Charlottesville Astronomical Society

Septemeber meeting

9/6/2006

McCormick Observatory

Attendance: ~30

Guest Speaker: Show and Tell

Main presentation

Roland gave a short talk about equatorial platforms.

Servo-Cat now has a Servo-Cat Jr. This allows tracking and go-to for Dobsonian telescopes.

Roland uses a "compact" version of the equatorial platform.

http://www.equatorialplatforms.com/

Roland uses the optional polar alignment scope to align the platform to North.

The company only makes about 30 platforms a year and only takes orders once per year.

Provides tracking for 50 to 70 minutes.

Cost around $1000 but worth it if you want to observer objects for a long time in a Dob.

Larry gave a demonstration of Starry Night 6.0

Graphics are faster then previous version.

The all sky CCD view in Pro-plus is faster then old version.

The new version has about 160 exo-solar planets. Highlights plants with exo-solar plants with circles around the stars.

Now has star pronunciation guide,

John Avalone showed a solar scope from a john Dobson design

He used a 2.5 inch mirror f/10 uncoated

See through mirror mounted on a diagonal, then an uncoated mirror, then it reflects back to eyepiece where a welders glass lowers the light even further. Very neat design…but hard to describe.

Here is a link to a similar telescope of the same design.

http://members.aol.com/sfsidewalk/sunscope.htm

And a picture of John with a similar telescope in 2003

http://www.wsanford.com/~wsanford/exo/solarmax/2002/36.jpg

Gary Cornick....showed homemade red reading light that clips on clipboard. He modified a standard flashlight light bulb to include a resistor and LED and a dimmer circuit. He then mounted the long battery life bulb in a little clipboard flex light.

Secretary note: You can now buy RED LED incandescent bulb replacements from Digi-Key and other electronic part suppliers.

Steve Laymen showed The Year-Round Messier Marathon book from Willmann-Bell.

Some of the best Messier finder charts out there. Gives good beginning Deep Space how to, and finder charts for 8x50 optical and telerad finders for all of the Messier Objects.

Wes Epperly showed off “The New Patterns in the Sky: Myths and Legends of the Stars” by Julius D W Staal. This book gives all of the ancient stories from many cultures of the constellations.

Publisher list of book.

Steve began club business.

58 paid active members

Checking account: $1,539.79

See Larry Saunders for information on discounted subscriptions to Astronomy and Sky and Telescope

September 22/23 at Susan Bender’s in North Garden

Club Outreach

McCormick – Friday, September 22 – See Larry

Fan Mountain – Friday, October 13

Sign up to sell snacks and/or have your scope available

Nelson County & Possible Ivy Creek – Wednesday, November 8

Mercury Transit / Moon viewing

McCormick – Friday, November 10 – See Larry

Upcoming speakers

October ? John Turchi – Dob Conversion

November - Open

December – Adrienne Juett, UVA Grad

January – Open

February – Al Wootten, NRAO – Director of the ALMA project

Website of the month

http://www.astronomywebguide.com/links_telescopemaking.html

Larry raised a motion form the floor:

In future years retreat attendees pay 50% non-refundable deposit at least 2 weeks before retreat. This will cover years that the event is rained out do the foul weather.

Dave Seconded the motion.

Motion passes.

10 minute topic

VAAS

Richard Drumm won the Door prize.

Dave donated a book to the club.