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The WHAC Meeting was held on June 12, 2007 in the Hualalai conference room at the W.M. Keck Observatory Headquarters in Waimea.

Laura Kinoshita facilitated the club meeting. She opened the meeting with a welcome to all members both new and old. Those new to WHAC were asked to introduce themselves to the club. There were about 30 members in attendance, with a half-dozen new faces.

Several members shared various astro-goodies. Craig Combes discussed Burgess Optical 2" eyepieces. See the Burgess Optical website for more information: http://www.burgessoptical.com Craig C. is well versed in Burgess Optical equipment; contact him if you have questions about their products. Dr. Mark Senft shared his 5mW green laser pointer he bought for $20 recently. These laser pointers are handy to shine up at objects in the night sky when trying to tell someone else where to look. Perhaps best of all, Jenny Chin shared some double-dipped pretzels!

Bill Brevoort shared some information about the upcoming occultation of the star SAO109353 by the asteroid 10-Hygeia on the early morning of June 26, 2007. Wayne Fukunaga is organizing the event. He is seeking observers stationed across the Big Island so that data may reveal the true size of the asteroid, and perhaps whether it has a moon. Since Wayne's work obligations make it impossible for him to attend WHAC meetings, please see the WHAC web site and email Wayne of you are interested in participating. To observe this you need a 10" or larger aperture telescope, a video camera, a timing source, and a recorder. The goal is to get video of the occultation along with accurate timing information. In the event of successful observations, the results will be presented at a future WHAC meeting.

Cliff Livermore presented our regular feature The Sky This Month. Cliff had a bit of help from Bill Brevoort's laptop. Cliff indicated the sky is thick with planets - Mercury, Venus, Saturn and Jupiter are all prominent this month. Venus and Saturn will pass closely to each other (called a "conjunction") on July 1. The Moon and Venus will be in conjunction on June 18. Among "Deep Sky" objects, Cliff indicated the location of the "Leo Trio" of galaxies, which can be observed in a telescope of 8" aperture or greater. Cliff highlighted NGC-4565 as a spectacular edge-on galaxy. The Virgo Cluster of galaxies was highlighted. This ~20-degree by 5-degree patch of sky in Virgo contains over 2000 galaxies, many visible in modest backyard telescopes. Cliff mentioned Scorpio and the objects M6 and M7 within it as fine targets.

Laura Kinoshita gave a brief presentation about the discovery of an extrasolar planet Gliese-581c. She shared how ESO announced that the planet may have water due to its proximity from the parent star. Laura shared that UC Berkeley astronomers announced 28 new extrasolar planets on May 29, 2007. This brings the tally of extrasolar planets well over 200. The trend seems to be that ~10% of the nearly 1,000 stars surveyed have planets. And, many of the star systems have multiple planets.

We then took a break for a bit of socializing.

The main program of the evening was by Laura Kinoshita. She gave a presentation about the New Horizons spacecraft recent visit to Jupiter en route to Pluto. The presentation was authored and originally presented by Fran Bagenal of the University of Colorado. Fran is a co-investigator for the New Horizons mission.

Laura gave some interesting information about Jupiter. Jovian planets, like Jupiter, do not grow significantly larger as you add matter. For example, if Jupiter's mass were doubled, its volume would not double. In fact, it would hardly increase in size at all! However, the matter within Jupiter would become denser. Laura showed illustrations of the various layers of Jupiter. The higher layers are gaseous Hydrogen. Deeper, there is a layer of liquid hydrogen. The deepest layers are "metallic Hydrogen" and exist at the extreme pressures of Jupiter's center. Jupiter's appearance does not change much with time. Individual features tend to stay around for "hundreds" of years. When observing Jupiter, brighter features are higher altitude while dark regions are deeper. Jupiter has an impressive magnetosphere that interacts with Io. There are strong auroras on Jupiter.

The WHAC Business was short as always.

• The weather forecast looks promising for the weekend. The consensus was to observe at the club dark site on Mamalahoa Hwy. Check with the WHAC Yahoo group page for email announcements and planning for the upcoming weekend observing.
• The next WHAC cookout social, nicknamed the Sizzling Summer Star Party is tentatively scheduled for July 14. Again, this will be discussed on the Yahoo page as well as at the next WHAC meeting.
• Craig Combes announced that he is moving to California towards the end of July. We are truly sorry to hear that Craig C. is leaving. The remaining WHAC leadership will figure out what to do in the coming weeks and months.

There was a small bit of impromptu observing after the meeting. Armed with a ~2.5" refractor and an 8" reflector, many members enjoyed Venus, Saturn, and Jupiter through surprisingly clear Waimea evening skies.

The next WHAC meeting is Tuesday July 10, 2007 in the Canada France Hawaii conference room at 7pm. The meeting agenda is on the WHAC web site. The traditional pre-meeting dinner is at 6pm at the Parker Ranch Food Court.