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

MEETING AT MONTE THIS MONTH

As discussed in the June meeting, the regular meeting of the OAS will not be held at the Ott Planetarium this month, (or in August for that matter). The planned overnight star party/camp out at the Monte Cristo Campground will serve as our meeting.

Members can arrive anytime during the week but the official Pot Luch dinner and star parties will be on Friday and Saturday the 12^th and 13^th.

Monte Cristo campground is about 28 miles east of Pine View reservoir along Highway 39 in the Cache Wasatch National Forest. The best camp sites are around loop "E" but anywhere in the campground is accessible to the meadow. Contact one of your Executive members for further details.

MINUTES

OGDEN ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY

June 13, 2002

The monthly meeting of the Ogden Astronomical Society was called to order by club president Dave Dunn at 7:30 p.m.

Dave informed the members of the decision that the July and August meetings will be held at the Monte Cristo camp out and star parties set for the weekends of July 13 and August 10. Camping and Pot Luck dinners will be as before.

The ALCON event is scheduled to begin on July 31 .The OAS will be participating. For specifics contact Dave Dunn or Deloy and Karen Pierce.

A star party at Powder Ridge is set for August 17.

Dr. Sohl is in the process of procuring financing for updating the PAWS 25-inch telescope. The improvements will make the telescope much more portable. John also was asked questions about the recent story of the "Space Ice" that was actually water from an airplane. John announced that two new PH.D.'s are joining the WSU Physics Department. Both new staff members are women. The competition was grueling and John believes the university got two top people.

The evening's "Show and Tell" got started. Topics included astronomical web sites, recent photographic work by members and mirror testing equipment.

The meeting adjourned to discussions at 9:20 p.m.

Bob Tillotson, Secretary

STAR [PARTIES FOR JULY

AND EARLY AUGUST 2002

• The July Antelope Island is scheduled for Saturday July 6. The moon will be in a late waning phase rising about 3:00 a.m.

• The weekend of July 13 is the overnight Monte Cristo camp out and star party.
• Saturday August 3 the OAS will participate in a star party at Antelope Island State Park for the ALCON event.
• The weekend of August 10 will be the second Monte Cristo Star Party and camp out.

2002 GRAND CANYON STAR PARTY

NORTH RIM

OUR MOTTO IS: "Come to the Grand Canyon and see the Grand Universe!!!"

The North Rim Grand Canyon Star Party 7th year was a great success! It went from Saturday, June 8th, through Saturday, June 15th. The seeing conditions were very steady and clear except for the first night and day when the winds were very strong. As we drove down, we had a strong head-wind from just past Nephi on Friday to the Grand Canyon on Saturday which doesn't help on gas mileage. We spent Friday Night with Jerry and Cindy Foote in Kanab and enjoyed their hospitality. Jerry did some of his computer imaging on a variable star that he is studying with his telescope while he sleeps and then has the data to process the next day.

Each day starts with mid-day solar viewing (from about 10:00 am to about 1:00 p.m.) usually with our 1000 Oaks Optical type 2 glass filter on an Astroscan. The wind on Sunday did not allow for any solar viewing. The other days while we were there we had to depend on other solar scopes since after we took or scopes to the porch and tied tarps over them Saturday June 8th, a VERY STRONG gust of wind came and blew over the Astroscan and Karen's 10" Dobsonian. The Astroscan was cracked and the mirror loose so we could not use it. When we got home, we took it to "Scott Crosby's Telescope Hospital" Scott was able to repair the damage. Thanks Scott. Karen's 10" had no damage and was able to be used during the week. We also decided the last few days to be up by the Visitor Center instead of on the porch of the Lodge. The walk-by traffic is lots better at that location.

Also during the solar party was when Karen worked with the kids 12 and younger in making them Jr. Astronomer. She had games to play, and handouts to color. Then the hardest requirement needs to happen, that of looking through a telescope, which allows them to become a Junior Astronomers. Each child receives a personalized certificate with their names and date listed as well as a small badge. This is the 4th year that she has provided this program. The first year there were about 40 Junior Astronomrs which we considered a great success. The Rangers at the Grand Canyon also seemed pleased with this new program and encourages us to continue it. 2000, the numbers more than doubled with 86 achievers, and last year, 2001, there were almost 200, this year, 2002, she handed out 156 Junior Astronomers Certificates.

At 7 p.m. each evening a slide show was presented in the Lodge's 150 seat auditorium. This year 4 different participants brought a slide show to share. The topics ranged from "Scale of the Solar System" with props for the audience to see, "Our Variable Sky" which discussed different ways of observing night-time objects from eyes to binoculars to telescopes to satellites and how there are constant changes in what we see, the other 2 shows were on general astronomy. In the near future, we would like to have another show on constellations, and then maybe still another one on constellation mythology.) These slides shows are about 30 to 45 minutes long. During the slide show we had from 50 to 125 public in attendance. The public always are amazed at the information they learn about the night skies and the universe.

While the rangers do their slide show the astronomers are setting up the big scopes on the south-east patio of the Lodge. On some evenings when we had several scopes, Deloy and I we available to do "constellation point-out" and binocular viewing with the public sometimes having as many as 75 - 100 each night watching our "Star-Stabber" point to the stars. Jupiter and Venus put on their show before it was dark and the public enjoyed seeing these planets through a telescope. Toward the end of the week, we lost sight of Jupiter because of the roof of the lodge, but the moon took it's place near Venus. Public participation went as high as 450 per evening. The public was usually looking through our scopes until about 11:30 after which the astronomers sometimes did viewing for 4 or 5 more hours.

Also a great event that took place was the eclipse on Monday evening. It was about 65% at the Grand Canyon and with 5 solar scopes, eclipse glasses (10) and #14 welders glass (2) and pinhole cards (4), the crowd of about 400 was able to take several looks at the eclipse as it progressed. The Eclipse party was held in front of the Visitor Center.

For the week, overall tourist participation for the 8 days at our activities was approximately 5000; a significant increase over 1996's 2500. Volunteer man-hours by participants exceeded 730 and a total of 68 telescopes (counting 1 for each program that the scope was used at). Astronomers came from all over the country. One fellow from California organized a group on Astro-Mart chat room and had at least 10 on his list, some of the other states represented were: 1 from Alaska, 1 from Missouri, 8 from Arizona, and 7 from Las Vegas club, we were the only representatives from Utah. A few from the Las Vegas club were there last year and want to continue growing and make this an annual trip for many club members from their club.

Total volunteers for the 8 days were 24 (but 104 if counted once for each day they help at a program). Total scopes each night ranged from 5 to 14. Sizes of scopes ranged from 80 mm to 20", an 18" and 17" Dobsonians. At the end of each of the participants' stay we felt like we were saying good-bye to a long-time friend. We are hoping to keep in touch with them and to see each other at other North Rim Star Parties in the future. Many may be able to come to ALCON 2002.

We had a great relationship again with the park rangers. The same rangers that we worked with last year were assigned to us again this year. Darby Bramble is a cute young vivacious girl from the Seattle area. She went out of her way to make sure all was well with all of the astronomers and that we had all we needed. Roger Kline was also there for part of the week. They really seem to appreciate us and for the week did away with the "Night Walk" so that rangers could learn from the astronomers and look through the telescopes each night. This year the astronomers had 3 individual sites instead of the one group site. This was lots better and hope to continue with the individual sites for future years. The park advertises our activities at each of the information boards and doors of restrooms.

This is the 7th year of the Grand Canyon Star Party on the North Rim. The activity is becoming more popular with repeat participants. We have grown to really love doing this activity each year and wish that others from Utah would help us out.

LOTS OF ENTHUSIASM AT

ANTELOPE ISLAND IN JUNE

The Antelope Island star party on June 15 was a good one. I think that everyone enjoyed the good clear sky. The slightly less than first quarter moon was in the sickle of Leo. Even with the moon in that position I was still able to enjoy M65 and M66 (in Leo's tail).

I had First Light for one of the telescopes that I have been building this year. The 8" telescope that I had just finished putting together earlier that day performed well. M65 and M66 appeared brighter in the 8" than they did in the 10" telescope that I had Shawn using. My first guess is that maybe the 10" gathered more of the Moon's light and washed it out a little. I spent the whole star party using the 8" and saw nebula, globular clusters, galaxies, double stars and of course the Moon.

Having two small Dobsonians also allowed me to spend more time teaching the sky to Shawn. He really concentrated and tried to learn that evening. He learned how to get several of the clusters in Scorpio and was starting into Sagittarius when we had to pack up and go home.

I hope to see you all at Monte Cristo. Dark sky and a lot of fun.

Dave Dunn

Jim Seargeant's - Images

The Moon - Mare Imbrium (Click on image for higher resolution version.)

This picture of the Mare Imbrium (the sea of rain) region of the moon is the result of images taken by three of John Sohl's students [editor's note: the print version of this was in error], Lance Jeffery, Conrad Smith, and John Pratt on 22 Apr 02. The best four of the five shots they took were calibrated, median combined, and enhanced through a series of sharpening and unsharp masking processes. It took a bit of experimentation to learn how to sharpen the image without over-doing it; too much sharpening just makes the noise in the image dominate. As it is, any additional magnification of the image shows the artifacts introduced through the processing. The images were taken through my 12" Meade LX200 using an f/6.3 focal reducer and SBIG ST7 CCD camera. At high resolution, the shortest possible exposure time of .11 seconds was just adequate to image the bright moon - some of he areas on the east side of the image are saturated (overexposed).

At the time these images were made, the sun was really lighting up the Jura Mountains that form the rim of Sinus Iridium (the "inlet of iridescence" or the "bay of rainbows") - that's what caught our eye as we cruised along the terminator looking for something interesting to shoot. The unusual straightness of the Valles Alpines was also visible.

Jim Seargeant

On 14 Sep, 59 the USSR's Lunar 2 was the first spacecraft to land on the moon; it impacted east of the crater Archimedes. (http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/MasterCatalog?sc=1959-014A)

Luna 17, which landed to the south of Cape Heraclides, transported an automatic mobile laboratory, Lunokhod 1, to the moon on 17 Nov 70. (http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/MasterCatalog?sc=1970-095A )

In 1971, Apolo 15 landed at Hadley Rille, to the right of Archmides near the edge of the image.

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/apollo15info.html

Information on all of the moon exploration missions can be at: http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/apolloland.html. A map showing the landing sites is at http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/moon_landing_map.jpg.