The 1997 Annual meeting of the Ogden Astronomical Society will be held on Thursday September 11, 1997 in the Ott Planetarium on the Weber State University campus. The annual election of club officers will be the first order of business. As before, elections will be by silent ballot. The results will be announced before the end of the meeting.

This year's slate of nominees is:
 

President:	Vice Pres:	Secretary:	Treasurer:
Steve Peterson	Bob Jones	Bob Tillotson	Doug Say
Open	Elgie Mills	Open	Open
	Deloy Pierce

The three slots that remain open for nomination may be filled by nomination from the floor as long as the nominee has been contacted and has accepted the nomination prior to the "Annual" meeting.

Following the election, a guest speaker will talk to the members. Mr. Lowell Lyon, a former President of the Salt Lake Astronomical Society (SLAS), will speak about the national organization The Astronomical League and will conduct us through a slide tour of some recent SLAS star parties in various areas of our state.

This Saturday, September, 6 will be the last in this year's series of Antelope Island star parties. It has been a great year for public events. Many hundreds of people have viewed the cosmos through the telescopes of the O.A.S. members and the members have been generous to share their time and knowledge with the visitors.

Saturday's event will close out this successful year. No official public or private star parties have been slated beyond this one. Everyone is encouraged to attend this last big fling at the island. At dusk John Sohl will be conducting the slide tour through the universe. Then the telescopes will turn to the skies. Most members will agree that the seeing has been acceptional at the island this year. Weather predictions for this weekend are reasonably good so a successful event is anticipated. Bring the family and enjoy. The $6.00 park fee is waived for O.A.S. members.

On August first and second, O.A.S. members gathered under the pines at the Monte Cristo campground in the Cache/Wasatch National Forest. We were treated to three nights of starry skies, (Thursday was the best) and warn clear days. The food was marvelous, conversations ranged from the usual to the unusual and no star-struck casualties were suffered. Thanks go the members who participated and to the U.S Forest Service for permitting access to the meadow again this year.

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Saturn and the Moon get together on the morning of September 18^th (4:50 A.M.). If Saturn's rings were aligned north-south rather than east-west, in fact, we would see the tip of the rings closest to the Moon would almost graze the Lunar edge, as viewed from the Ogden area. As we observe further south toward Provo, Utah, we can expect to see various degrees of occultation. Titan, the largest and brightest of Saturn's moons will also be the southern-most at the time and will be occulted from Salt Lake City. Unfortunately, the Moon will be nearly full (16.45 days old) making 8.2 magnitude Titan difficult to see. Still, the event, even viewed from Ogden, will be interesting and worth getting up a bit early to see.

Events involving the moons of Jupiter are plentiful and the period from September 7^th to October 7^th is no exception. For the most part these concern only one of Jupiter's moons, but on the evening of September 10^th, between 19:08 and 23:35, Io, Europa and Ganymede take part in seven events. Three of these occur before Sunset (19:41) while Jupiter is close to the horizon and will be very difficult to see. The series begins at 19:08 with Jupiter only 8.5 above the horizon as Io begins to slip behind Jupiter's western limb. Five minutes later, Europa begins its transit at the opposite limb (19:13). Fifteen minutes later (19:28) Ganymede follows Io behind Jupiter at nearly the same spot. The next four events will be seen under more favorable conditions.

At 20:44 Europa's shadow begins to cross the planet in pursuit of Europa. The drawing above shows the locations of Europa and its shadow at 21:00. At this point, Callisto, about seven minutes west of Jupiter, appears to be the planet's only moon. Io and Ganymede are behind Jupiter and Europa is in transit and not at all obvious. This is a surprisingly rare occurrence.

By 22:04 Europa will end its transit and can once again be seen at Jupiter's west edge. Eight minutes later, at 22:09 watch for Io's reappearance (from Jupiter's shadow) east of the planet. Because Io has a diameter of ~1.2" and the edge of Jupiter's shadow is not sharply defined, Io will slowly return to its full brightness of magnitude 4.7. The whole process will take about three minutes. Finally, at 23:45, Europa's shadow will end its transit.

Remember Ganymede? Like Io, it will emerge from Jupiter's shadow. For those willing to wait, the event begins at 2:09 on September 11^th. It will take eight minutes for Ganymede to attain magnitude 4.4.
 
 

R Pegasi and (Chi) Cygni reach their relative maxima this month, R Peg on September 8^th and Cyg on the 17^th. R Peg is Mira type long period variable with a period of 378 days. On the 8^th, the star should shine at magnitude 6.9. At its faintest, the star shrinks to nearly magnitude 14. With a spectral class of M6e-M9e, R is red star with a surface temperature of about 2500K.

Cygni, another LPV located in the neck of the Swan on a line 60% of the way from Cyg to Cyg, should reach naked-eye visibility on the 17^th. Cyg is one of the longest known variable stars, having been discovered by Gottfried Kirch in 1686. At its faintest (mag 14.2) it is all but lost in background of other faint stars in the Milky Way. Chi's maximum brightness (usually 4^th to 5^th magnitude) varies from cycle to cycle and has appeared as bright as mag 3.5. Its period is somewhat irregular. For those interested in following the changing brightness of the star, excellent comparison charts can be found in Burnham's Celestial Handbook, pages 764 and 765. The figure to the left is my humble offering. Chi is also a red giant of spectral class M6ep.

I have compiled a list of about 75 carbon stars and hope to observe each over the coming months. Below is a short list of a few of these stars known to be the reddest of their class. Since most N type stars are LPV's, periods of variability are given. The "comments" are from Burnham's Celestial Handbook. The letters "p" and "e" in the class designations stand for "peculiar" and "emission" spectra.
 
 

NAME MAG RANGE PERIOD CLASS COORDINATES COMMENTS

S Cepi 7.4 to 12.9 487 days N8e,C7₄ 21:35.2N78.6 One of the reddest.

VX And 8.0 to 9.5 369 days N7,C4₅ 00:19.9N44.7 Exceptionally red.

V Cyg 7.8 to 13.8 420 days Npe 20:41:18N48.1 Red!

U Hya 4.7 to 6.2 Irregular N2,C6.5₃ 10:37:33S13.4 Very red.

V Aql 6.6 to 8.1 353 days N6,C5₄ 19:04:24S5.7 Deep red.

With the recent landing of Pathfinder on Mars there has been hightened interest in sending people to the red planet. Of course, as an amateur astronomer I am somewhat biased in my opinion - I would love to see a manned exploration of Mars. But for myself the important question is not should we go, but rather when? I recall seeing an interview on the news just after the July 4 landing on Mars in which a scientist was explaining how every other year NASA was planning on sending a probe to Mars with the culmination resulting in a manned mission to Mars. He gave a somewhat ambiguous timeline, but felt that a manned mission was possible before the year 2020. I have no objection in sending people to Mars, and my only hope is that I live long enough to see the day. It will be one of the greatest achievements of the human species, and will be the next step of our evolution into a multi-planet species. But, are we ready to take such a big step so soon?

Now, I can imagine what some of you might be thinking, "but, we are ready". And, I agree that we may be ready, or somewhat close to being ready technologically, but are we ready intellectually, financially, and for the long run.

Of course, the biggest strain that a manned mission to Mars will put onto our society will be the financial burden. Let's take a peek into some statistics, which represent just a small sample of the cost justification problem we're already facing. The current U.S. population is estimated at 267,956,858. The most current estimate for those in poverty is a 1995 estimate of 36.4 million. According to a September 26, 1996, U.S. Census report authored by Daniel H. Weinberg on Income and Poverty, "children are 27% of the population, but are 40% of the poor". Something like 14.6 million children may be living in poverty, and just in the United States alone.

If we have over 14 million children living on or below the poverty line in the U.S. alone, how do we justify spending tens or even hundreds of "billions" of dollars in putting just a handful of men and women on Mars?

Now, before we really think about trying to answer this difficult question, let's take a closer look at what the cost will really be. The first real estimate that I'm aware of was made sometime during the mid-80's, and was an estimate of around $500,000,000,000. That's enough to scare anyone! But, this was to include a manned station on the Moon as a kind of stepping stone to Mars. Some of the more recent ideas and estimates, which are under $100,000,000,000, call for a direct mission to Mars, and do not include the Moon station. One additional way to cut costs, which has already been proposed, would be to send items such as oxygen generators to Mars so that when the astronauts arrive, they will already have enough oxygen for the return trip home. This means that they only have to carry 1/2 the amount of oxygen they would normally carry. And, assuming that there may be materials on the surface of Mars that could be used to produce some kind of fuel, NASA could send small refineries to generate the needed fuel for the trip home. Again, meaning it would only be necessary to carry half as much fuel as would normally be needed. The question in my mind is, do we have the technology? From what I understand, it would be possible to build an oxygen generator with present technology, but I have not seen or heard anything suggesting the possibility of a surface refinery.

We should and are joining together with other nations in this endeavor which would reduce, even more, the cost by spreading the burden out evenly among the participating nations.
 
 

The joining of nations has been used as a major reason for going to Mars. If we can learn to get along and work with each other in going to Mars, then just maybe we will learn to get along with each other in other endeavors also.
 
 

I believe that by joining with other nations it may be possible to conduct a manned mission to Mars for substantially less than the earlier estimate of $500,000,000,000. Perhaps we could do it for under $100,000,000,000, and it has been suggested, from a former senior engineer at Martin Marietta Aerospace, that we just might be able to do it for under $50,000,000,000. Still a lot of money! But, again by distributing the cost among different nations, each nation's obligation may be within reason.

Another concern that I have is whether or not we are ready for the long haul. What I mean is, suppose we succeed in justifying spending the money to go to Mars, and suppose in the beginning we have the support of the people. What happens after the mission? Will the vast population, not to mention Congress and all the other governments, simply lose interest in any further exploration? Will they then see any further exploration as a waste of resources and money? Look at what happened after Apollo and the Vietnam War. After several trips to the Moon, the program was cancelled mainly because the program was too expensive and the nation lost interest. The morale of the American people had been beaten down by Vietnam. (This was one reason why it took so long to get Hubble off the ground. We could not justify the cost and there was no public interest in expensive space ventures).

If we do go to Mars, we must be ready for long term exploration. We must not go to Mars once and then abandon space exploration. ( This is one reason why I support public star parties. We, as amateur astronomers, should try and show as many people as possible that this concerns all of us alike, and that we can all take part, even if indirectly, if we wish).

One other thing we should think about is, why do we want to go to Mars? In going to the Moon, part of our justification was that we had to be the first. We had to beat the Russians! Was the cost of the Apollo missions really justified, or did we simply want to protect our pride? It has been argued that, from a scientific perspective, the Apollo missions were not necessary for scientific discovery. It has been argued that robotic missions could have done the job. So then, do we really have good reason for sending a manned mission to Mars? Wouldn't we learn just as much from robotic missions? Justifications for the Mars mission include scientific exploration, developing technology, international cooperation, education, the environment, and so on.

In the end, if we decide that the unmet needs here on earth should take priority, this does not mean we should stop exploring. If we don't go to Mars right away, we should still continue on with robotic missions, and just perhaps they will satisfy our curiosity for now. However, if we do choose to go, I believe we have good reasons for going to Mars. One reason is that we need to find out if there was life on Mars. If the robotic missions, which we are now starting to conduct, fail in answering this question, then this may be a very good reason to go. And, I feel another reason for going is that, as citizens of the Milky Way, I believe it is a continuation of the evolution of the human species. We began as wanderers. We are wanderers still.

This Galaxy NGC 6207 lies only 27 minutes 43 seconds of arc north west of M13. It is a magnitude 11.6 and measures 2'.0 X 1'.0. It's coordinates (for those who use circles) are RA 16H 43m 0.8s Dec. +36d 50m 41sec. It is a very elongated galaxy with a bright core. See page 979 in Burnham's Celestial Handbook for details. You should be able to see this in most telescopes.