The WHAC Meeting was held at an unusual location, the Mauna Kea Conference room at the Keck Headquarters in Waimea.
We had to use this smaller meeting room since our usual Hualalai Conference Room was unavailable.
It was definitely tight quarters!
Thanks to "Pizza Dan" for providing the fine dining! Awesome!!
Craig Nance facilitated the meeting. While Nance was still helping people find their way to the meeting room at 7pm, the meeting began with
Cliff Livermore giving a tour of the evening sky.
He used the planetarium software called "Where the Stars Are" for the tour.
Cliff demonstrated an encyclopedic memory of the night sky, taking everyone on a tour of all types of objects.
Next, Craig Nance had finally arrived at the meeting room and welcomed everyone to the pow-wow. For
Observing Reports, numerous persons reported on recent observing sessions. Discussions included Comet McNaught, which made a
fleeting appearance in Hawaiian skies the past month.
Several observing sessions were held recently at both the VIS and the WHAC dark site on Mamalahoa Hwy.
We then went around the room and each person introduced themselves. The scribe counted the peak attendance at 37, perhaps a few more!
Making his first-ever appearance at a WHAC meeting, new member
Andrew Cooper was pressed into service to give a talk. His excellent presentation was about
charting of the sky throughout history. He divided the history of sky charting into three eras -- ancient times, the era of great atlases, and modern catalogs.
Throughout the talk, it was evident how ancient depictions of the night sky influenced future renderings of the night sky. He linked the names of constellations and asterisms, such as the Hyades and the Pleiades, back to as far as 16,000 years ago!
It was noted that Andrew is a past President of the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association, a very large astronomy club on the mainland. Thanks for the talk and Welcome Andrew!
For
club business, several items were discussed. First, a big mahalo to Pierre Martin for the donation of a significant number of 2007 CFHT calendars.
These were quickly bought up by WHAC members, providing a modest but important amount of funds to our club.
This generous donation helps us maintain a "Dues Free" club. Doug had a half-dozen CD's of our infamous "Where the Stars Are" planetarium software.
This was used by Cliff earlier in the meeting for his sky tour. The planetarium software is quite good and, the best part, free!
More CD's of the software will be available at the next WHAC meeting. Although the weather forecasts are marginal, plans are being hatched for observing at the VIS and the WHAC Dark Site this weekend.
Membership is asked to check the
WHAC Yahoo groups page for the latest news and information as the weekend approaches.
Although the meeting ended at 8:45pm,
a discussion about the WHAC Dark Site followed. Doug proposed that we use club resources to improve the Dark Site by the purchase of gravel and make use of contacts who have offered machinery for the earthwork.
The improvement of this site is expected to be a major initiative for WHAC in 2007. Doug will have more information as events unfold.
For now, members who would like to help with this (i.e., gravel/rock, equipment, manual labor, funding, etc…) are asked to contact
Doug.
The next WHAC meeting will be at the spacious CFHT Large Conference Room on
Tuesday March 17, 2007 at 7pm. The meeting agenda will be on the
WHAC web site in the near future.
As always, at ~6pm prior to the meeting everyone is invited to join in on a pre-meeting social at the Parker Ranch Food Court!
The Scribe will miss the upcoming meeting. The Scribe seeks a volunteer to take minutes of the March 17 meeting? It's easy -- attend the meeting and type up a summary comparable to the drivel you've read to this point.
Email the minutes to our webmaster for posting on the WHAC web site. A cheap gewgaw from the mainland might be your reward!
Contact Craig Nance if you'd like to take minutes of the March WHAC meeting.
