The Celestial Observer
Newsletter of the
April, 2003
To Download This Months Newsletter Click Here
From the President
The club held its annual elections at the
March business meeting. Joining me as club officers for the coming year will be
Vice President Rich Bickerton, Treasurer Kevin Ackert, Membership Director
Barrie Sawyer, Secretary John Hobbs, and members at large Lew Gramer and Dave
Fournier. This is an experienced and varied group, and I think the club will be
well served.
Writing these little essays each month has been
getting more and more difficult as this abysmal winter has worn on, because the
weather has allowed so little observing. Like many of you, I now welcome spring
as much for the promise of clear skies full of galaxies as for any sentiment
involving chirping birds or budding trees.
In the last month or two I’ve had a scope out
exactly twice, once with Jim Koerth, to show the moon to a group of seventh
graders in Rockport, and the other time to help demonstrate some scopes to a
group of first graders romping through a school hallway in Salem. Nights like
these are a rewarding part of the hobby, and I encourage everyone to find out
how much fun they can be, but it’s past time for some good weather.
Seeing Jim Foy pull off a star party at a school
full of children on a cloudy night is an impressive thing, by the way, and
might almost make you wish for bad weather once in a while, just for the
experience.
But this string of cloudy weekends can’t last
forever. It’s still messier season, the Virgo cluster is just around the
corner, and those streetlights at VMP have been baffled, so I’ll hope for the
best this month. See you on Friday.
Mike Deneen
President
Proposed Amendment to the Bylaws
The Board of Directors recommends amending the
Bylaws Article I, Section 1 - Qualifications to read:
Any person, of at least sixteen years of age,
regardless of race, color, creed or gender who expresses an interest in
astronomy may become a member of the Club.
Effect of the proposed change is to lower the age
limit for membership from eighteen to sixteen.
Note that under Bylaw Article II, Section 3 -
Eligibility; a member is still required to be a minimum of eighteen years of
age to hold office in the Club.
The membership will be invited to discuss the
proposed amendment at the April business meeting. A vote on it will be
scheduled for the May business meeting.
Business Meeting Minutes for the March, 2003 Meeting of the NSAAC
President Deneen called the February Business
Meeting of the NSAAC to order at 8:13 PM.
President Deneen called for introduction of new guests: there were two
guests Karl Ellison and Nuno Santos. 18 members were in attendance plus 4 board
members.
Committee Reports:
Treasurer: Dave Fournier
gave the treasures report. Motion made
to approve the Treasurers report. Motion
approved.
Upcoming Events: The program talk in April will be on
software.
Membership: No report.
Merrimack College: No
information. Observing later in the
month.
Salem State: No observing
the last week due to cold weather. No
additional help from the school on lubricating the dome. May not happen until the summer.
Star Parties: There
will be a star party at Camp Kent in Amesbury, MA, March 11 at 6:30PM. The next start party will be in Salem, MA, at
the Bates Elementary School on March 20th from 6:00 to 8:00PM. 300-500 people expected. Probably the last star party of the year will
be at Endicott College April 8th.
Share System: No report.
Unfinished Business: Hat and Tee shirts will be discussed at the
next board meeting.
The full spectrum cutoffs have been made and will be
installed by the Groveland Lighting Department.
They will install four new light shields next week.
New Business:
Election of Officers: Nominating committee slate of
nominees were:
Michael Deneen for President
Richard Bickerton for Vice
President
Kevin Ackert for Treasurer
John Hobbs for Secretary
Barrie Sawyer of Membership
Director
The candidates were elected by unanimous consensus.
Members at large elected by unanimous consensus were
Dave Fournier and Lew Gramer.
We should all thank Nominating Committee chairman
Chris Nichol and his committee for their hard work and a job well done.
Barrie Sawyer discussed the possibility of having a
Messier Marathon this March. A show of
hands indicated that there were about 5 members who would be interested. See Barrie Sawyer if interested.
Rivers camera is still offering the Celestron
eyepiece sale.
The speaker this evening is John Petrowicz who is
going to talk about lighting and astronomy in a talk entitled “The Lighting of
America”. The talk was very interesting
and Mr. Petrowicz took extra time to discuss his home observatory with the
club.
Meeting adjourned at
Respectively submitted,
John Hobbs,
Secretary
Star
Party News
Our last star party of the school year is on
Tuesday, April 8 at Endicott College, 376 Hale Street, Beverly MA. About 50 Freshmen and Sophomores, who are early
childhood and elementary education majors, are expected. Set-up at 6:30 for the program and
telescopes; followed by a one hour program; then telescope observations at
8:00PM. The star party will not be
cancelled for weather!
Hope to see you there,
Jim Foy
DIRECTIONS: From Route 128 North (Peabody): Take exit 17 (Grapevine
Road, Beverly Farms). Turn right off the exit ramp and right again- after 1½
mile onto Haskell Street (by the cemetery). Proceed to the end; at stop sign,
turn right onto Hale Street, Route 127 to Endicott College. The main entrance
is the second entrance on the right.
I am not sure where to go from here. Check in at the
entrance. Mary Hatton, Assistant
Professor, Arts and Sciences Division is the contact for the star party. I will send out a reminder on the list server
and try to have more details for the business meeting.
From Route 128 South: Take
exit 17 (Grapevine Road, Beverly Farms). Turn left off the exit ramp and follow
directions above.
New-Moon Star Party Committee
I've
volunteered to head up a committee whose goal will be to put together internal
star parties. The goal will be to have one night or weekend per month
(probably around the new moon) become a focal point of gathering the club together
for shared observing. There are a lot of different routes that this can
take, and I'd like to get as much support and as many ideas as possible.
The first phase will be to enlist
volunteers to serve on a committee with me. As a committee, our goal will
be to try to put together a format and schedule that will appeal to broad
segments of the membership - everyone from very green newbies to grizzled
crusty veterans. It's my hope that this will help us all get to know each
other a bit better, and to increase the opportunity to benefit from others'
wisdom and experience.
For those concerned about the time
commitment, I don't anticipate that this will be very demanding on your
time. There would probably be a kick-off committee meeting, but I expect
much of the subsequent business could take place via e-mail, punctuated by the
occasional face-to-face meeting. So, if you think you'd enjoy becoming
involved in the club in a way that is less demanding on your time than holding
club office, I'd like to hear from you. Also, don't be shy about
volunteering if you're new to this obsession that we call a hobby; as a matter
of fact, we need some folks who are very new to the hobby - that's the best way
to find out what kinds of formats/activities might encourage you to come to
events like this!
Finally, for those who don't want
to be on the committee but have some ideas: we will be soliciting ideas
club-wide once the committee is formed. So everyone will have a chance to
have their voice heard in this!
To get hold of me, you can:
e-mail at work
(nicholl.cj@mellon.com)
e-mail at home
(jcnicholl@worldnet.att.net)
phone at home 978-352-2102
And, in the off chance there's a
deluge of interest, we'll probably try to cap the committee at about 6-7
people, so as not to make getting opinions/consensus decisions too unwieldy.
Chris Nicholl
Talk for April
First of all I’d like to thank Mr. John Petrowicz
for giving his talk on “The Lighting of America” at the March meeting, and telling
us about his home observatory he calls Star Gate Observatory.
This month we are honored to have a guest speaker
duo from Reading Information Technology, Inc. (RITI). This was the talk
originally scheduled for January, but postponed due to the weather. Our two
guests are Steve Rubin and Hung Pham.
Mr. Rubin and Mr. Pham will demo and talk about
their company’s software package called Lunar
Map ProTM. This is RITI’s latest mapping product, and their
first product ever developed for astronomy enthusiasts, who have a passion for
lunar observing. Nearly 13,000 features have been digitalized, and combined,
from various lunar data sources. The named features alone total more than
7,300, making Lunar Map ProTM
the product with the largest and most complete software database ever developed
for the observation of the moon. Its use of “state-of-the-art” GIS (Global
Information System) vector technology, combined with high-resolution Clementine
raster maps, makes Lunar Map ProTM
the most advanced lunar mapping software available to date. For more details on
this package, please visit:
http://www.riti.com/prodserv_lunarmappro.htm or call
RITI at 781-942-1655. Please make an effort to attend this meeting, especially
if you’re a lunar observer.
I am still looking for more volunteers to speak at
future general meetings about their scopes and other astronomical subjects. The
scope talks don’t have to be positive reviews. You can talk about a scope you
really hate. The purpose of these talks will be to acquaint other members of
the club with different scopes, binoculars, or scope projects, so that they can
make an informed decision as to whether they wish to acquire, or make, one for
themselves. We also accept volunteers to speak on other topics, such as mounts,
CCDs, photographic techniques, astronomy trips, the ten things that got them
interested in astronomy, etc. Giving a talk can be a lot of fun. In addition,
I’m looking for non-members willing to do a talk on astronomy related subjects.
If you know of anyone, please contact me at (781) 438-7375, or at
dgudzevich@attbi.com, or at the general business meetings.
Dennis Gudzevich
Program Coordinator
Getting to Veasey
Memorial Park
From Interstate 95 north, take the Route 133 west (54B)
exit, and follow it into
For more information about the club and its
activities, contact Dave Thomas Membership Director at, email: membership@nsaac.org or contact Mike Deneen,
President, e-mail at president@nsaac.org. No email, call Richard Bickerton, Vice
President at 978-887-8533.
Better
yet, visit our Web Site at: http://www.nsaac.org.
Members who
subscribe to Astronomy or Sky and Telescope through the club should send their
renewal notice, together with a check in the proper amount payable to the NSAAC
and mail to N.S.A.A.C. Treasurer, C/o
E-Mail
Listserve
If you have access to the Internet or other email
system, you may want to subscribe to the email notification system that Lew
Gramer established for the Club in 1996. This is a "members only"
system that places you in contact with other members for late breaking news
concerning spontaneous observing activities, outings, tech talk, etc. You can
subscribe by emailing your request to the address below. Your message should look like this:
To: majordomo@nsaac.org
Subject: Email list (you can put anything here)
Message: subscribe NSAAC Your Full Name
<your-email-name@your-isp.com>
Subscribers will be verified as actual members in
good standing before being granted access to the system.
NOTE: To remove yourself from the email list send
the same message but replace subscribe with "unsubscribe" in the
message body.