Before the power returned to the building though elections for new club officers were conducted. The following O.A.S. members, in good standing, will represent the club Executive Committee for the next twelve months:
Club dues are in order as of the September "Annual" meeting. Please forward your $12.00 to our ever watchful and tenacious club Treasurer, Doug Say, as soon as possible. You can annie-up to Doug at the meeting on the 9th, drop them off to the Say Country Club personally or mail them to:
Mr. Doug Say
2060 West 1025 North
Farr West, UT 84404
Members who have not been accounted for by the November meeting will not receive continued club benefits (the newsletter, etc.) in December.
The October meeting of the Ogden Astronomical Society will be held this Thursday October 9 at 7:30 p.m. in the Ott Planetarium on the Weber State University campus.
Returning to Ogden from an exciting couple of days out of town, to present a paper on Project Starshine, Dr. John Sohl will be the evening's main speaker. John will present a taped presentation featuring Mathew Gollembeck, chief scientist for the Mars Pathfinder mission. The latest available information on the Cassini mission to Saturn is planned and, discussion on the Kansas Cosmosphere and Planetarium Convention will be discussed.
Remember, club dues are due. See Doug at the meeting.
One score and seven years ago, a group of wise and farsighted gentlemen composed a document intended to unite local astronomers and offer a means to spread the word of science to our community. That document was the O.A.S. Constitution. Article I states the "Purpose" of the club: "...to promote interest and education in astronomy among people in the Ogden area." This codicil was not intended to be seasonal in its application.
With the end of the Antelope Island star parties for this year, I encourage each O.A.S. member to now focus their energies on supporting the Ott Planetarium star parties each Wednesday night following the 7:30 p.m. shows. If each member would just contribute one Wednesday night a month to help Dr. Sohl and staff it would be a great help. It is a small effort to donate. The star parties rarely last more than two hours. The university provides the telescopes. There are a lot of us to share the load.
This can be a good learning experience. The crowds are usually small and they don't stay long. I think this is a splendid way to learn new skills and polish up on our old ones. We all know that the best way to learn is to teach. If you haven't been out to the star parties don't be shy. Every one of us had a 'FIRST TIME' and the 'seasoned' members will be happy to help anyone get through that FIRST TIME.
Remember, O.A.S. members attending the star parties are admitted into the planetarium shows FREE. Think about why you joined the O.A.S. Are you a bench warmer or a player? I would like to see everyone of us be a PLAYER.
I'll see you out there on Wednesday nights.
Steve Peterson
One of the most interesting O.A.S. meetings this year was forced to a sudden close last month when campus security asked the members and our guest speaker to evacuate the planetarium. A "coolant leak" in one of the buildings adjacent to the science center presented a hazardous condition requiring the sudden closure.
Our speaker, Lowell Lyon a former S.L.A.S. President, was well into a fine discussion about the Astronomical League and a slide tour of star party sites around the state when the closure was demanded. Members left the planetarium and attempted to conclude the meeting near the upper parking lot, under a starry sky. No luck. As we watched the Ogden emergency and fire equipment surround the area it was decided to adjourn the meeting and head for safer digs.
All this is bad enough but becomes even more unusual considering the whole meeting had been delayed due to a major power outage. The meeting had convened in the hallway outside the planetarium-. Only after the power returned was the group able to enter the planetarium to continue the meeting, until the evacuation came.
Before the power returned to the building though elections for new
club officers were conducted. The following O.A.S. members, in good standing,
will represent the club Executive Committee for the next twelve months:
On Friday September 26, 1997 a miracle occurred. The skies cleared off beautifully, just in time for a fine star party to conclude the day's Project Starshine activities at Weber State University.
Many thanks go out to the club members who brought out their valued instruments to share with the teachers attending the meetings. An estimated 150 people attended the evening's viewing event. Most of these were primary and secondary school teachers.
They were starry-eyed. The teachers loved it. There were more Oooh's and Aaah's that night than are even heard at Antelope Island. The members instructed the teachers on the use of a telescope, what there is to see out there and how to find it. Some of the teachers brought their own telescopes and members explained how to set them up and use them. At least three schools will be contacting the O.A.S. to schedule star parties for their students.
Representatives from the Hansen Planetarium were there along with people from Iomega, (Brent Watson gave a talk), Thiokol and many others. Dr. Sohl thanks the members for participating in this worth while event.
Recent issues of The Star Diagonal have carried "Elgie's Picture of the Month". These CCD images Elgie is taking contain an amazing amount of detail which, unfortunately, cannot be reproduced in this newsletter because of the photocopy process that is used. In order to view these beautiful images in detail, readers are referred to the O.A.S. web site at:
Also, Elgie has his own web site in which he posts most of the images he takes. Members can access this at the address below:
CORRECTIONS:
The September Star Diagonal carried an incorrect issue number. It should have read No. 12.
Elgie's Picture of the Month in September indicated the exposure
was 1/32 sec. It should have read 30 seconds. The Editor regrets the errors.
Bob Tillotson
The Man:
Many of us probably first became aware of Carl Sagan, astronomer, when COSMOS burst over the airwaves. COSMOS was very exiting! An average of 500 million viewers, in over sixty countries, watched each episode. The book then sold more copies than any other science book ever written! It explored the universe, with its billions and billions of neat things from atoms, to cells and life with different levels of data storage and retrieval systems like DNA and brains. Then there was storage beyond the organism such as books and computers, stars in a galaxy and the numbers of galaxies themselves. After that we started noticing Sagan's appearance in various science specials. So it was for me, anyway.
But even then, I wondered just who this man was! What were his credentials as a "Planetary Scientist"? When the news came of Carl Sagan's death on December 20, 1996, I knew some answers to this question, but not a lot. Here are some things I have since learned about the man:
Carl Sagan was born in 1937, in New York. He married three times, and has three sons and two daughters. Following two ungratifyling marriages he found Ann Druyan. She wrote books and articles with him. Sagan authored 14 books. Contact, his only novel, is now a movie. Then there were over a hundred professional papers, and multitudes of popular magazine articles and TV shows. The latter included appearances on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. He was JPL's television spokesman for the Mariner Mars flybys, and the Pioneer 10 Jupiter flyby. In 1994 he began struggling with a type of anemia that turned out to be a cancerous precursor to leukemia. Despite three bon-marrow donations from his sister that had put the tumors in remission, a pneumonia complication two years later claimed his life.
Carl Sagan studied at the University of Chicago. He earned both a BA and a B.S. degree. Then, the MS was in Physics, followed by a Ph.D. in Astronomy and Astrophysics. Some of his under graduate training was under the tutelage of Nobel laureate H. J. Muller. He taught at Harvard and Cornell, and worked at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the Ames Research Center. One of his students later directed this center. Sagan co-founded and was President of the Planetary Society. He has won many high awards including 18 honorary university degrees!
His first paper actually dealt with genetics and was based upon work
done as an under graduate college student. This piece came out in 1957,
the year Sputnik's flight initiated the Space Age. He later trained in
Biochemistry to the level of doing Ph.D. research. Sagan was sole author
for many of his papers, but was noted for never hogging the glory when
he worked with others. Collaborations often found him acting as a mentor
to exceptional, younger researchers; others often found ideas freely tossed
to them.
The Planetary Scientist:
As a Planetary Scientist, Sagan's first big project involved Venus, proving its surface to be hellaciously hot (900 F or 480C). A runaway greenhouse effect due to high amounts of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) was the reason. These also affect Earth and other planets but to a lesser amount. This work was mostly done using Earth based radar imagery made prior to spacecraft investigations of the planet.
He next turned to Mariner based studies of Mars, his favorite non-Earth planet. He dearly wanted to find extraterrestrial life. His relentless objectivity led him to disprove Professor Lowell's idea that the spring and summer darkening of the hemispheres is due not to growth and dying of plants, but to winds removing and redepositing fine dust. Moreover, the place is cold. Pathfinder found that in summer, lows of -109 F, -78 C and highs of only to +7 F, -13C are not uncommon.
Carl Sagan's career spanned the days of interplanetary flight. His projects involved a majority of United States robotic spacecraft beginning with Lunar Ranger, most of the Mariners, the Voyagers and Galileo. He was also keenly interested in the upcoming Cassini/Hyugen Mission to Saturn and Titan. Manned Missions caught his interest only in later years, particularly in the context of international manned flights to Mars.
There were three main areas of interest in Dr. Sagan's work: 1) The nature and history of planetary atmospheres, 2) Pre-biotic Planetary Chemistry or how the planets came to be the way they are and 3) The theory of, and the actual search for, extraterrestrial life, intelligent or otherwise.
These ideas often intertwined. He conducted lab experiments similar to those done previously proving that life on earth probably had a chemical beginning. Jolts of static electricity shot through gasses like the atmospheres of Jupiter, Saturn and its satellite Titan, produced gook similar in color to the bands on those bodies. Moreover, the gook included life precursing, carbon-based (organic) compounds.
Carl Sagan established the scientific reasons for SETI (Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence). Three active programs grew out of this. He was the driving force behind the Humanity ID Plaque attached to Pioneer 10, and the "Voices of Earth," record player on the two Voyager spacecraft. Interest in Atomics, and similarities with the Yucatan Cretaceous/Tertiary (K/T) impact crater gave rise to the idea of Nuclear Winter.
Quite a career!
His Spirit:
We have seen COSMOS' author, Carl Sagan, in several perspectives. His family life, as a father, as a husband who went through divorce then found a happy partnership to a woman with whom he could share his work. Not too unlike many of our lives.
The man was incredibly productive, authoring many papers. He was a phenomenal teacher, reaching people through television, books and magazines. But his professional life also included giving college lectures, seminars and coaching both students and younger colleagues. Indeed, one way or another, Carl Sagan is credited with training most of today's Planetary Scientists! Sagan's influence lead others into choosing scientific careers.
It is said, "at meetings, whenever he entered a room, there was suddenly a striking hush; the participants knew that the level of discussion would now be higher. Carl Sagan could be counted on to contribute some truly marvelous insights."
In all ways, he was a remarkable man!
As a closing reminder of his spirit, I leave you with two of Carl Sagan's favorite quotes. The first is his own; the second, from Albert Einstein:
"The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It
is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a
stranger, who can no longer wonder, or stand rapt in awe, is as good as
dead; his eyes are closed... To know that what is impenetrable to us really
exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty
which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms
- this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness.
In this sense, and this sense only, I belong to the rank of devoutly religious
men."
1) THE PLANETARY REPORT, vol. XVII May/Jn issue, (memorial) March/April (article urging the Society to follow CS' ideals). July/Aug, (letter).
2) DISCOVER. May 97. Pp. 45-49 (memorial)
3) The Carl Sagan Web Home page
This photo was taken with the ST-6 on September 29,1997 at 22:14:20 MDT. It is a 40sec. Exposure.
M55 (NGC6809) coordinates (for those who use circles) position 19H 36m 9s +31 03m. A large but loose-structured globular star cluster located about 7 to the east and slightly south from Zeta Sagittari in the "Milk Dipper". Early observers commented on the unusual "openness" of this star cluster. This impression is due to the fact that only a relatively small percentage of the members exceed a brightness of 13th or 14th magnitude. The cluster does not begin to "fill in" until one reaches about 17th mag. where a vast swarm of stars quite suddenly appears. This is what you are seeing in this image.
Elgie
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