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Auburn Astronomical Society E-Newsletter March, 2010 In this Issue
We’ll hold our March meeting on Friday, March 5, at 7:45PM, in room 215 of Davis Hall, the Aerospace Engineering Building. The doors to the building automatically lock at 8:00PM, so if you’re running late, rap on the door nearest our meeting room and we’ll let you in. Our new moon star party this month will be on Saturday, March 13, at Cliff Hill’s farm March 05, March meeting, 7:45 PM, in room
215 of Davis Hall
We currently have 17 official AAS members:
AAS memberships ($20.00/$10.00 for full-time students) are due in January. Make checks payable to “Auburn Astronomical Society”. If you’re unable to attend our March meeting, mail your dues to: Auburn Astronomical SocietyIf this will be your first time to join, please print out the Membership Application form, and include it with your check. We need your address to ensure that you’ll receive your Reflector. Special thanks to those members who do not attend on a regular basis but still want to help us out by paying AAS. membership dues. You may recall that Jennifer Lolley had scheduled her winter constellation class on the evening of Friday, February 12. You may also recall that it snowed that day. Jennifer’s rain/snow date was the following Saturday. Jennifer wrote: We had it -- a great turn out for the weather. The skies were perfect. Had over 30 in attendance. I think they learned a lot. I had created a pretty good power point to show them what we would be looking for. My laser light did not work well. Guess we are getting too much light out there now. I am going to go out to Kiesel Park and see if it would work better for our programs. Do we want to set a rain date for the April program? Tomma and Michael Pastorett, Ray and Ann Kunert, and your editor, attended the lecture given by Dr. David T. King Jr., on February 18, in Wetumpka. Dr. King opened his presentation with an overview of discoveries made at the crater through 2008, then recounted the details of his new NASA funded research from four new core wells made this past summer. I’ll try to summarize: Recall that the remaining crater rim is a horseshoe shape, with the south rim missing. Originally it was thought that the asteroid came in from the northeast at a low angle and blew the south wall out. The new core well samples strongly suggest that the southern wall of the crater was first pulled deeper into the sea that covered the site, then returned as the associated tsunami washed the separated crater wall section back into the newly formed crater, filling it in with remnants of the southern wall. This is a very simplified version of Dr. King’s conclusions. Be sure to attend his next lecture for a thorough explanation. See the AAS crater page at http://www.auburnastro.org/wetu.htm Astronomy Day 2010 is set for Saturday, April 24 at the W.A. Gayle Planetarium, in Montgomery. Planetarium director, Rick Evans, has already secured the keynote speakers, Dr. Michael Sterner, and Dr. Michael Patton, directors of the James Wiley Shepherd Observatory at the University of Montevallo. Their presentation will include the construction and operation of the facility and its 20-inch PlaneWave telescope. Eastwood Christian School Tracy Shamburger, a parent at Eastwood Christian
School, wrote to request that we host a stargaze on Friday, April 16, at
a farm in Pike Road. If there is any way you could make this event
that would be great. I replied to Tracy that we already had another
stargaze scheduled in Auburn on Saturday, April 17, and that our annual
Astronomy Day event at the planetarium here in Montgomery would be on the
following Saturday, April 24. I know that we’re going to be quite
busy with events in the middle of April, but if you can help, please let
me know so I can let Tracy know our plans.
American Heritage Girls' Leader Troop 0125 Terri Klose, troop leader for her American Heritage Girls wrote to ask if we could bring our telescopes to her Millbrook home in for the girls on. She wrote that It was fairly dark at night in their 4 acre backyard. They want to work on the merit badge, Space Exploration, and suggested dates of March 20, March 27, April 3, or April 24 I suggested the March 20, as a target date, with April 3 as a second best choice. When Terri comes up with a date certain, we’ll need volunteers with telescopes. Have a good meeting. I'll see you at the stargazes, Russell
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