Meeting Summary April 2002

Speaker of the month - Russell Sipe video (90 minutes)

To Reach the Unreachable Stars

OCA member Russell "Don Quixote" Sipe shared the woes and triumphs in his quest to build Star Cruiser Observatory, a remotely controllable instrument of great potential located at OCA observing site in a far off land. Using the tools of the trade he took the audience on a vast journey through dense star fields in quest of asteroids, those distant mountains in space. Through the process of "blinking" the audience worked to find the oft elusive prey as they make its way past stars and galaxies and objects of wonder. This was our quest, to follow those "stars", no matter how distant, no matter how far. A good time was had by all.

Additionally, Russell talked about the current dark-sky status of our Anza observing site and light pollution in Southern California.

Russell Sipe - in Star Cruiser
An avid amateur astronomer Russell Sipe created Halebopp.com (now Halebopp.info), one of the most popular astronomy sites on the Internet in 1996-1997. In 1995 he co-founded the successful "Explore the Stars" astronomy program for the general public at Palomar Mountain's Observatory Campground (www.sipe.com/explore). In 1999 Sipe became Sky & Telescope's first telecommuting employee when he joined S&T as Webmaster. His Star Cruiser Observatory (www.starcruiser.com) has been designated as Observatory #444 by International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center where he is honing his skills in asteroid research and enjoying the quest to reach the unreachable stars. He is past president of OCA and three time board member. He lives in Anaheim Hills from where he plans to operate Star Cruiser Observatory "any day now".

What's-up by Bob Gill
video (10 minutes)

Club Announcements
video (15 minutes)

A brand new capability - you can now experience the last OCA meeting by viewing a streaming video. To view these videos you will need to download the latest Realplayer 8 (be sure to download the free Realplayer basic package- only select Realplayer plus if you feel you would benefit from the extra capabilites and want to pay $29 for the product)

Look for the icon to view the video for each section of the meeting. All of the videos have been encoded to account for connection speeds ranging from 56KBs (dialup)->100KBs (cable or DSL). These videos are being streamed from a server setup in the divine offices in Irvine.

please let me know what you think of this feature - Liam Kennedy