This is a reiminder for our monthly meeting tomorrow at 4:00 P.M. Dan Schmitt will deliver a presentation with a different perspective of our home galaxy: The Milky Way. Jon Wood is back and will update us on what’s up in the nightsky. Theo’s Current Events will close the meeting. After the meeting obseving at the observing field. So if you are not going to the PSSG, stop in for a great afternoon and evening at Charlie Elliott Wildlife Center.
Clear Skies
Theo Ramakers

Frank Garner and Theo Ramakers went on September 30, to the Chamblee Middle School for an entire school day, and did presentations for the 6th graders of Dr. Victoria Rao. Frank’s presentation explained and showed the students how telescopes work. They could touch and feel the optics and after Frank built the “open” telescope they could look through it and saw the results. Frank’s prsentation included refractors and reflectors.

Theo took the students on a flight through the solar system and they did visit a number of planets from a viewpoint you only can get from a space craft that orbits a planet, or moon. Most of them were very surprised to find out that other planets have moons that do not look like moons but more like asteroids…. The event was very rewarding for us and the students did like it too I believe. Some of them made it home with some nice sun posters and stereo cards of the sun. Click here for some pictures of the event. Thanks Frank and Theo for putting on this event.

This is a reminder for our monthly meeting for September on Saturday September 19 on 5:00pm. This is a Potluck dinner meeting so bring your favorate dish to share with others. Please let me know what you will be bringing, so I can publish during the week the menu for Saturday as we receive the list of items.

We also will host a group of interested persons of the Atlanta Outdoors Club. For this purpose, Stephen Ramsden will setup his Solar Telescopes at the Visitors Center at 4:00 P.M. , weather permitting.

The feature presentation this month is: “NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory” by Stephen Ramsden.
Stephen will present a mission briefing on NASA’s new Solar Dynamics Observatory scheduled for launch in November 2009 and give an overview of NASA Solar missions to date.

After the meeting as usual we will join at the observing field, (again weather permitting) for an evening and night of observing.

Hope to see you there!
Clear Skies
Theo

Telecon August 27th LCROSS Mission with Brian Day
The Lunar Crater Observing and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) is scheduled to impact the lunar surface on October 9th, at 11:30 UT (7:30 a.m. EDT, 4:30 a.m. PDT), +/- 30 minutes, to confirm the presence or absence of water in a permanently shadowed crater at the Moon’s South Pole. Our speaker will give us the background on the Mission and how we as amateurs can actively participate.

Brian Day is an avid amateur astronomer with the Fremont Peak Observatory Association in Northern California and Education and Public Outreach Lead for the LCROSS Mission and Technical Educational Lead for NASA/Ames Educational Technology Team.

To join the Teleconference on Thursday, August 27th at 6:00 pm PDT (9:00 pm Eastern) call the toll-free conference call line: 1-888-455-9236
Call anytime after 5:45 pm the evening of the telecon. An operator will answer and:
- You will be asked for the passcode: NIGHT SKY NETWORK
- You will be asked to give your NAME and the CLUB you belong to, and number of people listening with you.
(Charlie Elliott chapter of the AAC)

The PowerPoint to accompany Brian Day’s talk is available here:

http://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/download-view.cfm?Doc_ID=384

View the Online Version of LCROSS Telecon here:

http://www.astrosociety.org/nsntelecon/

Clear Skies,
Theo

This is a reminder for tomorrow’s meeting at Charlie Elliott Wildlife Center. The main presentation will be: “Heading back out of the Harbor” by Fred Buls, who will discuss NASA’s plans to return to the moon and on to Mars.

Observing after the meeting at CE’s observing field.
The meeting and observing are free and open to everyone.

Clear Skies
Theo Ramakers

Yesterday’s event got “rained out”. However, some diehards still made it up to Charlie Elliott, and Ms M. Hill, another teacher, and two of their students had the opporunity to still see some of the nighttime goodies our telescopes can show them. Frank Garner, Jim Soboleski and Theo made it out to the field and showed the group some of the beauty of the nightsky. Some open and globular clusters, Jupiter and despite the bad transparency some nebulas. Thanks guys for being there and allowing these people to see some of the beauty of the night sky. We hope that they will be back for more… with more kids and parents!
Thanks guys for being there and Debbie and Clevis for being available if we would have needed you.
Clear skies
Theo

The Stone Mountain Middle School has asked if they could come out to Charlie Elliott on Saturday for some meteor observing and other goodies. There might even be some others who are interested. The forecast does not look very good, but everyday after tomorrow the number of meteors visible will be less. So they did not want to take a chance to miss this. And than there still is Jupiter.

So if you can spare an hour or so on Saturday evening, come on out and share your enthousiasme for astronomy with these kids and their parents and let them see what you see through your scopes.

Please let me know if you can make it,
Thanks
Theo Ramakers

The problems with this year’s outreach program for the week 2 of Charlie Elliott summer campers started before we actually were on site. Stephen’s cases with eye pieces and hand controllers were stolen the night before. However, Stephen did not let up. He was at the Camera Bug first thing on Wednesday morning to see if Tim could get him the pieces he needed to make the outreach event happen!! At 11:30 he was uploading the latest version of the software for the new controllers, but at that time the clouds had already rolled in at Charlie Elliott, 60 miles to the east, so we had to cancel the solar event. Stephen, thanks so much for your effort and your attempts to still make this happen and thanks to Tim for helping him out!!!

The evening session was still on with an inside presentation by Theo Ramakers and outside observing if the clouds would let up. Theo presented material of the NSN on the solar system, followed by a flight throught the solar system showing views future astronauts would be able to see using the program Celestia. After visiting earth, our moon, and practically all the planets and some of Jupiter’s moons, the kids had many questions. Outside the clouds were still persisting, so we had to cancel the observing part of the outreach program. Taking the observing cancellations aside, overall a great event!

Thanks to the management of Charlie Elliott, especially Julie Duncan, for inviting us again this year to reach out to those kids and try to spark interest in Astronomy and Space Exploration, and the members of the Charlie Elliot Chapter, Stephen, Frank and Jim Soboleski, who had volunteered their time but could not because of mother nature.

Click here or use this URL for images of the program.

http://www.ceastronomy.org/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=6790

Theo Ramakers

This is a reminder for our monthly meeting and observing at Charlie Elliott’s visitor’s center this coming Saturday July 18, starting at 5:00 p.m.

Our feature presentation will be Larry Owen’s: “Philosophy of Astronomy”.

Human spaceflight has long been the dream of mankind. As we enter our 48th year as a space fairing civilization, only a select few have had the opportunity to experience space travel. These lucky few often speak of how profound and life changing this experience can be.

Of course, space travel for the masses is many years in the future, but is there a way we can have this profound experience from Earth? Amateur astronomers have the tools!

The cloud cover forecast is 37% with a humidity of 52%, so maybe we get to spend some time observing this month!!

Hope to see you there!
Clear skies
Theo

Some of you might remember the outreach event we did for the Garden Club of Georgia last year. This was a very rewarding event and this year they want to look through our scopes again. Stephen Ramsden gave an early notice on June 18th. So here is the follow up. Please let us know who can make it for a little time on Sunday evening July 12th. Click here to see the pictures from last year.

Clear Skies,
Theo Ramakers