You're receiving this newsletter because you have registered for a meeting or joined our email list. Not interested anymore? Send an email with "unsubscribe" in the Subject. Having trouble viewing this email? View it in your browser. —  November 2009 edition  -  http://richastro.org — Our 60th anniversary celebration dinner will be held on Friday, December 4th, starting at 6:00 PM at the Holiday Inn on Staples Mill Road (2000 Staples Mill Road, near the intersection of Staples Mill and Broad Street).  We will be reminiscing about our long distinguished history and enjoying a presentation by Jim Condon on “Weighing a Black Hole.”  Jim is with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory headquartered in Charlottesville and contributed to a recent study using the Very Long Baseline Array to directly measure the size of a disk of material orbiting the galaxy’s central black hole. The cost of the dinner is $30 per person.  This covers a 3-entrée dinner, cost of the meeting room and some wonderful door prizes that we will be giving away.  Please let either Jim Blowers (treasurer@richastro.org) or Jim Browder (804-598-5030, president@richastro.org) know by November 30 if you plan to attend.  Please provide your payment to Jim Blowers at the address below or by PayPal on our web site.  Be sure to note with your payment that it is for the anniversary dinner. Jim Blowers 4514 Foxwood Rd. Chester, VA 23831-8011 Please join us if you can.  It will be a great event and a wonderful occasion to celebrate.  Note that this event will take the place of our regular December meeting. Regards, Jim Browder Richmond Astronomical Society Items of Note Note of thanks from Anne Verbiscer: At our October meeting we had the pleasure of hearing about Anne Verbsicer’s recent co-discovery of Saturn’s largest ring with collaborators Michael Skrutskie (UVA) and Douglas Hamilton (University of Maryland).  Anne and her colleagues used the Spitzer Space Telescope to observe the ring and developed supporting evidence through detailed image analysis and computer simulations.  It was a real treat to hear about the discovery within a couple weeks of its announcement to the public. Anne sent a note of thanks to the club for hosting her and for the honorarium and RAS mug.  It was certainly the least we could do to express our gratitude.  The pleasure was all ours. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Keck) Election of the 2010 board of directors: We elected our new board of directors at the last meeting.  Many, many thanks to the 2009 board.  The club depends on its board of directors to take care of the club’s business matters so we can all enjoy the events and meetings and focus on our astronomy.  The newly elected 2010 board is as follows: John Barnett Bill Jeffries Prashant Reddy Jim Blowers Chris McCann Tim Streagle Jim Browder David Medici Betty Wilson Gary Cowardin Jeff Pike Ken Wilson ___________________ Thanks again to the outgoing 2009 board members and thanks to those who volunteered to serve in 2010.  Our first duty as 2010 board members and the last duty of the 2009 members will be to attend the next board meeting on November 16 at Extra Billy’s Restaurant at 7:00 PM.  Arrive earlier if you want to eat before the meeting. Last meeting’s presentation: Thanks to Jeff Pike for the interesting presentation on amateur solar astronomy.  As Jeff demonstrated to us, there are now more tools than ever available to the amateur.  As with many things in astronomy, the professional grade equipment does a better job, but current amateur equipment is producing high quality results and is within a price range comparable to other telescopes.  We look forward to hearing an update from Jeff at a later date when solar activity picks up. (Photo credit: US National Solar Observatory, Sacramento Peak ) _________________________ __________________________ Ted Bethune has gone international! Earlier this year Ted Bethune visited the 40th anniversary celebration of the Apollo 11 moon landing which took place on July 20, 1969. The event was held in Washington, DC with a number of former astronauts attending. Ted was interviewed on Chinese television and has been kind enough to provide us with a copy of the video which we will be showing at an upcoming meeting. ___________________ _______________________ ___________________________________ November SMV Skywatch and LiveSky cancelled: Due to a conflicting event at the Science Museum, the Skywatch and LiveSky events have been cancelled for November. Upcoming events Matoaca High School skywatch: We will be hosting a skywatch for students at Matoaca High School on November 25.  Please contact John Raymond at al_nath2007@yahoo.com if you can help out with the event. Observatory open house: John Barnett will be hosting an open house at our Ragland Observatory on the evening of November 22 (weather permitting). Video experiment: We have recently been streaming our regular meetings over an internet video link on the “UStream” web site.  Naturally, we prefer that members attend meetings in person, but it may helpful to some to have the option of attending by video link as an alternative.  The video link is password protected and we send out the link and password by e-mail prior to each meeting.  Please let us know how you like this service and whether it has been helpful to you. Virginia Skylines: We recently added a link to our web site which takes the user to an audio program broadcast weekly on public radio by Leslie Bochenski, educator with the Science Museum.  The audio file link can be found on the richastro.org web site under the “Weather” tab or “Links” section on the main page. Dues are due! This is the time of year when we renew our membership dues.  Please furnish the following information to the treasurer. You can also pay via PayPal on our web site at http://richastro.org/ras_payments.htm.  If paying by check, make it out to RAS, and send to: Jim Blowers 4514 Foxwood Rd. Chester, VA 23831-8011 Name: ________________________________________________ Address: ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ Phone: _______________ (h) _________________ (w) Email: ________________________________________________ Regular membership ($30.00) _____________ Observatory membership ($10.00) _____________ Astronomy renewal ($34.00) _____________ Sky & Tel renewal ($32.95) _____________ Total: _____________ _______________________________________ Contact information All meetings are the second Monday of the month, at the Science Museum of Virginia, 2500 W. Broad St. For more information, contact Jim Browder president@richastro.org. or Chris McCann secretary@richastro.org. RAS Richmond Astronomical Society