|
Club Address:
65-1158 Mamalahoa Hwy.
Kamuela, HI 96743
An electronic publication of The West Hawaii Astronomy Club -
Club Officers:
Co-Presidents:
Craig Combes,
Craig Nance,
Doug Summers
Secretary:
Laura Kraft
With Support From:
Canada-France Hawaii Telescope and
W. M. Keck Observatory
This website is currently maintained by
Doug Summers
|
|
|
December 2005 Club Meeting Report
Club Meeting, December 13, 2005 @ 7:00pm, Keck Hualalai Conf Rm
Agenda:
| | Introductions | Craig Nance | 10 mins |
| GearTalk Show&Tell | All* | 10 mins |
| Featured Web Site | Doug Summers | 10 mins |
| The Sky This Month & Observing Reports | Craig Nance | 10 mins |
| Featured Guest Speaker | Steve Durst - International Lunar Observatory |
40 Mins |
| Club Business | TBD | TBD |
| Group Discussions | All | Finish by 9:00pm |
The club meeting was held on December 13, 2005 @7pm at the Keck large conference room. We had a peak of ~30 attendees at the meeting. Introductions included a few new faces amongst all of the regulars. We went around the room and everyone introduced themselves. Welcome everyone!
The Gear Talk Show & Tell - sorry to report that no-one had anything to share. Perhaps this is a lull before the gift-giving (or hopefully gift-getting) season. If everyone has been nice this past year, there should be lots of astro-goodies to share at the next meeting.
The Featured Web Site was by Doug Summers presenting information about our very own WHAC web site. He reviewed our site and its content. He asks that people submit to him contributions for our site. Consider the site to be our collective community property. Contributions he seeks include:
Astrophotos of objects you have taken
Links to astronomy-related web sites that you find useful
Observing reports of things you have observed
If you would like to be included in the Profiles section, send the information to Doug. He is looking for the classic person standing beside their telescope types of pictures.
Nance (the Scribe) followed up on Doug's presentation by reviewing the Yahoo group we have. If you go to "Yahoo", then select whac, then search for whac you will get a link to take you to our Yahoo page. Or, for a direct route, it is located here: "whac group". Anyone can view the messages without joining the group. If you join the group you are able to post messages and do additional things. You can join the group at the top of our web page, or at the Yahoo group site. Then, once you've signed up, to send email to the rest of the group simply send an email to whac@yahoogroups.com and it is automatically forwarded to everyone. This also protects your email address and thus prevents unwanted promulgation of your email address. Or, posting a message on the group site also sends an email. Scott Hartman shared that there is a feature in Yahoo where you can configure your Yahoo membership to consolidate the WHAC group emails and receive them in a shortened, less-frequent basis. In summary, the WHAC web page can be thought of as our reference library, while the Yahoo page is for fast-breaking news, information, and discussion.
The featured speakers were Steve Durst, Chris Thomason, and Jason Ventura of the International Lunar Observatory (ILO) project. Here is the web site for the project "Spaceage Publishing"
Steve started by introducing himself and his colleagues. By way of introduction, he said that the idea for ILO is about 7 years old. Paraphrasing, the Moon to get to the Stars, and using the Stars as motivation for getting to the Moon. The ILO is intended to be a toehold onto the Moon, setting the stage for increasingly advanced work, including human exploration. Doing astronomy from the Moon is an idea being actively pursued by organizations as far away as Chile. He mentioned that the University of Arizona has a group exploring how to do astronomy from the Moon using liquid-mirror telescopes of large aperture. Steve's vision is lunar-based astronomy with the Earth headquarters in Hawaii. This would ensure that Hawaii remains a premiere place for astronomy into the far future. Specifically, if the ground-processing stations for lunar-based telescopes are in Hawaii, then Hawaii's place in astronomy is ensured for the next 100 years!
Chris presented a formal PowerPoint presentation on the ILO project. The Scribe will attempt to summarize: The ILO is a private initiative to land and operate an observatory on the Moon. The advantage is that the project would not be hobbled by government slowness and bureaucracy. The ILO is estimated to cost $50M, which he compared to the estimated $2B for the James Webb Space Telescope, $1B for Hubble, and the large sums spent on Hubble servicing missions. Why the Moon for astronomy? Many reasons were listed; mechanical stability with the Moon as a platform, high-vacuum, lunar far-side is radio-quiet, can do constant uninterrupted observations, and more. Why based in Hawaii? Hawaii is a crossroad between Asia and the Americas, perhaps the most significant technology zones of the future; equatorial latitude is ideal for the development of sea-launch platforms based in Hawaii and launching from the equator south of here; Mauna Kea is an international center for astronomy, and more. Chris highlighted the possibility for space-related tours with a lunar/space exploration theme. For example, the lunar-like landscape of the Big Island is analogous to certain locations on the Moon. Chris indicated that telescopes on the Moon can be 6 times larger using the same structural strength since the Moon's gravity is 1/6 of Earths. This makes possible telescopes that are too large for Mauna Kea (such as ALMA), but would easily fit on the Moon. He highlighted the University of Arizona concept of a liquid-mirror telescope on the Moon. (pristine_view_universe_moon.html) He pointed out that the liquid mirror lunar telescope requires much technological advancement, while the ILO can be done now.
SpaceDev has done a conceptual design study for the ILO, and created the spacecraft model that was shown at the meeting. SpaceDev has a strong reputation in the non-government space exploration circles. SpaceDev built the engines for SpaceShip1, which won the X-Prize recently. SpaceDev also built CHIPsat. The SpaceDev concept for ILO is to use as much off-the-shelf technology as possible, similar to the concepts they have used for these past, successful projects. The SpaceDev web site highlights all these accomplishments in detail.
ILO is slated for location in the Malapert mountain area in very close to the lunar south pole. The idea is to avoid the 14-day extreme freeze-thaw cycles that most of the Moon experiences. By finding locations of peaks of eternal light, or PELs, you get power (sunlight) and thermal stability. PELs still require some further characterization, but the principle is deemed sufficiently strong that they are a critical part of the ILO concept. The lunar south pole is preferred over the north pole to provide access to the Milky Way galactic center.
The science case for ILO is being made by astronomers as part of the Master Plan for ILO. The science package (i.e., telescope) for ILO has not been established. It is expected that the scientific sweet spot for ILO will be in the infrared-visible-ultraviolet bands. Pierre Martin suggested that photometry would be an excellent small telescope science program for ILO. He cited MOST as an example of a small telescope doing highly valuable research in space. (astro.ubc.ca) The ILO has a planned mission life of somewhere between 6-months and 2-years.
There was a brief Q&A session with many good questions about the project and the information presented.
Craig Nance presented The Sky This Month and Featured Object of the Month. The featured object was the Andromeda Galaxy. He highlighted recent endeavors to glimpse bright globular clusters in Andromeda, such as G1. There is much detail to be seen by a dedicated observer of the Andromeda galaxy.
Doug Summers presented an observing program the Scribe calls Best of the Best. Doug has gathered many observing lists and made his own observing list consisting of objects that appear most frequently in these lists. This results in a best of the best list. Doug's list has ~400 objects of all types. Doug has posted on the WHAC web site the objects from his list having RAs of 23H, 0H, and 1H. Look for the link Interesting Visual December Meridian Objects. For observers that provide Doug some feedback in these objects in the form of an observing report, he will share with you the entire list. Doug intends to observe the entire list Messier Marathon style sometime in the spring! Stay tuned.
Scott Hartman introduced a visitor named Kevin who is from the UK. Kevin lives ~30 miles north of London. He shared a bit of information about the local astronomy scene there. Their club has a 10-inch Newtonian in an enclosure with a slide-off roof. They have severe light pollution due to the growth of London. For his personal astronomy, primarily Kevin does solar observing with a small hydrogen-alpha telescope. He gave some hints on solar imaging with CCD cameras. He also has a 14" Newtonian that he uses primarily for planetary observing, as this type of observing is immune from bright sky glow.
It was noted by Scott Hartman that the club has now reached the one-year mark! Too bad that we didn't recognize this sooner or we would have organized a cake or something. Later the Scribe did confirm in the WHAC archives that the first-ever meeting of WHAC was held on Tuesday December 14, 2004 at the Keck meeting room.
The formal part of the meeting ended at about 9:15pm, a bit tardy. We skipped the club business part of the meeting in lieu of these interesting talks.
Reminder that the next WHAC meeting will occur on Tuesday January 10, 2006 at 7pm at our usual meeting room at the CFHT headquarters. At 6pm that evening many club members gather for the customary pre-meeting dinner at the Parker Ranch Food Court. If the weather appears clear, bring your telescope for some after-meeting observing. Check the Yahoo groups web site for updates on observing opportunities.
|
