Co-chairperson Mike Keefe hosted the online meeting using the Zoom platform
54 participants
Indoor Meeting: “Bringing Columbia Home” by Mike Leinbach (former NASA Launch Director) and Jonathan Ward (Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, author, and NASA Solar System Ambassador). Mike and Jonathan discussed the loss of space shuttle Columbia and the large recovery effort that followed.
Business
- Treasury Report. The report was provided by Treasurer Steve Izzo.
Membership – 259 total
- 167 single memberships
- 46 family memberships
Balances
- $568.35 in business checking
- $14,374.72 in savings
- $139.42 in special purpose checking
- Astronomical League by ALCor Doug Lively
Doug gave an overview of observing programs offered by the AL. Please see https://www.astroleague.org/observing.html for more information.
- Observing Committee by Matt Lochansky.
Aug 11 – Perseids meteor watch at Dix Park has been canceled.
- Web & Social Media by Doug Lively and the web team.
Traffic on the Club’s Facebook page and website has double in the past month. We believe this has been triggered by the images of Comet NEOWISE provided by the Club’s imagers. Nice work everyone!
Planets Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are very well placed for viewing and imaging. Please submit images to our social media pages (Facebook, Twitter, InstaGram) to [email protected]. Images for our web site can be sent to [email protected]
- Club Historian – Position Still Open.
We need a volunteer to organize the club’s historical records (primarily photos). We discussed digitizing these so that they can be stored online. We discussed splitting the work among several people or submitting it to a service. If you would like to lead this project, please contact an officer.
- Big Woods Observing Guidelines.
Guidelines for using the Big Woods observing site during Covid-19 are available to members. Log in to your raleighastro.org account; the rules are available from the red box at the top of the page. Use of Big Woods is by members only at this time.
- Upcoming Activities.
Aug 14: RACOBS
Aug 20: Imaging meeting via Zoom
Aug 28: Indoor meeting via Zoom. “Five Astro Images that Destroyed the World” by author and astrophotographer Alex McConahay.
