M-111
May
2003
Editor’s Note Andrea Staiger
Keep looking up…
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Editor’s Note |
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Words from our President |
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Words from our President cont’d. |
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RAS Counter Proposal Mike Allen |
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Winter Star Party, Upcoming Events |
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Words From our
President
Well folks, it's
spring once again and I can feel the excitement in the air already!
I think now would be
a good time to recap the major points of the previous year. First, Hidden
Hollow was a tremendous success, and I would like to thank everyone once again,
who made it possible. Not only did the sky clear up both Friday and Saturday
nights, the entire weekend went off without a hitch! There were very few
complaints and they were handled on the spot without having to come to me. The speakers
were all great and we had many compliments on them. Everyone had a wonderful
time and to top it all off, we made a profit! The profit was smaller than in
years past, but considering the hurricane and conflicting [major] conventions
the same weekend, we did very well. I look forward to Hidden Hollow 2004!
We were approved for
our first ever GRANT for $10K from the Rupp foundation. Unfortunately, we lost
this grant due to us and Friendly House not being able to come up with an
agreeable lease in time for the deadline. I think this shows that we can
receive grant money in the amounts we wish to repair and upgrade WRO the way we
have all envisioned it. Keep positive thoughts, and it WILL happen!
We entered into
"negotiations" with Friendly House to come up with an equitable lease
arrangement. We have gone through a few modifications and our latest proposal
is in their hands (and in this newsletter). I see no reason we won't be able to
iron this out by mid summer or earlier. After we get a lease agreement, we will
be free to start applying for grants again.
Last year we recoated
the 31" secondary and the "Greer Scope" secondary. This winter
we noticed that both coatings were in terrible shape! After contacting the
company, they have agreed to recoat both mirrors AT THEIR COST. Hopefully, this
coating will last a little better. They should be back by now and reinstalled.
I still have the tension spring for the worm gear to fix, but I hope to have
that done this week.
This Year looks to be
another wonderful year. We have a new "education" committee, headed
up by John Boggs, with help from Gary Deatsman and a few others. They will be
handling the scheduling of events for our club, so if you know of a group that
wishes to come down, or would like us to come to them, contact John or Gary.
The other aspect for them will be to recommend purchases we will need to make
for our presentations. The one thing we are looking at right now is a
"computer projector". If you have any ideas or would like to get involved
with this aspect of the club contact John or Gary.
We are in the process
of purchasing six (6) new eyepieces for the club. along with a case and
filters! We already have a few and are waiting on the rest. We should have them
shortly. These eyepieces will stay at the observatory. We haven't decided yet
whether to keep them in the dome or the clubhouse, but I will let you know
ASAP. Although these eyepieces are for all of us to use, please do not take
them (or a club scope) off site without authorization. Authorization has to
come from either myself, Joe Forster, or John Boggs. This is mainly to let
everyone know where club equipment is at all times in case someone else wants
to use it.
We are selling some
of our scopes, to raise money to purchase a couple of Dobs.... If you are
interested in one of them contact an officer or board member. Congratulations
to John who is purchasing the 10"!
Meetings and Public
Nights for 2003 will be held on the FIRST Saturday of each month! I know the
change is sometimes confusing, but we can better accommodate that dreaded
Moon-thing if we are flexible from year to year. We voted at the last board
meeting that from now on ALL meetings will start at
MESSIER
PUBLIC NIGHT/Club
Meeting: Saturday April 5 at
RAS SUMMER PICNIC:
Instead of me doing my annual Rib BBQ in late spring and contending with
moderate weather, we have decided that we will combine the RAS summer picnic
with my Ribs. The club will purchase the racks of ribs for me to cook and we
can all bring a dish to compliment them. If you haven't tried my BBQ Ribs yet,
don't miss out this year. Ask anyone who has tried them and I'm sure they will
tell you that my Ribs are "the best in town". I would actually like
to do this twice this year, once in June/July and again in Aug/Sept sometime.
If you have a preference on a particular date let me know.
NEW MEMBERS: I would
like to welcome all of our new members! I am sure you will find this group to
be a fun loving bunch of guy and gals. I may have mentioned you before or I may
miss you this time, I do the best I can: Welcome: Jerry Beck, Harry Copper,
Eric Leedy, Terry Richmond, Bruce Scodova (welcome back Bruce!), Dave Balint,
Gordon Eyster, Jon Darkow, Monty Meier, Rick Reeder, and Tammy Plotner.
Club Officers for
2003:
President: Mike
Grilley
Vice President: Terry
McQuistin
Sec/Treas: Keith
Moore
Observatory Director:
Joe Forster
Club Board Members:
Mike Grilley Jan 2003
- Dec 2005 (stargazer@core.com -
419-368-6218)
Terry McQuistin Jan
2003 - Dec 2005 (no email - 330-683-6689) Kenneth Hemmerly Jan 2001 - Dec 2003 (no email -
419-747-1080)
Joe
Forster: Jan 2001 - Dec 2003 (joef@direcway.com - 740-599-7669
John
Boggs: Jan 2001 - Dec 2003 (jjboggs@bright.net
- 419-289-2541)
Mike
Allen: Jan 2002 - Dec 2004 (cloudrider@cybrtown.com
- 419-562-0599)
Keith
Moore: Jan 2002 - Dec 2004 (KMOORE10@columbus.rr.com
- 419-468-3542)
Webmaster:
Tammy Plotner
M111
Editor - Andrea Staiger (astaiger@veroom.net or stargazer_andrea@yahoo.com
)
Education
Committee Chairman - John Boggs
I
Hope to see you all at the Messier Marathon
Mike
Lease Negotiations with Friendly House Still Pending
Late last year Friendly House responded to our
lease offer, with an entirely new proposal. You may recall, the lease is a
requirement for RAS to obtain grant money to improve the Warren Rupp
Observatory. As a result of lengthy negotiations with Friendly House, it
appears that a grant offer by the Warren Rupp Foundation has expired. Some of
the conditions suggested by Friendly House were thought to be less than
acceptable by the RAS board. We have since sent a letter to Friendly House
expressing our concerns. The bulk of the letter is below:
Here are some important points that the Richland
Astronomical Society would like to address concerning the lease and operating
agreement proposed by Friendly House.
1.
The 5 year renewable term for the lease would be a
detriment to obtaining grant money to maintain the facilities. Our research
shows that potential grant organizations would not look favorably on the short
term proposed by Friendly House. They want to feel confident the organization
they donate money to will be around for awhile. Anyone who is not familiar with
the 40 year amicable relationship between the Richland Astronomical Society and
Friendly House might question the reasoning for such a short term when the
standard for such arrangements is much longer. For example, the lease on the
Cincinnati Observatory has a 99 year term. We feel our original proposal of a
40 year lease is the minimum term acceptable to successfully obtain grant money
and be in compliance with Section 19 of your proposed lease.
2.
Some of our members have expressed concern over
wording in Section 4(b) which seems to indicate that Friendly House could seize
the personal property of the Richland Astronomical Society and its members if
Friendly House were to find us in default of the agreement. We certainly
believe this could not be the intention of Friendly House; however we would
like to see this section reworded to clearly indicate so.
3.
There are a number of sections that require RAS to
obtain permission from, or notify Friendly House concerning our activities. We
would like to have wording added in these sections which indicate more
specifically who we should contact.
4.
There are a couple of sections of your proposal
that might on the surface seem to limit access to the observatory by RAS.
Sections 9(c) and 5(i) seem to limit us from scheduling activities on any night
except Saturday during the summer camping season. We have not in the past had
such a restriction placed on us. This would certainly require us to turn down
many requests we continually receive from church, school, and service
organizations. As a result we would not be in compliance with section 5(d) of
the proposal which requires keeping the observatory open and free to the
public, or the intention of Warren Rupp of providing a unique educational
opportunity to central Ohio. Any group interested in donating money to us would
certainly raise an eyebrow to this issue. The RAS would like to see language in
the lease which clearly places no conditions on “unfettered access”.
There are some other more minor issues in the lease we
would like to address with Friendly House. We would be happy to schedule a
meeting to discuss these and the others we indicated above.
The addition of the Warren Rupp Observatory has posed
both opportunities and challenges to RAS. It is our desire to maintain and
improve the observatory to the best of our ability. Our efforts to secure a
lease with Friendly House are founded solely on our desire to obtain grant
money for the observatory. We feel our efforts will insure that the observatory
remains a premier facility for amateur astronomers, and the public, to explore
the Universe for many decades to come.
As we previously mentioned, the Richland Astronomical
Society has had a mutually beneficial relationship with Friendly House nearly
four decades. We expect the next forty will be just as productive.
Winter
Star Party
The
Winter Star Party was held February 3-8 2003 in West Summerland Key in the
Florida Keys. I drove there in my new pickup truck with Louis Pcheny as my
companion. It’s about a 15 hour drive and 825 miles. We slept in a tent and ate
out of a cooler, roughing it the whole 5 days we stayed. This was only my second
star party but it was the best. There was some light pollution visible in the
east from the city of Marathon and to the west from Big Pine Key. It wouldn’t
have been so noticeable had it not been for the severe humidity spreading the
faint lights. No sooner did the sun set than the humidity would soak anything
not covered. The moon was a slight nuisance later on in the week as well, since
new moon was two days before the party started. On the flip side of these
circumstances was the fact that the cause of the humidity (water on all sides)
helped to make the seeing phenomenal. We were able to use magnifications of
over 300X on most nights there to view the planets and the lovely crescent
moon. I viewed objects in telescopes ranging in size from 4 inches all the way
up to 36 inches.
The
party opened with past Chairman Tippy D’Auria offering a moment of silence for
past registrar of the WSP Bob Grant and also the seven astronauts who died
aboard the shuttle Columbia. It was quite a moving speech.
Several
vendors were there, selling at below retail all manner of astronomical
equipment. There were activities for the children including a photography
contest. The foods consisted only of coffee and sweet snacks though grocery
stores were only a couple miles away. The astrophotographers who participated
in the astrophotography contest were way above my level of expertise. The door
prizes were great; I won a night sky poster, Galileo t-shirt and Astronotes
observing software. The best thing about this star parties’ activities has to
be the speakers though.
They
sponsored for the first time ever an astrophotography workshop aimed mostly at
what to do with that astrophoto you just took. It was put on by some of the
best astrophotographers in the field: Tony Hallas, R. Scott Ireland, Tim Khan,
Dr. Donald C. Parker & Herm Perez. I learned quite a bit in a few hours
about Adobe Photoshop as well as had my picture of Omega Centauri scanned and
written to CD by Tony Hallas himself, who on any other day would charge me for
this service. All the speakers especially Scott Ireland were eager to share
their knowledge, often staying late to answer questions. It was a rare
opportunity I am glad I got to participate in.
Other
speakers such as Roland Christen with Mark Jenkins & Trent Kjell talked
about their observatory they built and the fun they’ve had photographing M31.
They are currently working on a single shot of that galaxy that has taken them
four months so far using three separate telescopes. That should be in your
coming Sky & Telescope gallery soon, keep an eye out.
Dr.
Caroline Simpson gave a revealing look into the life of a radio astronomer. She
was there at the filming of the movie "Contact" which starred Jodie
Foster. Her enthusiasm for this field showed well in her talk.
Donald
Parker gave a humorous talk about filming Mars during this coming opposition.
He advocated using simple webcams and ordinary digital cameras.
There
was a swap meet on Friday. The prices on items were very low. I brought two 4½
inch telescopes and a 6 inch mirror set but was unable to sell them. It was
sort of like a garage sale only lower prices.
I got
to help famous mirror maker Dan Joyce grind a 12 inch Newtonian mirror. After
an hour of that my shoulders had enough.
This
was a star party I can highly recommend. I had as much fun as possible in the 5
days I was there. The WSP sells out early every year, yet I got lucky and found
a ticket through astromart.com. If you plan on attending I suggest you register
early because next years’ party is a twentieth anniversary gala that is sure to
be even better.
Mike Davey, Education Coordinator, Escambia Amateur Astronomers Association
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P.O. Box 1118 Mansfield, Ohio
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ADDRESS CORRECTION
REQUESTED |
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