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Location: Chemistry/Physics Building, MUN

Time: 8:00 pm

Present: 16

1. Fred's Introduction. Observations. Randy saw the aurora around the new moon. It was on a Friday (the day of the big solar storm from about 12:30-4:00. I also got a call from someone in Mackinson's who saw much the same great display at the same time. Fred: here comes the Gobi desert storm. Watch the sunsets. Ben: birds in front of the moon. Spectacular effect. Garry: saw the ISS last night. 8:40 or was it 9:40, it took 3 min to cross the sky. Quite a good viewing time.

Some talk then followed on solar flares and their effects on the earth, shuttle, and airplanes. Garry: 16-18 Girl Guides in Central. He and the girls saw 67 M-objects until 3 or 4 am. There were 36 sunspots counted by everyone during the day. Amazed the girls paid attention.

Discussion on the use and safety of #14 welder's glass for viewing the sun. It also would seem to be safe to combine two #7's. [Don't believe me, check it out from a reputable source, also.]

Fred on GA 2004. There will be a transit of Venus in 2004. That was formerly a very important event to determine the size of the solar system. The only place in North America that the 1761 event could be viewed was here. Just like in 1761 we won't get to quite see all of the event. The IAU is pushing for plaques to commemorate these observing sites. The historical transit, the plaque thing, and the next transit make a good excuse to hold the GA here (June 6). This was mentioned to Fred by some people from National.

All agreed that we should try to do the 2004 GA. Fred and Gary Case will also be busy with the Canada Wide Science Fair, though.

Butterpot Project. We are now approved to be on a major fund-raising list. This is the first step needed to get this project going. Hopefully, this sanctioning will make it easier when we look into sources of funding. For details, check with Fred.

2. Brian Payton on the MUN Armillary. The campus armillary was vandalized and then fixed. Unfortunately, the people involved with fixing it were not given any advice as to how to go about it. The resulting armillary is incorrect. The armillary is supposed to be mid-18th century [I thought 19th], the sort of thing that could be found in the gardens of relatively wealthy estates in Britain. A check with the antiquarian company that originally provided the armillary provided no information (no reply). Brian explained the purpose and function of an armillary sphere (no, you don't strap them on your wrist and use them to navigate the seven seas!). Also, he and Fred showed us their models. [I think Fred's class project only deserves an A-, since he didn't provide any labels. Just kidding!...] The various rings are: the meridian ring (need not be a closed circle), the horizon ring, a support ring 90 degrees with respect to the horizon ring, and a ring for the celestial equator (marked to display the time from the shadow of the gnomon). There can be all manner of other rings, as well. The plinth is apparently pre-Christian in origin, and hand-carved. Brian showed various pictures and discussed the errors in re-construction. Chris also has some stuff on his web page about this, he noted.

3. Garry and Jack Show. How to find Deep Sky objects the hard way, and the easy way. Garry brought in his non-motorized scope, and Jack brought his fancy Meade. Garry began by explaining the celestial coordinate system. The rest of the talk was a hands-on demo of how to use the scopes, guided and non-guided. Garry explained how to use a scope with setting circles and how to align it with the celestial pole. This all works well in theory, but in practice you have to set your setting circles based on a pilot star and not swing too far from it to get to the desired deep-sky object (errors start accumulating rapidly the farther you have to swing). This sucks and it is a pain to try to align the scope accurately, even more so if you want the extra accuracy needed for wide swings and only having to set your setting circles once.

Jack then proceeded to demonstrate how to find things with his guided scope. By the way, 8 AA batteries are supposed to give you 20 hours of use. Put the scope in alt-az mode. Point it north as close as you can get (not very picky). Set the time as accurately as you can, the closer to the second, the better (or else you may have to do some major manual searching during the set-up). Follow the menus. Pick an alignment star. Click, boop, beep. Impressive whirring noises follow and the scope slews. You use your VCR-like slow motion controls to centre the star (it almost always puts it in the field of view. Repeat for another star. All done. Now, to find anything either enter the coordinates or for many objects it is already in a database for you to choose. There is even a guided tour feature and another to track satellites. You can also use the scope in equatorial tracking mode (to avoid field rotation in longer camera exposures). Basically, it works the same way, you point it at the pole star to start with.

4. Randy on Astronomy Day. This will be Saturday the 28th at Chapters on Kenmount Road. We will be there for the general public to ask questions, etc. It will be from 2-5 pm. Please come and help, drop by for an hour or so. There will be no night-time observing, but we may set up something to view sunspots.

5. Robert on the Sky Next Month. There will be a meteor shower on April 22. Lunar occultations on the 27th. He talked about what planets are visible now and passed out a list of deep sky objects generated for our time and location.

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Please send any additions or corrections to:

David Bourgeois: mailto:dbourgeo@thezone.net