Category: Meeting Minutes

The Central Arkansas Astronomical Society met Saturday afternoon for our yearly grounds maintenance party. We beat back the wilderness, piling up a good bonfire’s worth of brush and also assorted salvage materials from the corner of the West Observatory area. That salvage included some steel fencing and studs and other items. We would some member who has a truck to haul it off to the dump if they would. John and Pat also rerouted some of the electrical wiring in the East Observatory to assist in Wade’s renovation of that building.

At 5 PM, we abandoned the 45 degree, overcast sprinkles for a warm class room for our board meeting.

• John Reed will contact the Pinnacle Mountain State Park about the Master Naturalist program to find out what we will need to do.
• Astronomy Day conflicts with our meeting night this year. It was decided to cancel the meeting unless there was some need for a short business meeting in which case we would hold it there at the Visitor’s Center.
• James Fisher will invite Stuart Parkerson, the publisher of Astronomy Technology Today to a future meeting.
• John Reed put out a call for presentations. He has a few lined up but needs more.
• We discussed projects for the year:
• Water treat the three decks.
• Paint the picnic table.
• The front building, used for storage and bathroom, is deteriorating. Mainly the foundation is rotting but the building itself is pretty old and in need of TLC. It was generally agreed that fixing it up will be an enormous and expensive task and we decided to investigate the purchase of a new building instead. In previous years this would have been untenable but this year we will pay off the note on the classroom and so we ought to be in a better situation after that. Rocky agreed to check into this solution.
• James will head up contacting the three counties around us to try to set up a “light protection zoneâ€? around CAAS in an effort to reduce or at least halt the increase of light pollution in the area around CAAS.
• James will contact the Aerospace Museum about having an early morning showing of “Seeing in the Darkâ€? as a lead-in event for the Astronomy Day events at Pinnacle Mountain State Park.
• Don Ferren has agreed to do a Messier Marathon presentation at the March meeting as a lead-in to holding one at the property this year.
• While on the topic of presentations, we decided to invite Scott Austin from UCA and Jim Robertson from Arkansas Tech to CAAS. Perhaps someone at UALR as well although since Al Grauer retired we don’t know who that would be.
• We discussed Wade’s renovations and his concerns that the climate control in his warm room will cost CAAS money since he plans to leave it on continuously. Pat agreed to monitor the cost compared to last year and let Wade reimburse CAAS for difference.

Jim Dixon

The skies were clear for our regular monthly meeting on October 13 and as many set up scopes, they were greeted to a very thin new crescent moon to the southwest in the evening twilight. We adjourned to the meeting room at 7:00 pm where Thomas Baskins presented a program on Meteorite collecting. Thomas has been very active in the club in the past using one of the observatories to house his scopes, writing articles for “The Observer”, and earning several Astro League Awards. He became enamoured over meteorites one night in the western most observatory as he observed a green fireball break up into fragments. Wondering about those fragments started him on his quest to study meteorites. Not just collecting them but studying them microscopically to know their composition and origin. He brought his collection of micrometeorites to show. He also broke down different types, why studying them is important and what has been learned, and the lure of searching for them.

Following his presentation and questions, there were a few stories told about meteorite finds with an emphasis on some of the big finds in Arkansas. The Paragould Meteorite is the third largest meteorite (816 pounds) found in the United States falling at 4:08 am, Feb 17, 1930. Bill Sanders then gave everyone who came, iron meteorite samples from Nantan, China. This fall was observed in 1516 during the reign of the Chinese Emperor Zhengde. “During summertime in May of Jiajing 11th year, stars fell from the northwest direction, five to six folds long, waving like snakes and dragons. They were as bright as lightning and disappeared in seconds”.

Following this Rocky Togni gave a short presentation on how to observe meteors and submit your data. Data Collection forms and meteor shower observing information were handed out. Opportunities emphasized were the Orionid Meteor Shower, October 21, 2007 and the Geminid meteor shower in December.

There were about 20 in attendance with 2 new members, Alan Stroman and Jim Boles, and 2 visitors. Upcoming Outreach events were discussed for several school groups (go to www.caasastro.org for information). Other announcements included a board meeting set for November 11 at 5:00 pm.

About 8:00 pm we adjourned to some beautiful October skies.

Rocky Togni

CAAS met Saturday evening September 8 with much clouds and threatening weather. This was appropriate to the topic though which was a presentation on Meteorology by Allen Lee. We had a delicious covered dish dinner with the highlight being a homemade squash casserole by Linda Sorrows. Thanks to all who brought something.

The meeting opened with a treasurers report by Pat Morris. Rocky talked about the upcoming star party at Pinnacle Mountain on September 15 and “Seeing in the Darkâ€? presentation at the Aerospace Education Center Planetarium on September 19. James Fisher and others are getting out some good publicity on this and we hope it will be well attended. James also announced that CAAS has been invited to the first showing of a new planetarium show at the AEC on September 22 at noon.

Allen Lee then taught us how to predict the weather with a list of sites giving raw meteorological data. He showed us how to analyze a sounding which is data taken by a weather balloon. By looking at the current data from a local weather balloon you can determine what kind of seeing you can expect for the evening. In addition he taught us about radar and what the TV meteorologists use to give us our weather. We have access to the same data and with the other information he gave us he proclaimed that we now knew more about predicting the weather than most of our favorite weather personalities.

It was a fascinating lesson in meteorology and there were many questions and discussions. The best moment though was during Allen’s introduction when he told us he was from Wyoming and went to school at Texas A&M. Just as he stated that he started out in Astronomy with dark skies in Wyoming, the lights went out for a few seconds (due to the raging thunderstorm I am sure) and he got to say “Like thisâ€?.

The meeting adjourned about 9:00 pm. By the way Long term predictions look good for this next Saturdays star party at Pinnacle Mountain.

Rocky Togni