Regular meeting Mar. 11, 2011.

Tonight’s meeting was titled “Photographing Auroras” by Michel Tournay.  Michel is from the James Bay, Quebec, Canada.  It was a pleasure to listen to his French-Canadian accent during the talk.

Initially Michel described the processes that are responsible for creating aurorae on Earth – the solar wind and coronal mass ejections interacting with the Earth’s magnetic field.  He showed an interesting image of the mirror image aurorae that happen at the same time in the North Pole regions and the South Pole regions.

Michel described his odyssey of photographing aurorae.  It started with inexpensive film cameras many years ago that he had to master to get any results at all.  Many of his first photos came back from the photo processor unprinted because the lab thought there was no image on the film.  In recent years, Michel has moved to modern digital cameras that can record many hundreds of images in the camera.  That was a huge improvement over having to change a 36-exposure roll in sub-zero temperatures.  He also shared the challenges that the extreme cold of his region caused on his cameras and film, not to mention on the human body.  One thing he mentioned was that James Bay had going for it was the humidity was usually very low which made the cold easier to take but also created a lot of static electricity.

Michel showed many aurora photographs he has taken over the years.  He also showed quite a few animations he created with his digital cameras which showed how the aurorae moved over time.  They were stunning!

Michel was kind enough to raffle off 3 large prints of his work.  The lucky winners were Steve Izzo, Wayne Rettinger, and Jeff Martin.

You can see many of the photos used in tonight’s presentation at Michel’s website http://aurora-borealis.ca/en/index.php.

In the business part of the meeting, Doug Lively reminded members about the April 2 Messier Marathon.  It is likely that we will be able to use Howell Woods this year.  Mark Lang and Jim DellaPenna reminded members that they can view the latest meeting reports and treasurer’s report on the RAC website.  Doug announced the BigWoods key committee for this year.  They are:  Joe Pedit, Steve Izzo, Pat Moore, Brian Reasor, Jeff Martin, Chris Cole, and John Irwin.

Nominations are now being accepted for next FY Club offices.  All Club members are encouraged to run.  The three existing co-chairmen Michael Keefe, Ian Hewitt, and Doug Lively have agreed to run again.  Treasurer Jim DellaPenna has agreed to run again.  Mark Lang will not run for secretary after a 13 consecutive year’s service.  Please notify one of the current Club officers if you wish to run.

Astronomy Days 2011 is coming up fast.  We need people to sign up for events as soon as possible.  There are still many openings.

The next RAC indoor meeting will be April 8.  Gayle Riggsbee from the Charlotte Amateur Astronomers will be speaking on the construction of the Palomar Telescope.