|
Broadcasting, Discovering, and
Expanding
Those of you at the last club meeting
got a special treat. Professor David Malin put on
quite a show for us and left us some food for thought.
If you weren't there, you really missed out. Or
not.
I have the pleasure of announcing
that OCA now presents what no other astronomy club
offers, its meetings online via streaming video.
If you indeed missed last month's meeting, simply
go to the the report from the last meeting (written
by Anna Kennedy). From there, if you have the Real
Audio player installed on your browser, you can
click on a video feed of the club meeting virtually
from start to end. Only the boring stuff has been
removed. If you don't have the Real Audio player
you can download it and install it in a minute or
two. Our thanks goes to OCA board member and webmaster
Liam Kennedy who is making this service available.
As I said only the boring stuff
has been removed. Therefore, of course, my dynamic
delivery of the announcements has been included.
I am particularly pleased with the first announcement
I made at the October meeting, the ASROC group (see
www.sipe.com/asroc ) added five new asteroid discoveries
to the previous 14 giving us 19 discoveries over
the past year and growing.
The important thing to note about
ASROC's current work is that most of our discoveries
are in the 19th magnitude range. That is deeper
than a lot of amateur search programs can go. John
Hoot calculates that ASROC has discovered as much
as nine percent of all non-automated discoveries
(i.e. Spacewatch, LINEAR) of magnitude 18 or dimmer
during the past 30 days. Considering the number
of astronomers doing asteroid discovery work, nine
percent is a big number. Congratulations to discoverers
Myke Collins, Minor White, Marissa Gahran, Alan
Ruud, and Russell Sipe.
Rumor has it that one of our discoveries,
2000 RR33 had been spotted on prior oppositions
but lost. The correlations of the 47 observations
form a 12 year arc, good enough that it won't be
long before we should get to name our first asteroid.
The asteroid in question was discovered by Myke
and Minor. Although they probably don't need help
coming up with a name, it makes me stop and wonder.
What name would I want to give my first discovery,
when the time comes? It's fun to think about. What
would you name an asteroid if you had the opportunity?
Think about it. Then go to the OCA Forum and post
a message telling us what you would name your asteroid.
Heck, maybe Myke and Minor will like your name and
ask if they can use it.
If you read this newsletter on
the web you may still have time to participate in
the October 28th work day at Anza. If you are reading
this in the Sirius Astronomer then I am pleased
to announce that work has begun to expand the viewing
pad and add electricity to the common viewing area
known as the "football field". This is
a project that has been a long time coming and will
be of great value to many OCA members.
Finally, I am pleased to announce
that initial construction has begun on Star Cruiser
Observatory that will hold my 17" F/4 Cassegrain
which will join with the 22" Kuhn telescope
in searching the heavens for minor planet bodies.
For more information see www.starcruiser.com.
"The goodness of the night upon you"
Othello Act 1 Scene 2
Russell Sipe |
