Club Address:
65-1158 Mamalahoa Hwy.
Kamuela, HI 96743
An electronic publication of The West Hawaii Astronomy Club -
Club Officers:
President:
Doug Summers
Vice President:
Craig Nance
Secretary:
Bernt Grundseth (acting)
Treasurer:
With Support From:
Canada-France Hawaii Telescope and
W. M. Keck Observatory
This website is currently maintained by Doug Summers
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September 2007 Club Meeting Report
Agenda:
| Welcome/Introductions |
Doug Summers |
5 Minutes
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The Sky Tonight |
Doug Summers |
15 Minutes
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August's Lunar Eclipse |
Craig Nance |
25 Minutes
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WHAC on the Web |
Dan "The Pizza Man" |
15 Minutes
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Social Break |
All |
15 Minutes |
"Google Sky" software review |
Doug Summers |
10 Minutes
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Club Business |
All |
20 Minutes |
The WHAC Meeting was held on September 11, 2007 in the CFHT Large Conference Room at the CFHT Headquarters in Waimea.
Doug Summers facilitated the club meeting. He opened the meeting with a welcome to all members both new and old.
There were about 25 members in attendance, with a couple of new faces that were asked to introduce themselves. The meeting scheduled for August was canceled due to Hurricane Flossie watch for the area of Waimea and the west coast of the Island of Hawaii.
Doug also did an introduction and a review of the new software available from Google the Google Sky. This tool can be found in "Google Earth". Doug encourages the members to review the features of this interesting tool.
The sky tonight regular feature presented the objects available for observation during this month, the last opportunity to look at the summer sky.
The summer triangle is high overhead in the northern sky and easy to find with three very bright stars: Vega, Altair and Deneb. This is the last month to look at Scorpius with Antares a very bright red giant star, easy to see over the SW.
Also, M8 the Lagoon nebula is up, above Scorpius. In the northwestern sky two very bright stars, Vega and Arcturus are visible. Next to Antares is Jupiter. The Big Dipper is also disappearing from the summer sky.
No significant comets are visible during this time.
Dan presented WHAC on the web, an overview of the various features and items in the club web site for the members that are not familiar yet with our web site. Here we can find the club meeting agenda, club news, selected astronomical links, Mauna Kea weather etc.
Craig Nance described the recent lunar eclipse with a nice and a scaled presentation of the size of the moon, the sun and the earth and their respective distances. The moon features were painted by Craig's wife on a golf ball and she painted an earth on a Styrofoam ball of 6 inches diameter.
Club Business: The next star party will be held at the DLNR site Saturday, the 13th of October, the site is located on Mamalahoa Hwy at mile 15.5. This time the main dish will be hamburgers. Volunteers for the food supply are Dan and Bernt. The projects suggested for this event are to find out the magnitude limit of the various member telescopes as well as observation of the ring Nebula.
The next WHAC meeting is Tuesday October 9, 2007 at the Keck Headquarters Hualalai conference room at 7pm.
The full meeting agenda will be on the WHAC web site. The traditional pre-meeting dinner is at 6pm at the Parker Ranch Food Court.
Previous meeting minutes / club news
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