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This month I wanted to spend some
time letting you know of the many things that members
and board members have been working on recently.
Antonio Miro runs the OCA's beginners class - now
attended by upwards of 30 people each month (many
are prospective members of our club). Antonio asked
for help - he wanted to be able to show his class
some astrophotos. I thought it would be a great
idea if the images we used were actually created
by other members. The idea being that it will show
the beginners class what can be done by regular
OCA members. Four members of the special OCA AstroImagers
group printed out samples of their work. In particular
I would like to recognize Dick Greenwald for producing
over 12 high quality prints of his original work
- all with very detailed information about the objects
in his photos. Antonio used the prints for his October
class meeting - and reported back they were very
well received by the attendees.
*Thanks also to Jim Windlinger, Dave Kodama and
Bill Patterson for their help with this.
The OCA's AstroImagers Special Interest Group now
has around 60 online members. This group is dedicated
to perfecting the art and science of Astrophotography
(both the film and digital kind). Our last meeting
marked the first year since this group was formed.
The meetings occur each month on the third Tuesday
at my offices in Irvine - with more than 20 people
usually attending. The past year the meetings have
been chaired by Garth Brooks. He has done a great
job with running the meetings and keeping us all
focused on the topics at hand. Last month he turned
over the chair to another great member Gregory Pyros.
A recent very important development is the creation
of a very special sub-group tasked with the planning
for our AstroImage 2002 conference. The whole group
has come up with some great ideas for next years
conference and it will be the sub-committees task
to make it all come together. Look out for more
information on this event soon.
A special group was setup some months ago in order
to examine in detail many aspects of the Anza site
- including the observatory and Anza house. The
committee consists of Barbara Toy, Bob Gill, Tim
Hogle and Don Lynn. Don is the person who you will
often find down at Anza working on many aspects
of the maintenance and upkeep - he has been doing
this job for quite a few years now (and we hope
many more years :). Barbara Toy created a very extensive
report of their findings. One of the first items
on this list was related to something I have no
experience with -the pumping out of the septic tanks
for the observatory and Anza House. Apparently this
has not been done for very many years - and there
was concern that damage would occur if this was
not handled quickly. Barbara arranged everything
and went to the site in order to oversee the operation
a few weeks ago (everything went smoothly - although
we were very near the "danger zone" as
far as capacity). While she was there she also took
it upon herself to do some items of maintenance
on Anza House and also re-painting some of the stairs
around the property.
I would like to offer a special
thank you to Barbara and the Anza Maintenance Committee
for their very many efforts - it is most appreciated
by all of us who use the Anza facility.
The OCA Elections for boardmembers is approaching
in January. Nominations for Board Members will be
open at the December meetings.
"every day we are connecting ever more photons
of light from distant galaxies to the eyes, hearts,
minds and imaginations of our members and others
in our community."
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