Meeting was held at the Canada-France-Hawaii Headquarters in Waimea on July 11, 2006. We again thank Pierre Martin for providing such a wonderful meeting room. The cookies were great!
Craig Combes facilitated the meeting. The meeting was called to order at 7pm. The attendance was a bit light with 14 persons in attendance. There were two new faces in the crowd.
Craig asked for any observing reports. Doug reported on a recent mid-week observing session with Steve Gottleib of California. Craig Combes and Mark Baril reported on their recent dark-time observing session at the Hale Pohaku site.
Craig Nance presented
The Sky This Month. There was some very entertaining group banter about the Full Buck Moon…you had to be there. The planet Jupiter is the most prominent of the planets at this time. All the other planets are “in the weeds” near the horizon at dawn or dusk. The evening sky is dominated by the Milky Way, although Orion is already reappearing in the morning sky. The object of the month was Omega Centauri, perhaps the finest object in the sky, and certainly the greatest globular cluster. Craig showed ground based and Hubble images of the cluster. This sparked a side discussion about a prominent galaxy adjacent to Omega Centauri, NGC-5128. Doug Summers used his laptop and planetarium software to discuss this galaxy. NGC-5128 is known for its dark, irregular, and prominent dust lanes. It is also known as Centaurus A.
Craig Combes was the featured speaker of the night. He discussed recent upgrades to his 16” f/5 telescope. He has converted it from a “string scope” to a more conventional 8-pole arrangement. And, he is implementing Autostar control for the telescope. He has also converted from a curved spider to a more conventional spider. There was some playful banter that the telescope is becoming more orthodox over time!
Since the main program was finished a bit early, we had time for some impromptu meeting items. Craig Nance used NASA’s main website to show some fascinating video taken from cameras mounted on the solid rocket boosters. These videos must be seen to be appreciated. They can be found on the NASA web site, and other places.
Following the shuttle videos, Pierre Martin shared with the group images taken with a new multi-million dollar instrument on CFHT, WIRCam. Everyone is highly encouraged to go to
the CFHT web site to peruse the spectacular first images taken with this innovative imager. Pierre detailed how the camera works, and shared some of the science insights gleaned from the images. Everyone was particularly impressed with the image of the Ring Nebula, showing that the Ring is much larger than the central area seen in most telescopes.
A bit of business was conducted to wrap-up the meeting. Specifically, reminders of the observing sessions planned for both July 15 and July 22. See the
club web page for details.
The next WHAC meeting will be Tuesday August 8, 2006 at the Keck Headquarters in Waimea. Prior to every meeting, all are invited to join in the informal dinner at the Parker Ranch Food Court.