President John Reed called the meeting to order at 7 PM. There were 22 members present and one visitor. Kevin Floyd from Cabot came to check us out. Welcome, Kevin, we hope you come back.
Old Business:
Our Astronomy Day event on May 10 was officially canceled due to a large front of thunderstorms rolling through. However, that did not stop our most reliable star party goers Bill sanders, Sandy & Pat Morris, and Carl Freyaldenhoven. They were there at Pinnacle Mountain with bubble soap at the ready. They had a few visitors who also braved the weather. Thanks to you four for your committment.
Since the last meeting, we’ve had two star parties in Beebe. The first was at a church there for cub scouts and the other at their junior high school. The first star party was clouded over but John, Don F, & Stacy brought the show indoors and entertained the scouts. The second party had better weather. John, Carl, Don F, Jason, and Rocky represented CAAS very well. This was a group of 5th-7th graders. There was too much light pollution but they were able to show the kids the brighter objects in the sky.
Last weeked, several members went to Mulberry Mountain for an camping, astronomy event. From what I hear, the skies were good once they stopped lighting up the hot air balloons.
The RRAC Burger Burn in Nashville was also a big success with clear skies and good friends.
New Business:
The 2008 MSRAL Convention is coming up next weekend. At this time, we know of John Reed and Jim Fisher attending.
In coming weeks, CAAS has committed to three star parties:
- Pinnacle Mountain on 6/28.
- Woolley Hollow on 7/19.
- Pinnacle Mountain on 7/26.
We’ve also had a request to hold a star party on August 5 for the Wakefield Neighborhood Association. We will discuss it further to see if we have people available after all of our other committments.
If you haven’t heard, we recently paid off the note on the classroom. Like any mortgage, this has been drain on CAAS (though well worth it) for years and now it is all ours!
Presentation:
Jason Wallawine gave a presentation on perhaps the greatest physicist that you’ve never heard of Burkhard Heim. Starting in the 40s, he developed theories of the physical universe that have only recently been taken seriously as they appear to do a better job of predicting field and particle attributes than other theories. Hopefully, Jason will make his presentation avaialble to this website. Thank you, Jason.
After the meeting, members retired to the observing field to visit and see what the nearly full Moon could not defeat.