[The background above is part of an image by the Hubble Space Telescope of the Crescent Nebula.]

WHERE: AT EXPLORIT Science Center, 3141 5th Street, Davis.

Hello all friends and members of the Davis Astronomy Club!

I have some great news. There's been a change in the topic of our meeting at Explorit on Saturday June 30 at 7:30. Member Ben Granett, who graduated from Davis High School last year and has completed his first year at Cal Tech, will present a slide show and talk on his recent work at Palomar, where he received training on using the 60 inch instrument. Come see what it's like to be on the 'inside" of one of the world's premier astronomy centers. Welcome Ben back to the club for this special visit!

Dennis Smith

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“Seeing Double” (Stars) - this program has been postponed, see newsflash above.

We will discuss multiple star systems: double stars, triple stars, and more. Some stars are obvious doubles to the naked eye, such as the stars Mizar and Alcor in the handle of the “big dipper” asterism. But with a telescope we begin to see that many, if not most, of the sin-gle stars we can see are actually double or triple stars. We will have a slide show on examples of star systems, and how they might appear from hypothetical nearby planets. For example, the “star” Castor in Gemini, which consists of 6 stars, and the star W in the constellation Ursa Major (Big Bear) which consists of stars that actually touch each other. We will see a demonstration of how stars or-bit each other, and what is meant by terms such as “apastron”, “periastron,” and “line of apsides.” We will consider a list of interesting star systems to view through the telescope, and we‚ll find out why the colors of the components in multiple star systems seem exaggerated when viewed through the eyepiece. Af-terward, weather permitting, we‚ll view some stars and perhaps Mars as well.

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The May Meeting: We had a good group of approximately 20 amateurs at our May 28th Meeting on “Preparing for Mars”. We had a slide show on what we know and don’t know about Mars, and how amateur astronomers can best prepare for viewing this object. The talk focussed on how to use various filters to view surface and atmospheric details (clouds) on Mars. After the show, Alvin Huey brought out his Dobsonian and provided views of the Moon, the Ring Nebula, and other attrac-tions. Thank you, Alvin!

Contest. Here’s a little mental warm-up exercise for our meeting on June 30th. Can you answer these questions on double stars?

The first 4 winners at the meeting on June 30 will each win a Design Ebony Pencil by Sanford (retail value 50 cents!).

Asteroids Double, too. Not only do stars travel in pairs: the Sacramento Bee (5/31/01) ran an Associated Press report that radar astronomy has detected “roughly 10” binary asteroids since the space probe Galileo found the first (243 Ida and its tiny moon Dactyl). The latest discovery (asteroid 1999KW4) was announced May 30. Approximately 7 other asteroids are “suspected” of having moons. The moons vary in size from nearly the same as the main asteroid, to rocks only 5 percent as large as the main asteroid. They may have formed from (1) collisions or (2) when passing too close to another body (such as the Earth) some material may have been pulled off the asteroid and dumped into a mini-orbit.

Friday the 3th in the morning, Venus reaches greatest apparent distance (“elongation”) from the sun.

Wednesday the 13th Mars is at opposition (due south at midnight), but only 26 degrees above the southern horizon. Thursday the 21st Mars is closest (42 million miles). Summer solstice was at 12:38 a.m.