The Celestial Observer

 

Newsletter of the North Shore Amateur Astronomy Club

 

 

March, 2003

 

To Download This Months Newsletter Click Here 

 

From the President

 

Well, another year has passed for the NSAAC, and although it has been a terrible winter in New England for observing, it looks as though we’re doing pretty well as a club. We’re in good shape fiscally, membership is holding steady, and member renewals look good so far. I’d like to recognize two outgoing board members, Treasurer Dave Fournier and membership director Dave Thomas, for their efforts in these areas over the past year.

 

It’s customary to address the state of the club in this final pre-election newsletter, and I’ll do so only briefly. Over the past year we’ve tried to refocus our monthly business meetings on amateur astronomy and telescopes; as part of this effort we’ve reduced our use of Robert’s rules to an absolute minimum, and in general tried to center the monthly business meetings on the true business of the club, sharing our interest in the night sky. To help keep the board’s focus on observing, we’ve made the committee heads responsible for star parties and for club programs & activities full participants in board meetings. Our guest speakers are a larger part of our business meetings, and we’re booked pretty far into the spring with interesting people and programs.

 

While this has been a slow time for observing, it is a busy time for the club: membership renewals are due this month, and our annual elections will be held at the next business meeting on Friday, March 7. This should be an interesting and entertaining meeting, and I hope to see you all there.

 

Mike Deneen

President

Business Meeting Minutes for the March, 2003 Meeting of the NSAAC

President Deneen called the February Business Meeting of the NSAAC to order at 8:08 PM. President Deneen called for introduction of new guests: Mr. Steve Chamberlin was a guest. 20 members were in attendance plus 5 board members.

 

Committee Reports:

Treasurer: Dave Fournier gave the treasures report. We are doing OK. He has finished the 2001-2002 final report. Motion made to approve the Treasurers report. Motion approved.

 

Upcoming Events: Swap Meet is taking place after this evening’s business meeting. The talk in March is going to be on light pollution and the talk in April will be on software.

 

Membership: Memberships have to be renewed by the March business meeting in order to vote in the next elections.

 

Merrimack College: Kevin Ackert reported that they had the best observing in a long time. There were twelve boy scouts plus Fred Sammartino and some of his friends.

 

Salem State: The Observatory was open but there has not been a lot of public attendance. The weather has been bad and there has been no observing. The dome needs to be lubricated, but we cannot as yet get the school to do it.

 

Star Parties: There was a star party at the IRWS February 4th. 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, on March 20th from 6:00 to 8:00PM. Location not yet determined.  Probably the last star party of the year will be at Endicott College April 8th.

 

Share System: No report.

 

Unfinished Business: Gorilla Astronomy was discussed. Jim Foy has agreed to start some effort on this. Dave Thomas mentioned the new member’s package.

 

New Business: Elections are to be held in the March meeting. Chris Nichols of the Nominating committee reported on the slate of proposed candidates. Astronomy Day is May 12 and the club has been invited to have a table at the MOS. Barrie Sawyer questioned whether it is worth the effort to have a table there in terns of gaining new members. The club will have an event at IRWS with Gary Meehan giving his last talk. At Vesay we will have a large observing session and Barrie Sawyer has volunteered to give a talk on Star Lore. Richard Amirault mentioned making a video on astronomy featuring the club members observing and presenting a star party. He volunteered to look into heading a committee to do this.

Dennis Gudzevich mentioned that Adrian Bjornison is writing a new book on creation and would like to have a few club members proof read the book. Contact him if interested.

Dave Thomas suggested that it is time that someone should inquire whether Sky and Telescope is offering their introduction to Astronomy and other pamphlets.

Barrie Sawyer recommended a new book by Timothy Ferris entitled “Seeing in the Dark”. Barrie Sawyer is also going to sponsor an open house at Starport in April, May, or June.

Dennis Gudzevich has found a company to make hats and Tee shirts at reasonable prices.

 

Meeting adjourned at 9:08 PM

 

Respectively submitted, John Hobbs,

 Secretary NSAAC

 

Star Party News

 

Our first star party this month is Tuesday, March 11, at the Camp Kent Environmental Center, Amesbury MA.   Set-up is 6:30 to 7:00 PM.  A program will start at 7:00 PM and last for about one hour. Telescope observations start at 8:00 PM and end by 9:30 PM.  The star party will not be cancelled for weather.  About 20 people are expected. 

 

Directions to Camp Kent Environmental Center:

Take route 95 N; Get off at exit 58B (Amesbury Route 110 exit) Go to end of ramp and follow, Stay in right lane
Bear right at the lights onto Elm St. (Keeping gas station on left) Follow until you get to downtown Amesbury- You'll be at a rotary. Take first right at rotary and you will be on route 150 N (keep Provident Bank on your right and Amesbury Cooperative Bank on your left) Bear left at the fork (after Whittier Press on right) onto South Hampton Rd.
Battice Farm is approx. 1 mile on your left from the fork ( you will go by Amesbury Elementary School and the old Amesbury Ski Tow). If you go past 92 South Hampton Road, you've gone too far.

 

Our second star party is Thursday, March 20 at the Bates Elementary School, 53 Liberty Hill Ave, Salem, MA.  At this time, I don’t have detailed directions to the school.  Please call me at 978-470-3902 (home) if you need directions. They will be posted on the list server a few days before the star party.

 

This is a general science day for the township that is open to all schools.  The program starts at 6:00 PM and ends at 8:00 PM and will not be cancelled for weather.  If you can arrive earlier to set-up, it would be appreciated.  Most people that stop by will want to look through a telescope.  I will have an automated presentation (15 minutes) on our solar system that starts every 15 minutes.  About 300 people are expected.

 

Jim Foy

Star Party Coordinator

 

 

NSAAC Swap Meet Held in February

 

This is a brief recap of our first NSAAC swap meet held on February 21, 2003 at VMP. It was rescheduled from our original February 7, 2003 date, which was snowed out. We had a good turnout for our first meet. There were several tables filled with items such as telescopes, binoculars, mounts, tripods, eyepieces, books, star atlases, and other odds and ends. There was a lot of looking, but few buyers this time around. However, it gave us hope that we can have future swap meets with greater success. I’d like to thank all of you that participated in the swap meet, and would like feedback, either positive or negative, from you about it. Also any suggestions for future swap meets will be welcome.

 

Dennis Gudzevich

Program Coordinator

 

 

Talk for March

 

We are honored to have a guest speaker from outside of our club this month. His name is John Petrowicz. Mr. Petrowicz is a Senior Mechanical Design Engineer for General Electric, and has won various patent awards for jet engine design. He is active in various facets of astronomy, both visual and radio, and is deeply involved with HAM radio. He has given talks to local schools, Scouts, and the general public, as well as operating his Star Gate Observatory in Rowley. John is a member of the IDA (International Dark Sky Association), NELPAG (New England Light Pollution Advisor Group), and IESNA (Illumination Engineering Society of North America). He has been a lighting consultant for a number of years to local area towns including Rowley and Ipswich, and has been providing education to area towns about light pollution and the proper use of exterior lighting fixtures and illumination levels to IES standards. He has also lectured at Northeastern University and at the National IDA Conference at Harvard Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.

 

Mr. Petrowicz’s talk is entitled “The Lighting of America”. Please make every effort to attend. We should all be aware of the impact that light pollution has had on our observing sessions by now.

I am also 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, or at the VMP observing site on partly cloudy to clear Friday evenings.

 

Dennis Gudzevich

Program Coordinator

 

Merrimac Observing

For the first time in recent memory, we had a clear 3rd Thursday last week, and even "balmy" evening temperatures in the mid-30's.New Englanders are a hearty bunch, and we had a nice crowd of about 30 people come thru the observatory.  Visitors included a cub scout troop, some young couples on dates, some students of Prof Ralph Pass's astro class, some first-timers, and a couple interested spectators who said they'd been waiting a couple of years for a convenient clear Thurs evening for a return visit to the observatory. 

It was a very enjoyable evening with excellent views of Jupiter, Saturn, Orion nebula and even some galaxies.  Once we realized that we needed to keep the observatory door shut to prevent the entire heat of the 4 story building from flowing up the stairs and out the observatory dome slit, the seeing was quite good.

The highlight of the evening was a Ganymede moon shadow transit that we were alerted to by astute guest and Cub Scout leader Paul Ferguson.  About 15 members of the public were there at 8:30 when the shadow was first visible, and everyone was able to see it.  There are a lot of "wow's" and "cool!" from the observing public when they saw the shadow for the first time - a solar eclipse happening in real time (well actually about 1 light-hour delayed!) on Jupiter.

Kevin and I stayed to watch Ganymede itself emerge from in front of the disk of Jupiter.  Very interesting.  Over a period of about 10 minutes, Ganymede went from being a small "zit" on Jupiter to a fully-detached ball with a thin dark line separating it from Jupiter.  For several minutes we had a wonderful 3-D perspective of the event as Ganymede could clearly be seen hovering over the darkened cloud tops on the rim of Jupiter.

 Let's hope that this is the start of a trend, and we get more than one clear 3rd Thursday in 2003!

 

Fred Sammartino

 

Getting to Veasey Memorial Park

From Interstate 95 north, take the Route 133 west (54B) exit, and follow it into Georgetown Center. Go straight through the light, now on Route 97n. Go about 1.5 miles and take a left onto Salem Street (Tea Garden Restaurant at this intersection). Stay on Salem Street and turn left onto Washington Street. VMP is a short distance down on the right

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 Veasey Memorial Park, 201 Washington Street, Groveland, MA 01834-2007.  The Treasurer then sends it on to the magazine.

 

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.

 

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