Arrangements are under way for a joint star party meeting between our club and the UCDavis Astronomy Club on campus at UCD. We will meet at the Physics Building, on April 7, Friday night at 9:00 p.m. This will be the "eve" before Astronomy Day, which is April 8. The speaker will be Astronomy Club President Jason Cosman and his topics, "Double Stars and Extrasolar Planets".

The web site http://maxwell.ucdavis.edu/~astro/ has links to maps of the campus. 55 Roessler Hall is the classroom on the ground level directly across from the Physics/Geology building. For more information on when and where to meet, call Explorit at 756-0191 or me (Dennis Smith) at 756-7006 on Thursday or Friday. We will try to ensure that the correct time and place are in the Enterprise newpaper's Friday edition. I am looking forward to this evening - - there are some interesting telescopes and views available from the top of the Physics building, and its always enjoyable meeting new amateurs. A note to parents: please stress to the kids that SAFETY must also be "observed" on the roof! See you there!

What will you do to popularize Astronomy on Astronomy Day? I hope you can come by to say "Hello" at the Davis Farmers' Market during the morning. If you have a solar telescope or anything to share about astronomy, come out. I will have my 8" with a solar filter and I am hoping to show off our 18.5 inch scope though we won't be able to view anything with it. This is an opportunity to publicly thank the gracious donors who made purchase of the materials possible. For those of you who don't know, the mirror was donated by Mr. and Mrs. Graham of Davis in 1993 and the mount was designed and constructed by experienced telescope maker, Tim Feldman. So, if you have any ideas that would brighten our Astronomy Day Saturday morning appearance, just call me.

Over 30 enthusiasts attended the March 25 meeting of the Astronomy Club. The topic was asteroids and the "world Ceres." We saw a slide show on identifying asteroids, how many there are, and why they should interest us.

Asteroids are of interest to amateur astronomers partly because they are small, and so represent a challenge to the observer. Most of the time, binoculars are needed to see the brightest asteroids. Thousands more can only be glimpsed by larger telescopes (8" or larger, generally) equipped with sensitive cameras or CCDs. We distributed maps for attendees to use to find the bright asteroids Ceres, Ida and Pallas in the evening sky. Discussion then turned to scientific research regarding the probability of a major catastrophe here on Earth due to asteroid impacts. The possibility is remote, but not a very pleasant prospect.

Concluding our brief look at asteroids on a more positive note, we considered how these rocks in space might become a resource for space exploration. They could provide metal for structural components and gasses for fuel and water for future space craft and colonies. Asteroids could also become way stations in the exploration of the planets (for example, former asteroids Phobos and Deimos could be staging areas for exploring Mars). We saw how "gravity assist" maneuvers could slingshot rocket powered asteroids from near-Earth orbits around the sun into a safe orbit around the Moon or Earth. Once there, metals, gasses and other resources would be mined from these asteroids for various space projects.

After our slide show, we adjourned to a generally clear sky. This was the first clear sky in many months. Some high clouds did appear, which degraded our views of the Orion nebulae. More objectionable was the increasing light pollution from the new buildings nearby. Alvin Huey trained his telescope on Ceres, so our meeting concluded with a glimpse of the largest known asteroid - - over 600 miles in diameter - - truly it is an exciting "world Ceres."

A new feature for those of you who receive this bulletin via the postal service is a copy of the current month's sky map from www.skymaps.com/. No more sloppy photocopies of planispheres! Those of you who have Internet access may obtain a copy of the current month's map at the site. Kym Thalassoudis of North Adelaide Australia, distributes the maps. For a nominal fee, I now am able to provide a limited number of copies to our club. It's a gift in gratitude for over 10 years of our members' work and fellowship. If you are on the postal mailing list, please let me know if you don't wish to receive a printed copy, as I will then be able to provide additional copies at the club meetings. I hope you find these maps as informative and useful as I do!

Free PC Planetarium Program

On the lookout for inexpensive ways to enjoy our favorite hobby? For the PC, I discovered a free computer program that plots the night sky. It is by Han Kleign (who is very interested in astronomy with Meade LX 10 and ETX scopes). With accurate databases for stars ("Tycho 2") and other objects, it also shows the positions planetary moons. It has editable files for asteroids and comets. It even has special files you can incorporate including deep sky information and Yale catalogue star numbers. The home page is: http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/han_kleijn/software.htm Let me know your opinion of this program. I have found it very attractive and useful, for the above mentioned reasons, and it is easy to navigate within it.

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Explorit Science Center
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Page last updated: July 23, 2005