The WHAC meeting was held Tuesday, November 14, at the CFHT Headquarters Conference Room in Waimea.
The meeting was called to order at 7pm by Doug Summers. There were about 30 persons in attendance with several new faces - some from as far away as Minnesota.
After going around the room and the new folks introducing themselves, Doug asked about recent observing sessions. Several people had observed the recent Mercury transit of the Sun, sharing their telescopes with the public:
Laura was set up in front of Keck headquarters, Riley was in the courtyard at CFHT, Cliff was at the VIS, Dr. Mark on the roof of his office building in Kona, Craig C. at Parker school.
Doug skimmed through recent Astronomy news:
- Saturn picture from behind
- European Southern Observatory (ESO) has gotten approval for the design phase to begin on their Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) - 42m?
- Winds have been measured in Jupiter's Red Spot Junior at 400mph
- NASA has lost communications with the Mars Global Surveyor
- Our moon is not dead! It belched some gas ~1 million years ago...
Doug presented an abbreviated
The Sky This Month highlighting the Scultptor galaxy, NGC253, as a very large object in prime time now. Saturn comes up late - after midnight. Other nice objects in prime viewing territory are the Andromeda galaxy and the Triangulum.
Additionally, two comets are currently up - Swan (although it's getting dimmer, hard to see the tail anymore) and Faye. The Leonids are this weekend. (What's the link for that?)
The first of the featured talks was
Kyle Kinoshita's What's Shakin' at Keck. Kyle, the Mechanical Engineering Manager at Keck, presented the Keck staff's strategy for recovery from the October 15, 6.7 magnitude earthquake.
Kyle presented many photos of everything from boulders on the highway by his surf spot at beach 69 to Keck's headquarters office damage to telescope encoders, azimuth drive tracks, and other mechanical parts of the telescope that were damaged.
Recovery has been the #1 priority at the observatory since the quake, with a strategy emphasizing safety.
In Kyle's words, the "interface" between the ground and the telescope is what took the majority of the shock from the quake -- encoders (which record where the telescope is on the track), the azimuth journal, and radial pads.
Both telescopes are back on-sky for science (K1 resumed operation on the 24th of Oct and K2 on Nov 11), but both are operating at a reduced level of efficiency. The slew speeds are limited and the pointing is worse on both telescopes, and the Keck II bottom shutter is locked in a closed position.
Some discussion followed about whether it would have been better for the telescope to have been "up on oil" when the earthquake occurred, estimated damage at about $250K, and about .2 to .3 Gs were experienced up on the mountain.
Dr. Mark Baril presented the second of the featured talks,
CFHT's Earthquake Recovery. The CFH Telescope fared much better than the Keck telescopes, whether due to the different design, smaller size, or just being an older design, it wasn't speculated.
CFHT's headquarters experienced about the same level of damage as Keck's.
Mark used the model of the CFH telescope in the conference room to help explain how it shifted around in the earthquake. The biggest hit was to an RA encoder roller that was crushed by the horseshoe mount.
Mark had a duplicate of the encoder roller to show us and lots of pictures of dents and scratches in steel caused by the horseshoe mount moving forward and back. They still have a "bump" on the horseshoe that has to be repaired or the encoder won't work when it rolls over it.
Instrument checks were complete by Wednesday, the 18th and the telescope was back on sky by Thursday, the 19th.
What followed was a lively discussion on the merits of altitude/azimuth vs equatorial telescope mounts.
Since it was cloudy in Waimea, we cancelled the observing session for the evening, and continued on with a few more topics.
Pierre demonstrated CFHT's new
Celestron CPC Series 8" go-to telescope.
CFHT had been using the same C-8 telescope for about 25 years for their outreach program. The new telescope has no manual controls. As Pierre says, "It's the perfect telescope for dumb astronomers."
It is completely computer controlled, and you don't even have to know what stars you're pointing at to set it up - just pick a few stars and center them, then it knows where it is and the pointing is great!
The telescope itself weighs about 42 pounds and cost ~$2000.
More lively discussion followed on the merits of star-hopping vs go-to telescopes.
Discussed a little bit of business. Upcoming events:
- Pierre mentioned that on December 2, following the Waimea Christmas Parade, all WHAC members are invited to set up their telescopes on the CFHT front lawn to share the skies with the public. This is one of the most enjoyable astro-events of the year. Even if it's cloudy, it is a fun time chatting with the public about astronomy.
- The December WHAC meeting will be held at Keck, but probably not in the Hualalai conference room. Watch the WHAC Yahoo groups page for details, and we'll make sure there's at least a sign up at the Hualalai entrance
- Craig Combes is planning an end-of-the-year social for the December meeting
Carlton Lane provided a little demo of a solar system model using a 1" marble as the Sun and a tiny dot on a scrap of paper as the earth, ~9 feet away!
The next WHAC meeting will be
Tuesday December 12, 2006 at Keck Headquarters,
but probably not in the Hualalai conference room.
Craig Combes is hosting the meeting.
As always, all are invited to the pre-meeting social/dinner at the Parker Ranch food court at ~6pm.
