The Celestial Observer
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Note: We discussed changing the January meeting date from Jan 2 to Jan 9,
but have decided not to do this because we felt that too much confusion would
be caused. The January meeting will be held on Jan 2, the first Friday in
the month, as usual.
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From the President
As another year comes
to a close, I want to make sure to thank everyone who has volunteered their
time and energy to help make the NSAAC the ongoing success it is. In addition
to the board members, this list includes committee members like Jim Foy, our
Grand Rajah of Star Parties, and Dennis Gudzevich, whose title is still unknown
but who is responsible for Business Meeting entertainment and even the shirts
on our backs. And let's all be sure to thank the members of the go-on
committee, including Chris Nicholl, Lew Gramer, Art Schneiderman and Ilane
Walberg for their work putting together those enjoyable, informative (and
well-attended) nights under the stars.
New to the NSAAC volunteer roster is our latest newsletter editor Leor
Zolman, whose task it will be to upgrade our newsletter in terms of timeliness,
content and format. Look for new features to be available in the future,
including emailed PDF formats with color content
And while we're on the
subject, it's time to start thinking about the upcoming NSAAC elections, to be
held in March. Here's how the process works: at the January business meeting
we'll select the Director of the Nominating Committee, who will then find a
couple of other folks to assist in the collecting of names. This committee then
gathers the names of nominees for the available positions, and reports on this
slate of candidates to the board at the February meeting. Elections are held at
the March Business meeting. The available positions are President,
Vice-President, Secretary, Treasurer, Membership Director, and two
members-at-large.
NSAAC elections are not
usually hotly contested affairs, so if you think you might want to take your
turn as a club officer let me encourage you, in the strongest possible terms,
to talk to me or any other current board member about what's involved in each
role. You won't have to spend a lot of time, you'll make good friends, you'll
be doing good work, and you'll learn a lot in the process.
VMP
note: As we stressed at the business meeting, if you think you will want to
observe at VMP during the week any time in the coming months, you should
contact a board member as soon as possible for instructions.
Mike Deneen
President
NSAAC Welcomes Our New Members:
Kerry
Murphy of
Jesus Hernandez of
Brian Wells of Rowley
Minutes of the NSAAC Business
Mtg.
President Deneen called the December Business Meeting of
the NSAAC to order at
Committee
Reports:
Secretary: The minutes
of the November Business Meeting were not assembled, but will be approved at
the next business meeting.
Treasurer:
No treasurer's report. We presently have 108
members.
Star
Parties: No Report
Old Business:
Leor Zolman is going to do the newsletter as Rich
Bickerton did his last newsletter in December.
The deadline for submissions to the newsletter is the Wednesday after
the business meeting. We are going to
have PDF files with color photos for the electronic version [...well, eventually. I've got some basic
ramp-up work to do before going for glory... -lz]
New
Business
The
Board met with the Board of Veasey to discuss the safety issues and the
lighting for the security at Veasey.
They agreed to let us provide shielding for the lights and to put a
switch and timer on the outdoor floodlight.
Veasey is going to be having more outside events on Saturday night and
therefore we should start using IRWS on Saturday night. We should not be using Veasey on a Saturday
night. If someone wants to use Veasey
weeknights they must call a board member a day before so that the board can
notify Veasey that someone will be observing on a weeknight. No observing unless these rules are followed.
The next Board meeting was set for
The program for this evening was a Book Fair hosted
by Barrie Sawyer.
Meeting
adjourned at
Respectively submitted,
John Hobbs, Secretary NSAAC
Talk for January
Our speaker this month will once again be Michael Deneen. Mike will be demonstrating the good and bad points of his quick-look setup, consisting of his LXD-55 AR5, Meade's goto f9.3 achromat, on a Universal Astronomics surveyor tripod and Unistar mount, with a TeleVue BinoVue. Which of these things would he not buy again? Come to the January club meeting to find out.
We are 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@comcast.net, or at the general business meetings.
Dennis Gudzevich
Program Coordinator
Star Party News
Our next star party is
Directions to
Take
I-93 (south) to exit 37A, turn off onto Ramp and merge onto I-95 north. Travel on I-95 north for 7.4 miles to exit
44B. Turn off onto Ramp and travel for
0.6 miles to roundabout and take the second exit onto 129(south/east). Continue on 129 for 3.6 miles and turn left
(north/east) onto 107(129). After 0.7
miles turn right onto 129 (
Getting to
From Interstate 95 north, take the Route 133 west (54B)
exit, and follow it into
Contact Information
For more information about the club and its
activities, contact Barrie Sawyer,
Membership Director, email: membership@nsaac.org
or contact Mike Deneen, President, e-mail at president@nsaac.org. If you have no email access, you may phone
Richard Bickerton, Vice President at 978-887-8533.
Our
club web site is: http://www.nsaac.org.
E-Mail Listserve
If you have email access and are an NSAAC member in
good standing, 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)
Body: subscribe NSAAC Full-Name <email-address>
Note to all Listserve participants: For now,
please post messages to the list using
the address nsaac@atmob.org (rather than nsaac@nsaac.org as the confirmation email
instructs).
To remove yourself from the email list send the same
message but replace subscribe with "unsubscribe" in the message body.
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