March 2010 |
| ATTENDANCE |
M. Arsenault; D. Beaudin; A. Bordage; M. Carson; C. Clayton; A. Davis; D. Driscoll; A. Huskins; P. Jensen; G. Jones; V. LeBlanc; J. MacDonald; B. MacNutt; D. McCashion; S. McHatten; D. McLean; K. McLean;K. Melville; C. Muñoz; E. O'Reilly; M. Powell; D. Thorn; S. Thorn; S. Tompkins
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| WHAT'S UP |
Peter explained the sights for March. The Moon will be near the Pleiades Mar.20; Venus can be seen in the west, Mars will be next to M44 mid-April; it’s easy to see Titan, one of Saturn’s moons right now, the rings are tilted 3.6° from edge-on; Vesta is in Leo this month; comets to be observed:C/2007 Siding Spring, 81P Wild2 is between Virgo & Libra, C/2009 K5 McNaught; Earth Hour: Mar. 27
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| OBSERVING |
George observed M81, 82, 35, 36, 47 & 50 among other things; Adrien searched for sunspots, without any luck; Peter saw a solar flare.
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| SHOW AND TELL |
Peter had 2 new books, one of which is the companion to the DVD series we have; Dave Beaudin showed his new book;Doug McLean brought his brand new telescope.
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| Talk: Improving Your Observing with Homemade Gadgets |
Dave Driscoll gave a list of the 10 most important things you can do to improve your observing activities, David Letterman-style. 10. star test your equipment (aberrations, cause & correction) 9.learn to accurately align your scope (get someone else to do it) 8.get a decent Barlow lens eyepiece & finder (he used a piece of the toilet to make an eyepiece! The hit of the evening.) 7. don’t use a mirror axis indiscriminately (vignetting around the edges of the mirror-fading of the image at the edges.) 6. check the baffling of the Barlow 5. take extra care to darken the inside of the tube 4. make spider blades as thin as possible (could use a curved vein) 3. lengthening the tube – be careful, can add too much weight 2. mask the edge of the mirror 1. baffle the focuser tube. He also talked about apodizing masks – used to separate double stars, to look at really bright objects. He talked about the danger of using a Herschel wedge-a prism that can be used in place of a diagonal to correct chromatic aberration. Be careful, because it can burn important “parts”!
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| Monthly Messiers |
Peter gave gave a brief presentation of his program for observing the Messiers month by month.
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| Business |
Karen McLean borrowed Nightwatch, David Thorn borrowed the Moonwatch kit, Consuelo borrowed DVD#2, Michael Carson borrowed DVD#5, Shawn is keeping the solar scope for March, Adrien has requested it for April, Ed Kaine still has the 6”club scope. John Dunlap still has one of the DVDs. June asked the group to pass the word about the museum meteorite exhibit, astronomy talks in March & Dr. John Sprays talk on Mar.13 at 1 pm. Some posters with a list of the talks were given to Peter to post at NBCC, Mike to post at work & Angela to post at the museum. Quite a few lists were handed out to people to post in their workplace. Briefly discussed IAD which is on April 24 this year. Trying to get space at Brunswick Square, just the usual:display boards, light pollution box, Peter was asked if he could try to get some brochures & magazines if companies/magazines were willing to part with them, asked if people would bring some scopes, binos, etc.. We have some planispheres left from IYA. June mentioned Algonquin Hotel in St. Andrews has requested an observing session for Earth Hour on Mar.27. Curt is going with a couple of scopes, June is going but begged for help.
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| OBSERVING |
After the meeting several telescopes were set up for observing.
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