The meeting was called to order at 3 p.m. by CE Chapter Director Theo Ramakers. The final attendance number was 19 members and guests present with 4 additional persons attending the post-meeting observing session.

Following welcoming remarks by Theo was the featured presentation, “Meteorological factors affecting visibility”, by Dr. Chip West, meteorologist in charge, Atlanta Center Weather Service Unit, Atlanta Air Route Traffic Control Center in Hampton, Ga. Dr. West did a great job of tying together the relationships between cloud types and other atmospheric phenomena with how well or not the night sky will appear.

Among his PowerPoint slides was an Hourly Weather Forecast Graph at
http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?site=ffc&map.x=193&map.y=124&FcstType=graphical which besides sky cover forecasts (in percent) includes forecasts for windchill, dewpoint, temperature, wind speed and gusts, relative humidity, precipitation potential, thunder, rain, snow, freezing rain and sleet.

Following a short break for refreshments, Theo’s “Current Events” PowerPoint segment included a great recap of:
* The recent Venus/Moon – Jupiter/Mercury conjunctions.
* A list of CEWMA – IYA 2009 Outreach Program events where volunteers are needed
* The CEWMA Volunteer Awards luncheon which Chapter Director Theo Ramakers and Chapter Observing Supervisor Jon Woods and their spouses attended.
* A comparison of the 1969 Presidential Inauguration Parade which included an Apollo 7 float and the 2009 Presidential Inauguration Parade which included a prototype of NASA’s Lunar Electric Rover
* An announcement of a request to extend the Space Shuttle Program through 2010
* Slides of the Constellation Program tests; this will be NASA’s new generation of spacecraft that will carry humans to the Moon, Mars and beyond.
* Slides of the Space Shuttle Discovery on its launchpad with lift-off tentatively set for February 12; STS-119 will fly the S6 truss segment and install the final set of power-generating solar arrays to the International Space Station.
* Images of Saturn and Mars
* Plans to modify the CEWMA web page

Jon Wood’s “Observing 101″ PowerPoint segment included:
* Upcoming rise/transit/set times for celestial objects in the coming weeks and was compiled using the software program Stellarium (available at http://www.stellarium.org/)
* An computer-generated image of a transit of Saturn by Titan
* An update on several comets including C/85P/Beothin (has failed to brighten as expected and has likely gone forever), C/2007 N3 (Lulin) (a morning comet) and C/2006 OF2 (Broughton) (an evening comet visible in small telescopes).

Afterwards, Theo led discussion of several ideas to enhance the chapter’s website
* A change to rename the “Events” tab as “Past Events” and to move the current “Outreach” tab to the main menu bar with the “Past Events” tab; this will hopefully prevent confusion for those looking for what future events the club has scheduled.
* Discussion about adjusting the website’s aspect ratio for older monitors; webmaster Larry Owens will look into this.

CEWMA rep Alesia Rast announced that the chapter’s observing field will be relocated across the road from its present site after logging operations have been completed no later than 18 months from now; the new observing field site will be within the “safe zone” and off-limits from hunters.

Alesia also ask that all who volunteer at any CEWMA note their hours and inform Alesia; she can be reached at 770-784-3059.

The meeting was adjourned at 5:45 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Ken Poshedly
CEWMA Chapter Recording Secretary