Meeting was held at the Keck Headquarters in Waimea on August 8, 2006. We thank Bob Sanders for doing such a great job facilitating the meeting, including snacks and coffee/tea/hot chocolate. Thanks, Bob!
The meeting was called to order at 7pm. The meeting was well attended, with nearly 30 persons in attendance. Bob started with introductions, and we welcomed a few new faces.
Bob asked for any observing reports. There were two club observing sessions on July 15 & July 22 of this past month, both at the Hale Pohaku site. A detailed observing report for the July 15th observing session is available
here on the club web site.
There was general discussion about observing for the dark time coming up in a couple of weeks.
Everyone was encouraged to keep tabs on the Yahoo! site for message postings and the
calendar on the club web site for more info about observing plans as the dark time approaches.
Craig Combes reported that he and Mark Baril recently attempted observing from the Saddle Road at approximately the Kilohana area. The weather there was wet and cold. Having tried this site several times without good weather, they have concluded that this is a poor site for astronomy and it is a waste of time to try to observe from there.
Craig Nance presented
The Sky This Month. The object of the month was Barnard 86, a fantastic dark nebula. Craig presented a discussion of how the dark nebula was found, an overview of who EE Barnard is, and images of various dark nebulas.
Jim Lyke was the featured speaker of the night. Jim is an astronomer with Keck and was involved with recent high-resolution imaging of Jupiter, particularly the close passage of the Great Red Spot and the Red Spot, Jr. He showed a spectacular image of the passage. Jim also gave some background on how Keck observing time is awarded to astronomers; how they must write and submit proposals well in advance. Jim then detailed how astronomers like himself plan for observing with the Keck laser guidestar system and adaptive optics. It is not trivial!
Carlton Lane then presented the mathematics of infinity. This was a follow-up to the recent panel discussion about multiple Universes, and the possibility of an infinite number of universes. The key points (the scribe thinks) is that many mathematical operations for non-infinite numbers do not apply to the smallest infinity, N0. In other words:
N0 + N0 = N0 or also, N0 + N0 != 2N0
One can get larger infinities by raising N0 to higher powers. The scribe was thankful that there was not a quiz afterwards!
For
club business, Doug Summers mentioned that this weekend he, and any others that want to join, are welcome to a short observing session for home schooled children and their parents. This event will occur on Saturday August 12 with details to be via messages on our Yahoo site.
Doug also mentioned that Gary Fujihara has discussed whether WHAC would be interested in getting a CCD camera to use to show people objects in the night sky.
Also, Doug reported that Gary gave WHAC $500 for our club participation in AstroDay! As a result of this generous donation, Doug has worked with Pierre Martin to establish a WHAC checking account!
The club co-Presidents led a discussion about the future of WHAC. The club is nearly two years old, and it is time for some reflection on where we are as a club, and what we want for the future. Of primary concern are the monthly meetings. The meetings take a moderate to considerable amount of time to organize properly, and there are only a small number who have hosted a meeting. The concern is that the membership will tire of hearing the same handful of people speak repeatedly, and that these presenters will run out of "things to talk about" and otherwise "burn out" on organizing/doing meetings.
One idea was to reduce the number of formal meetings to, say, every other month. Or, substitute "informal" meetings in lieu of the more formal style. This could be things like "talk story" gatherings or potlucks. The membership is asked to think about what they personally want out of WHAC, and let the leadership know so that the club is of most value to the membership.
The leadership would rather hear from the members directly, as opposed to guessing what the membership wants. In soliciting for ideas, several persons made suggestions:
- More information on astrophotography. It was noted that none of the present leadership have experience in astrophotography, so someone who has this background would need to take the lead on this. The Scribe thinks that one person volunteered to do this.
- "The Sky This Month" is appreciated and was asked that this continue in its present form. It was asked to spend a bit more time regarding planetary conjunctions and upcoming events, such as meteor showers, in lieu of just breezing over them.
- It was asked whether a "hardware tour" of Mauna Kea professional telescopes some Saturday would be possible. There are a number of logistical challenges, but the club leadership will see what can be done. It is harder than one would think. One person volunteered to help with this.
- There was interest in Craig Nance repeating his John Dobson dog & pony show for a wider audience. In the past, squeezed in amongst the Filippenko video lectures, Nance put this on for a very small number of persons one evening. Nance had thought that few would be interested in this. But, many in the club said they would, in fact, find it interesting. Nance said he would set this up for sometime in the near future.
It is worth noting that many of the above ideas require effort to organize. The present leadership feels that people should be free to participate in the club at the level they choose free of pressure to do things. However, in return, all of us must appreciate that we may not be able to carry out every great idea that comes along.
Members were asked to think about all this, and, it is hoped, come to the next club meeting with some feedback for the club leaders as to what WHAC should be.
The next WHAC meeting will be Tuesday September 12, 2006 at 7pm at the CFHT Headquarters in Waimea. Prior to every meeting, all are invited to join in the informal dinner at the Parker Ranch Food Court at ~6pm.
