Author: Theo Ramakers

Charlie Elliott Chapter of the Atlanta Astronomy Club
Minutes of the Meeting October 25, 2008
 
The meeting was called to order by Chapter director Theo Ramakers at 4:05pm.  17 members and guests attended the meeting and  62 persons took advantage of the observation field since the last meeting.   Following a welcome to all attendees, a request to change the April meeting date was discussed.  The request was made to avoid a conflict with the annual star party of the Flint River Astronomy Club.  The request to change our meeting date was approved to the weekend preceding the old date.  We now need to check with CEWMA if they will allow the change. The home page of the CE website has been updated with the chapter meeting dates for 2009.
 
Following a short introduction of Paul Tankersley by Theo, Paul started his presentation about Narrow Band Imaging in the City.  Paul's extensive presentation discussed this topic in much detail.  He explained why he got interested in this, the evaluations he went through, the challenges one has to overcome when imaging from light polluted areas, the equipment he needed  for this and finally the process when doing this the right way.  His presentation was very complete and everyone had a chance to see his beautiful album of images made by Paul over the one year he has been doing this.
 
We all enjoyed Paul's presentation very much.  You can review Paul's presentation on our website in the Presentations Page.  After thanking Paul and his wife Gail for coming out to Charlie Elliott, bringing donuts,  and showing us this very exciting part of observing the night sky, Jon Wood did his continuation of the Observing 101.
In addition to reviewing the night sky for November, location of Venus and Jupiter,  Jon discussed  the discussion he had with the management of Charlie Elliott about the hunting season and the fact that the observing field is not located in the Safety Zone.  We are sharing the observing field with everyone.  It was explained that the wildlife is very active around sunset and sunrise.  This means to be very cautious around these times of the day during hunting season, and it would be better to come a little later than earlier.  We have added the hunting season information on our website.  A link to this section has been added at the home page of the site: .  http://ceastronomy.org/blog/directions .  The information can also be found  at the website of CEWMA: http://georgiawildlife.dnr.state.ga.us/hunting.aspx.   
Jon also discussed a new focusing tool he is using: the Bahtinov mask. This focus mask is based on the principle of moving diffraction spikes.  His presentation included screen captures of in and out of focus objects and gave a great overview of the ease of operation.  A URL for a generator of a mask template is : http://astrojargon.net/maskgen.aspx
 
The last item of the agenda was Theo's Current Events in Astronomy and Space Exploration.  Theo discussed the advancement of some foreign countries in space exploration, notably China with the first manned space flight and India with the launch of their first mission to the moon and gave an overview of recent and current outreach events.  A review of recent images made by chapter members was followed by a status review and images of Odessey, Phoenix, and Cassini.  An overview and movie about of the Indian mission Chandrayaan to the moon completed this month's Current Events.  A link to this presentation can be found on the Events page of the website.
After the meeting it was out to the observing field, where several additional observers joined and some students and parents from George Walton High took the opportunity to see some nice sky objects.