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RAS News |
Newsletter of RAS (Richmond Astronomical Society)
June, 2001
Visit our web site at www.richastro.org
| Topic: | |
| Speaker | Joe Hetmanski |
Ken Wilson is teaching a course on "How to Use a Telescope" on Sat., June 2. He has also arranged for us to continue to meet on Monday nights, starting in July, in the planetarium. We were struggling with this potential change of meeting nights, due to the Science Museum having to close on Mondays. What a relief--thanks, Ken!
Gary Cowardin brought in some very nice 8 x 10 photos from Astronomy Day.
Keith Johnson brought in some maps to a skywatch at Sailor's Creek, to take place June 23. Take 360 west to 307, take a right. Go to 317, and take another right. Proceed for almost 3 miles, and just past the Hillsman House, look for the star party signs on your right.
Steve Coleman brought in some brochures from his recent visit to the wonderful Hayden Planetarium in New York City. Grace Suttle has also made a recent visit there.
Jim Petty announced the club's policy of loaning out the RV-6 (6 inch reflector), if the loanee will bring it to the SMV skywatches while they have it on loan.
Joe Hetmanski gave us the good news that, as part of the Malvern Hill Battleground expansion, they have acquired the house that had the irritating light from hell, and it has finally been extinguished. This should make the seeing much better.
Tim Brittain, our observatory directory, has five people signed up for observatory training. He will announce a training session sometime in the next couple of weeks.
Guests--we'd like to extend a warm welcome to our guests at the last meeting--Jerry and Ann Williams, Gene Dick, Allen Pois, Michele Jones, Rachel Cobb, Bill Beck, and Rick Rouhier.
Gary Cowardin reported cloudy weather for last month's SMV skywatch, but had a crowd of about 75 the evening of Astronomy Day.
Gary also gave the main presentation, on Relativity. He explained why there's a red shift in the light that we see from stars and galaxies that we see in space. From our perspective, they are all receding, and the amount of red shift in the light we see is related to the speed at which they're receding.
I'm preparing a talk to give at Case-Western Reserve next week and at aGR meeting in Warsaw in June. Along the way, I picked up a book I boughtlast year from Advanced Book Exchange, the Amazon.com of used books(they list books from over 6000 book dealers worldwide) and noticed thatthe inside cover has the inscription"David H. Levy, 1983." I had no idea at the time I bought it!
The ECSP on May 18 & 19 was not good. This is
unfortunate because the Tidewater area had experienced exceptionally dry, clear
weather two weeks prior to this.
Registration began on Friday May 18 at noon. By this time Matt Broscious, his
wife and three sons from Monrovia, MD had already set up camp. Just before
nightfall a handful of people arrived, hoping the forecasters were wrong about
the weather predictions. Unfortunately it remained cloudy most of the night,
however we did have two hours of clearing skies around midnight. Though the sky
was hazy the seeing was impeccable. I rated the transparency 5 on a scale of 10,
but I rated seeing as an 8.
Most had put their scopes away early for fear of rain, but since my 25" can be
easily and quickly rolled in and out of the trailer we used that telescope. M 13
was simply spectacular. I even managed to increase magnification to 450x. The
beautiful cluster looked more like an open cluster than a globular. Other
interesting objects viewed in Hercules included the small planetary NGC 6210 and
the globular M 92. We also observed the globular cluster M 5 in Serpens Caput,
The Box Planetary Nebula (NGC 6309) in Ophiuchus, The Owl Nebula (M 97) in Ursa
Major, and the best of all, The Ring Nebula (M 57) in Lyra. I was able to push
the power on the Ring Nebula to 611x. At that magnification the Ring barely fit
in the field of view. Using averted vision we managed to see the very
challenging 15th magnitude central star. Not only is it a faint 15th magnitude
but also a blue star. Blue stars tend to be difficult for our eyes to see. If
that isn't enough it is thought to be variable. The last object before the
clouds rolled back in was NGC 6543, The Cat's Eye. By 2:00am it was completed
cloudy again. Wesley Jacocks reported it cleared again at 3:00am, but the rest
of us had turned in for the night.
Despite the forecast of rain on Saturday the skies were beautifully sunny all
day. At 6:00pm I gathered everyone together for a cookout of hamburgers and hot
dogs, and once again Bob Hitt was our cook. During the cookout the temperature
dropped and fog and clouds rolled in. After dinner door prizes were handed out.
Congratulations to Dale Carey, Daniel Freas, John & Jeanette Hamilton, Georgie
June, Oscar Lopez, Dick Moncure and Kelly Proffitt as winners of books,
accessories and eyepieces. Thanks to the vendors who were gracious to send these
prizes, especially Meade and Tele Vue for the donation of fine eyepieces.
I hope the weather is better for the next East Coast Star Party scheduled the
weekend of October 19 & 20, 2001. Thanks to the 35 or so who did show up, sorry
the weather wasn't more cooperative.
On the heels of dark Coinjock skies coming up for East Coast Star Party this weekend I was very pleased to see a report on ABC News tonight. It seems human beings, and perhaps other creatures as well are having their immune systems put in jeapody by, you guessed it, too much light at night. According to Bill Blakemore's & Peter Jennings report the body produces Melotonin, which reduces certain immune damaging cancers. If we are exposed to too much light day and night our bodies can't produce the required amount. The report went on to state how we need to cut back and improve existing lighting, and how certain cities have saved millions of dollars by improving the lighting by proper shielding.
Crime has been found to actually decrease. Also graffitti has decreased. If the bad guys can't see the area to mar with their graffitti they won't do it.
The last issue reported on by Blakemore was how we need to preserve the night skies for generations who have lost it in the last few decades. Kudos to ABC News!
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Your RAS 2001 membership subscription is now overdue, if you haven't paid yours.
Please furnish the following information to the treasurer:
Cindy Bowers
9415 Laurel Grove Rd
Mechanicsville, VA 23116
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Astronomy renewal |
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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.
The months that have been assigned for presentations by the board for 2001 are:
|
January |
Cindy |
May |
Gary |
September |
Tim |
|
February |
Dale |
June |
Joe |
October |
David |
|
March |
Jim B. |
July |
Terry |
November |
Sam |
|
April |
Jim P. |
August |
Grace |
December |
Frank |