OAS Executive Committee President- Dave Dunn

Ph. (801) 544-7705

Vice Pres- Lee Priest

Ph. (801) 479-5803

Secretary- Bob Tillotson

Ph. (801) 773-8106

Treasurer- Doug Say

(801) 731-7324

ANOTHER MEETING AT

MONTE CRISTO THIS MONTH

Once again, the overnight star party and camp out at the Monte Cristo campground August 9 & 10 will substitute for the regular August meeting of the OAS. Many members like to arrive at the camp ground by Thursday so as to get the best pick of the sites. Pot Luck dinners will be Friday and Saturday evenings. Unfortunately, camp fires are still not allowed in the forest but without the camp fires, there is no smoke floating through air to degrade the viewing.

The campground is 41 miles from the mouth of Ogden Canyon up Hwy. 39; just foller' yer nose, you can't miss it. If you need additional information, contact one of your Executive Committee members.

NEEDED

OAS LEADERS FOR 2002 - 2003!

STEP UP AND TAKE A PART

The Nominating Committee is still seeking dutiful and enthusiastic OAS members to fill the President, Vice President and Secretary positions for the upcoming year. This allows, you, the opportunity to make a real difference in the club. Your ideas and talents are welcome and needed to build a strong and productive association. Do not be shy. Contact committee chairman, Bob Tillotson, at 773-8106 or e-mail to bob@skyplanner.com, and make the difference.

STAR PARTY LOCATION CHANGED

The August 17th Star Party that was scheduled for Powder Mountain has been moved to Antelope Island. The Powder Mountain Star Party will be rescheduled and announced at a later date. Antelope Island has added this to their schedule and will be expecting us. John has updated the OAS web page with this change.

MONTE CRISTO CAMP OUT - STAR PARTY

ANOTHER IN A SUCCESSFUL SERIES

Reported by Dave Dunn

The July Monte Cristo Star Party was a fun event. We had great weather and some real good viewing at night. My family arrived on Tuesday night. We were a little late getting away and I didn't setup the telescopes that night. Wednesday night was real nice. I spent several hours looking at various galaxies and studying part of the Virgo cluster. Thursday night I spent a lot of time looking a globular clusters near Sagittarius.

The real stand out night was Friday. I had seen all of the Messier objects available the first two nights so I decided to look at some NGC objects. I noticed a galaxy (NGC3998) near the handle side of the bowl of the Big Dipper on the Orion Map. I pointed my 10" f/4.5 at it and saw two galaxies. They were very small fuzzy stars. I decided to see the galaxies would look like in BOB. Doug put 3998 into the Sky Wizard and pointed BOB at the galaxies. There were three of them there. The two I had seen earlier were still just fuzzy stars. The other one was a nice spiral galaxy. Doug was tired and went to bed so several of us spent the next couple of hours looking at galaxies around the Big Dipper. The Sky Atlas 2000.0 shows a whole bunch of galaxies in this area. It think the prettiest thing we saw that night was M101. This had always been a round smudge when I had seen it before. This night in BOB it was a beautiful face on spiral galaxy. We could see the arms clearly and could see knots of stars in the arms.

I hope to see you all up at Monte Cristo for August. I plan to arrive on Tuesday night. We hold a potluck dinner on Friday and Saturday nights. Bring anything you want. We will have a couple of gas grills if you want to cook a steak or hot dog. If you need directions feel free to give one of us a call. You don't need your own telescope in order to come up and enjoy the sky. See you there.