On Friday evening, June 3rd, 2011, the Raleigh Astronomy Club (RAC) participated in the North Carolina Natural Science Museum’s First Friday event by setting telescopes outside the museum for the public to view through. The theme for this First Friday event was all about Mars from highlighting a full scale model of the Mars Science Lab Rover to a screening of the 1954 film “Devil Girl from Mars.”
RAC Treasurer’s Report dated 6/9/2011 Regular checking account activity since 5/11/2011 report: $17.14 to Ian Hewitt for Gayle Riggsbee speaker dinner. $590.00 to Astronomical League for annual club dues. $21.76 to Ian Hewitt for Kevin Hussey speaker dinner. Three deposits totaling $656.27 were made for membership dues. $2,787.25———-Regular checking account balance. $10.00———-Special Purpose checking account balance. $10,098.21———-Savings account balance. $13,098.21———-Total balance all funds on hand.
Our speaker tonight was Tony Rice who is a NASA Ambassador. Tony’s topic was “Visions and Voyages for Planetary Science 2013-2022.” In the title, Tony was talking about NASA’s decadal survey & the plan for the next 10 years. Tony pointed out that NASA depends on the science community to identify and prioritize projects. The classes of missions are Discovery missions with a budget of $500 million per project, New Frontiers with a budget of $1 billion per project, and…
RAC Treasurer’s Report by Jim DellaPenna Dated 3/11/2011 Regular checking account activity since last report dated 3/9/2011: $44.27 to Doug Lively for Michel Tournay speaker dinners. $116.01 to Jerry Watson for Gayle Riggsbee speaker lodging. $100.00 to Gayle Riggsbee for speaker travel miles reimbursement. $145.05 to Mike Keefe for 1.5 month rent + lock for new club storage unit. $1,044.00 to Uncle Bob’s Storage for 1-year rent including extra month free. Two deposits totaling $515.00 were made for membership dues.…
April 22, 2011 RACOBS. For the second month in a row, cloudy weather prevented our outdoor observing session. In addition, since this was Good Friday which is a state holiday, the Museum was closed preventing an indoor meeting. About a dozen members met at a restaurant in Cameron Village instead.
Gayle Riggsbee from the Charlotte Amateur Astronomers Society was tonight’s speaker. His topic was “Building the 200 inch Hale Telescope.” Gayle began his talk with the topic of constructing large telescopes; especially those equatorially mounted using a split ring design. Today, large telescopes are computer controlled and mounted on altitude-azimuth type mounts. The Hale 200 inch is the most massive equatorially mounted telescope ever constructed. He showed some other examples of equatorially mounted split ring scopes. Gayle’s talk initially focused…
The March 25, 2011 RACOBS outdoor meeting was clouded out, so an indoor meeting was held at the Museum. Doug Lively presented a slide show about beginning astronomy tips to a small group of 13 people. Doug focused on concepts and ideas to help beginners get a good start in the hobby such as what you can see with the naked eye, what the constellations are, how to observe the sun, moon, and planets, and the types of telescopes in…
The night of Saturday April 2nd and the morning of April 3rd was the Raleigh Astronomy Club’s Messier Marathon at Howell Woods. It went very well. Approximately 11 people attended for observing or to do the marathon.
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…
RAC Treasurer’s Report Dated 3/9/2011 Regular checking account activity since last report dated 2/9/2011: $45.00 to Phyllis Lang for the Redshift 7 speaker dinners. Three deposits totaling $ 1,115.64 were made for membership dues. One transfer of $1,805.87 was made from the regular checking account to the savings account. $3,000.00——————Regular checking account balance $10.00——————Special purpose account balance (from PayPal) $10,298.73——————Savings account balance $13,308.73——————Total all funds on hand CORRECTION: Last month I inadvertently reported $12,111.72 in savings and $15,731.95 total funds…
It was not a huge crowd, Frank W. with his binocular set up, Mike K. with his 8″ Schmidt Cassegrain telescope, new members Greg B. with his 12″ goto dob and Gary S. with one of the club’s 8″ loaner dobs. Additionally I counted 7 guests. I may be missing a few folks so my sincerest apologies. There was not a cloud in the sky and the seeing was not as bad as predicted, however the transparency seemed lower than…
Tonight’s guest speaker was Rod Streeper who is the North America operations manger for Redshift 7. His talk was “Redshift 7.” Lucky for us, Rod lives in Shelby NC and was able to drive in for our program. Rod’s talk began with what is a planetarium program and what does it do. He covered specific aspects of Redshift 7 such as what catalogs are included, how the graphics work, images included, how to plan an observation session, and how to…
RAC Treasurer’s Report Dated 2/9/2011 Regular checking account activity since last report dated 1/10/2011: One check written: $320.00 to Marsh-Seabury-Smith for annual liability insurance One deposit of $333.51 was made for membership dues Regular checking account balance———————————–$ 4,068.74 Special purpose account balance—————————————-$10.00 Savings account balance——————————————–$12,111.72 Total all funds on hand——————————————–$15,731.95
A good crowd of people showed up at Bigwoods for the Club observing session. By one count, we had 21 people and 12 telescopes. The weather showed mercy on the group by not being brutally cold as January can be on clear nights. As usual, there was a good mix of telescopes available. There were several good size Dobs present, some regular Newtonian scopes, a couple of refractors, and several Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes. The crowd thinned out a lot by midnight,…
Tonight’s meeting was called to order by Ian Hewitt. It was the first regular meeting in three months since the November and December meetings were cancelled due to the holidays. Ian introduced tonight’s speaker: Rob Teeter of Teeter’s Telescopes. Rob’s talk was titled “Teeter and his Telescopes.” Rob, who lives in New Jersey. told the Club about his career in telescoping building. Starting in 1998, he has built 72 scopes so far. His first scope was an 8″ f/6 Newtonian…
