RAS News

Newsletter of RAS (Richmond Astronomical Society)
January, 2001

Visit our web site at www.richastro.org

Next meeting--Monday, Jan. 8

Last meeting ...
by Terry Barker

Randy Tatum brought in some hand drawn pictures of the sun, taken from his observations with the club's refractor at our observatory. They were interesting, done on black paper with a gel pen.

Ken Wilson brought in a printout of ISS flyovers, which is now one of the brightest objects in they sky. Hmmm, how many new new UFO sightings will this create? Ken also had Mir and Iridium satellite timings. Ken will also be holding a How to Use a Telescope class in January. This is designed for the new user of a telescope (like maybe for Christmas), and will be held on Jan. 6, at the Science Museum, from 8 a.m. to noon. Call 367-8956 for a reservation.

Charlotte Talley was 12 miles from the last shuttle mission takeoff. Endeavor took off at 10:06 p.m., and Charlotte said it "lit up the sky like the sun."

Dale Fortner said he saw about 366 Leonids, most between 1 and 2 a.m.

Steve Coleman observed a transit of Io across Jupiter with his Ranger refractor.

Gary Cowardin had a big crowd for the last SMV skywatch, with about 60-70 people lined up at any one time. Channel 6 was there, because of the Leonids. He and the other club members "froze to death for 60 seconds of air time." You have our gratitude, Gary! Gary also took some good pictures of the Christmas Day eclipse, and you can see some of them at his web site: http://members.tripod.com/~g_cowardin/index.htm

Jim Petty has been in contact with the owner of some of the land adjacent to the observatory. He has plans to build a warehouse on the property, and Jim will work with him on the Virginia state statute about controlling the lighting within 1/2 mile of an observatory.

Terry Barker has made contact with directors of curriculum in Chesterfield and Hanover counties about our availability and desire to host skywatches for those school systems. Hopefully, that will generate more opportunities for us to share our enthusiasm about observing , and stimulate some interest in astronomy in some of our younger generation.

We had three visitors, Chris McCann, Audrey, and Rosemary.

Frank Carney gave the main presentation, based on an article in Astronomy magazine, "Light Speed Follies." The theory of relativity tells us that as speed increases, length decreases, mass increases, and time slows. At 99% c (the speed of light), the universe becomes 7 times smaller. At 99.99999999 c, the factor is 22,000. A one year trip at this speed, would span 45,000 years back on earth. Like snow in front of the windshield of a moving car, everything in the the universe would appear to be in one brilliant spot in front of you.

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Pictures from the Ragland Observatory--the Xmas day eclipse
by Gary Cowardin

	This was taken with Gary's digital camera, through the observatory telescope, shown below. You can even see some prominences in the original photo.
	This is the pier of the Ragland telescope. You can tell by the size of the mount that it's a pretty substantial telescope.
	The crowd that was at the observatory on Xmas day. Some of those pictured are Jim Petty, Cindy Bowers, Randy Tatum, Josh Lief, Grace Suttle, and Gary Cowardin.

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Letter from Iranian teacher

This is an email that Jim Blowers got from a teacher in Iran. I'd like to solicit ideas at the next meeting, or in advance by email, on how we can possibly help this guy.

I teach astronomy to many 6-9 grade students. I've been teaching for many years but I have never been satisfied with my teaching. I lived in Sydney, Australia during my school years and I see the difference between the facilities that I was thought with, with the facilities of a moderate Iranian school. It s not even comparable. My students may not notice it but they are wasting their lives most precious time only reading textbooks and answering tests, their only challenge in these years is to pass the tests and make it to the next grade with good marks.

This is exactly opposite to what American, Australian and other developed countries students do. School days where very fun for me, doing experiments, working with computers, doing projects about exciting subjects. These things are not possible for an Iranian student because of lack of funding by the government due to the economical problems of Iran. Students come to school in the morning, go to classrooms that have a very boring look (Single color rooms with no posters, paintings or anything else), they sit there staring the teacher the whole day whose equipment for teaching literature to science is only a chalk and a blackboard and nothing else. And after a whole day of only hearing they go back home and start to do the large amount of homework that they are given.

(As for my class I have to note that in all these years of teaching, my
students have never looked at the sky through a telescope, because simply I could never get my hands on a telescope) Well I wanted to change this situation as much as I could, but the most I could do was very little. I have been trying to use different methods in my teaching. I have downloaded lots of lesson plans and activities from the
Internet to use in my class, but most of them need materials that are not available in schools, computers, video, projectors and more. (I have been taking my own desktop PC to my classes so I could use it in the teaching but after a few times of taking it to school and back home it started having problems so I stopped carrying it with me.)
I have been trying to get support from different Iranian institutes but
there is no one in Iran who would invest on education because it doesn't have economical interest for them.

I even tried sending proposals to different education grant giving
organizations but they all rejected my request because I simply live in a country that is under US sanctions. I contacted every telescope seller I could find on the Internet and requested a donation of a telescope but they too rejected my requests for different excuses.
I believe that every kid in the world should have the same right to be
educated using the latest materials available for education, but it seems that some people in the US don't think that way.

You may not be in position to help me with a telescope or computer so I am asking you for what you can help me with, Do you have anything that can help me in my teaching (like Books, slide sets, posters, CD-ROMs, Video tapes and etc.) anything, even a small poster is highly appreciated and would be agreat help, since I have nothing in my hand.

If somehow you can help me with either a telescope, a computer (preferably notebook) or a digital projector, or you know of someone that can help me please let me know. (It would be a dream come true if I could get my hands on one of those equipment).

At the end I wanted to wish you a merry Xmas and a happy new year hope that you continue to serve the astronomy community for years to come.

Thank you for you time
Best regards,
John Hamm.
Jh2605@yahoo-ir.com
Mailing address:
ôS.C.W.M.R.C-Javad Tabatabaie Yazdi
P.O.Box 13445-1136
Tehran 

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Success- Here we come Pluto!
by Ken Wilson

This is a response that Ken Wilson sent me on an email I had sent to him questioning why we should send a mission to Pluto. I had gotten an email from Ted A. Nichols II - Campaign Manager for Save the Pluto-Kuiper Express Campaign. I thought it was a pretty good answer!

Well, many of the outer moons and all of the comet nuclei are pretty cold, but they've all been very interesting when we see them close up. Pluto is an important piece of the solar system puzzle. [ E.G., Why small terrestrial planets in the inner solar system and gas giants in the outer solar system, EXCEPT Pluto? Why's Pluto's orbit so different from the other planets? Did Pluto & Charon start out as moons of Neptune? If so, how'd they escape and go into independent solar orbit? Can this process happen again, elsewhere in the solar system? Is Pluto a Kuiper belt object and, if so, why is it so different than the other Kuiper Belt objects? And so on..

One thing that I think history shows us is that we often make the most
interesting discoveries where we least expect to (e.g., Volcanoes on Io; micro-fossils(maybe) in Martian meteorites; microscopic craters in moon rocks; lack of maria on the moon's far side; Jupiter's ring; Saturn's ring spokes and shepherd moons; etc.)

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Calendar

Calendar created by ImpactSoft

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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 Terry Barker, 379-8175, or tbarker@i2020.net.

Board presentation months

The months that have been assigned for presentations by the board for 2001 are:

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