May 27, 2011
The RACOBS meeting was clouded out. Since this was the Memorial Day weekend, the Museum was operating with a reduced staff so the indoor meeting was cancelled also. A few members met a restaurant in Cameron Village in place of a meeting.
June 10, 2011 Regular meeting – Club member Mike Malaska gave a talk entitled “Titan’s Earth-like Landscape.”
June 24, 2011 RACOBS – Clouds forced an indoor meeting at the Museum. Jim DellaPenna gave the group of about 10 people a guided tour of how his Denkmeier binoviewers work. After the demo, about 7 of the group headed out to Cameron Village to eat.
July 8, 2011 Regular meeting – Tonight’s guest speaker was Dr. John Blondin from the NCSU physics department. Dr. Blondin’s talk was “Measuring Dark Energy.” He started out with a history of modern cosmology. 1929 was the year the expansion of the universe was proposed. 1933 was the year Fritz Zwicky talked about dark matter and gravitational lenses. In 1964 Penzias and Wilson discovered the cosmic background radiation. In 1992 the COBE satellite sees cosmic seeds in the CMB. In 1998, two teams measure the cosmic acceleration and see galaxies moving away from each other at increasing speeds. Dark Energy is the reason the acceleration is happening. Dr. Blondin explored how the theory of Dark Energy explains isotropy, flatness and anti-gravity. Does it make sense? He also discussed how to measure Dark Energy. Some of the methods are looking at type 1a supernovae, baryon acoustic oscillations, counting galaxy clusters, and studying gravitational lenses. Finally he discussed new projects like HETDEX at the Hobby-Eberly telescope and the Dark Energy Survey on a scope in Chile.
In the short business meeting, Doug Lively was the officer in charge. He reminded members that the applications for the Key committee should have been submitted by now. He also noted that Brian Reasor will be the new ALCOR.
July 22, 2011 RACOBS – this outdoor meeting was held in hot humid conditions at Bigwoods. A small group showed under less than ideal conditions.
Aug. 12, 2011 Regular meeting. Alan Rich, one of NASA’s local Solar System Ambassadors was tonight’s guest speaker. Although tonight’s topic was supposed to be “Ion Engines,” Alan spent the first part of the meeting talking about the James Web Space Telescope. He gave us an overview of the scope that may be cancelled due to NASA budget cuts. The scope is very large and works in the visible to near infrared so it will be able to see through the galaxies gas and dust. It is to be put in one of the Lagrange L2 halo orbits a million miles from Earth. The mirror will be five times larger than Hubble’s. The field of view on the camera will be 9 are minutes and its pointing accuracy is 0.1 degree. The mirrors will be gold plated and the telescope will have to endure 100 degree temperature swings.
In the second part of his talk, Alan did speak about Ion engine propulsion. He reminded us that in this case ion engines are electric engines which will us a gas to provide gentle propulsion. He talked about the differences between thrust and specific impulse. The solid and liquid engines which boost rockets into orbits have good thrust. Ion engines have good specific impulse – they give long but gentle thrust. Alan also gave us a history of ion propulsion noting that it started in the 1930s.
In the business meeting, Ian who was in charge of tonight’s meeting, mentioned that there will be no Bigwoods lock changes. He also brought up the idea of term limits for officers noting that if we did that 3 year limits would make the most sense. The group discussed this topic for a while. The educational outreach program was discussed. Ian told the group that the officers felt that this was no longer working in it current structure and asked if having more large public events would better serve our public outreach. There was lots of discussion on this topic.
Aug. 26, 2011 RACOBS – Due to Hurricane Irene, the outdoor meeting was cancelled. In addition, there was no indoor meeting at the museum.
