B.C.A.A.S. MEETING MINUTES
June 9, 2005
The meeting was held in the Reading Planetarium and started at 7:35 PM with Vice President Bret Cadmus calling the meeting to order. About 20 members and visitors were in attendance.
Two visitors from one of our star parties at Blue Marsh Lake were recognized. We then reviewed some recent star parties. The Heritage Center star party of May 14th was cancelled due to bad weather and was rescheduled for May 20th. But that too was then cancelled due to the weather, but since it suddenly cleared, Ron Kunkel went down and set up in case any of the public showed. About 6 people came in all. The Jupiter double moon shadow transit of May 19 was also cancelled as was the one on May 26. On this latter date again the weather cleared suddenly so Ron went to the Flying Field and set up. Dave Brown also came and they did observe the double transit using Dave’s binoviewer in Ron’s LX200. A number of members attended the Cherry Spring Star Party held June 2 through 6. Generally the weather was not very cooperative and only about half of one night of the four afforded good observing. At least 6 club members attended CSSP and got a chance to see possibly the darkest skies in the state of PA.
Treasure Linda Sensenig reported a balance of $10, 063.51. This balance is expected to drop somewhat when we pay for our club insurance and league dues.
Under coming events, the following activities were mentioned.
1. Saturday, June 11 there will be a “meteor” hunt near Skull Hill. Groups are meeting at either the vacant lot in Centerport or the Elementary School in Bernville at 12:30 PM. They will then proceed to the quarry to search for the mineral called Goethite, which looks like a meteorite. This event is in conjunction with the Berks Mineral Society and it will be held rain, hurricane, or shine.
2. Thursday, June 30 there will be a BCAAS Board Meeting at Arner’s on R. 61 starting at 8:00 PM.
3. Sunday, July 3 there will be a Deep Impact Comet Watch at the Flying Field starting at dusk. The probe is expected to impact comet Temple 1 at 2:00 AM EST on Monday July 4. Possibly we will be able to see the brightening from the impact.
4. Thursday, July 14th will be our next club meeting. It will be Member’s night presentations. As of now the following talks are planned. Gene and Hanna Salvatore will present on their recent Solar Eclipse Trip. Dave Brown will talk on “Mysterious Orbs within Pictures” and Ron Kunkel will talk about “Solar Hydrogen-Alpha Observing.”
After a short break, member Larry Citro gave a presentation titled “Let’s Look at the Moon.” His talk was very informative and hopefully piqued your interest for doing some lunar observations. Look at it this way. The moon offers the possibility of greatly expanding the number of possible observing nights. Thank you Larry for opening our eyes to this fascinating object.
The meeting adjourned at 9:00 PM.
Submitted by stand-in secretary Ron Kunkel, since secretary Barb Geigle was in Florida