Prashant for the planning!
Welcome Visitors:
- Wes Barrier
- Jamie Favors
Recent Events: Science Museum – weathered out, Belmead – probably the best event there so far. Clear skies and good visibility
Astrophotolinks: RAS member and master astro-imager Madhup Rathi has created a new website for other imagers — www.astrophotolinks.com. The website is an online library of web content related to astrophotography, arranged by aspects of the imaging hobby and contains a wealth of information. Please visit, share and provide feed back.
Upcoming Events:
- Skywatch at the Science Museum of Virginia, May 16, 7:30 PM: Monthly skywatch at the Science Museum, weather permitting, following the evening planetarium show at 6:30 PM. Watch for weather updates at richastro.org and the RAS Facebook page.
- Powhatan State Park, Saturday, May 17, 9:00 PM: RAS has been working with the Powhatan State Park staff to develop several skywatch events for 2014. The first one will be held on May 17 starting at 9:00 PM. Please contact John Raymond if you can help with this event at raymond7419@verizon.net. The skywatch will be held in the equestrian area parking lot.
- RAS Board of Directors Meeting, May 19, 7:00 PM (dinner at 6:00 PM): Quarterly RAS Board meeting at Extra Billy’s restaurant on West Broad St. Meeting starts at 7:00 PM, dinner reservations will be made for 6:00 PM. All members are welcome — you don’t have to be a Board member.
- East Coast Star Party, May 29-31: Kent Blackwell is hosting his East Coast Star Party on May 29, 30 and 31 (ends Sunday morning, June 1) at the Hampton Lodge Campground in Coinjock, NC. For more information contact Kent at kent@exis.net.
- Greenbank Star Quest, June 25-28, Greenbank, WV: The eleventh annual Greenbank Star Quest will be held this year from June 25-28. More information is at http://www.greenbankstarquest.org/.
Short Talk: “Northeast Astronomy Forum Re-cap,” John Raymond
John packed his van and headed to NEAF. There were many various types of telescopes. He mentioned there was a classic 30-60 year old scope. Other scopes included a Takahasi scope. Neil Degrasse Tyson spoke at 1 of the assemblies. John also showed photos of about a dozen sun spots taken with his iphone.
Break
Presentation: “365 Days of Astronomy and Cosmoquest,” Richard Drumm and Jim Browder
This enthusiastic presentation discussed how podcasts are being used to educate the common layman about astronomical topics. Richard Drumm is one of the editors of this podcast, along with the Nicole Gugliucci, Matthew Francis (with his Bowler Hat), and several others. It can be found at www.cosmoquest.org and has several video components contained in it: Learning Space, Weekly Space Hangout (by Nicole), Virtual Star Party, Education Zone, Cosmo Academy, Science on the Half-Sphere, Space Play, Citizen Science Forum, and 365 Days of Astronomy.
We had the pleasure to see a few of these videos, which are constantly updated.
Some of the recent “365 Day” topics were: Origins of Life, Saturn’s Rings, Astronomy, Supernovas, Gas Clouds, Lunar Impact Monitoring, Telescopes to Tanzania, and Climate Change.
Richard Drumm showed a portion of a video on Spectroscopy that he created.
They are looking for volunteers to join their team to help create these educational videos.
Podcasts, like the ones at cosmoquest.org, can now be products of the laymen.