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Location: Chemistry/Physics Building, MUN
Time: 8:00 pm
Present: 39
Chris had a brief introduction to our President, Peter Jedicke: http://www.rasc.ca/officers/president.htm .
Peter noted he has been to St. John's a total of four times now, the last two being GA's held here, and then previously a talk in 1978, which coincidentally fell on April 21, 1978! There were a lot of changes in our Centre since then, he noted. Peter likes to note coincidences, and one of the themes of his talk was the similarities between Newfoundland and Hawaii.
The talk centred on three themes: Research, Outreach, and Observing.
Some similarities between Hawaii and Newfoundland: both have snow, have fairly recently joined their respective countries, and Captain Cook visited both.
Peter was on sabbatical from his job, partly to put in an appearance for a number of weeks at the Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii. His younger brother works there and had a helping hand in setting him up. Peter showed a picture of the kind of office (or was that a cramped monastic cell?) that visitors get to enjoy. The important thing is the internet connection....
The State University of Hawaii has a Physics and Astronomy Department, but they mainly concentrates on physics. The Institute for Astronomy is where all the astronomy gets done, although it mainly emphasizes research and graduate education. Peter showed us around some of the buildings, including the artwork. There was a Pleiades sculpture, which consists of prisms and rods on a wall, meant to interact with sunlight. Inside, the library (solely devoted to astronomy) had a couple of stained glass infra-red representations of Jupiter. These were donated by a former astronomer's wife.
Peter came to Hawaii to help out with the Pan-STARRS project: http://pan-starrs.ifa.hawaii.edu/public/index.html . This consists of up to 4 x 2-metre scopes. It is not yet decided whether they will function as a unit, or be employed separately. Over the lifetime of the project, they expect it will discover 10 million solar system objects (out to the Kuiper belt). The system will be using a new kind of CCD array, an Orthogonal Transfer Array CCD, or OTA CCD: http://www.noao.edu/image_gallery/html/im0949.html . This array "sort of" follows the pattern of the star's scintillation due to bad seeing conditions. This can allow the system an effectively higher resolution, "shrinking" the stars to smaller diameters in images.
Also, being seen as a neutral participant, he designed the Pan-STARRS logo (designed to be similar to the Institute's).
While working on the Pan-STARRS project, Peter and his brother also had some time access to the Dill Faulkes 2-metre robotic telescope: http://www.faulkes-telescope.com/the_telescopes.htm . They are only getting used to how to program their queue, but are working on taking pictures of asteroids named after "some people" they know.
For outreach, Peter took part in a number of events, including giving a talk on some unknown aspects of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 to the Hilo Association of Astronomers. There was a mall display, "Journey Through the Universe," sponsored by NASA, JPL and the Challenger Centre. When these sorts of things happen in Hawaii, other astronomical societies and institutes usually get in on the act, resulting in many displays in the same place, more per square metre than most other places (maybe every other place!).
There was a public observing session run by the Hawaii Astronomy Society near Diamond Head Crater on "Big Island" (the island of Hawaii in the state of Hawaii). Peter noted that with a stable, dependable event like this (once a month), people in surrounding areas knew where to go if they had an interest in viewing real objects.
Peter went on a road trip, up the side of Mauna Kea, where you have to stop over for several hours acclimatization at Hale Pohaku (holds accommodations for the astronomers), near the Visitor's Centre. The Visitor's Centre is possibly the best location an amateur astronomer can easily go to for an observing site.
Question and answers followed.
Chris gave Peter a gift to thank him for his visit: a Newfoundland railway spike and a MUN coffee cup.
Garry handed out membership certificates, along with the President, to people who have 10 or more years of service. Here is a list of recipients, with each name followed by their current number of years since first becoming a member:
Proxies were passed around. The Journal was discussed, and the Annual Report as well. The Society is trying to save money by mailing the minimum Annual Report required by the By-Laws. Other materials that were usually included with the old Annual Report will be provided on-line. There was some discussion as to what to do with the Journal's print and mail costs, and the recent Society survey regarding the Journal and other things.
Chris gave a very brief report on our doings for Astronomy Day this year.
Discussion of issues on proxy forms. These were completed by those interested, and transferred to our National Representative.
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