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Location: Chemistry/Physics Building, MUN
Time: 8:00 pm
Present: 22
Garry Dymond furnished the usual introduction to the evening's activities.
Robert passed around a handout on the upcoming sky. Some topics included Nova Scorpii 2007, an occultation of the Pleiades by the moon, and the total lunar eclipse on March 3. Robert is also interested in hearing from people who want to take part in a Messier marathon.
The Discovery Channel may want people as a backup group for their lunar eclipse coverage.
Fred Smith introduced our speaker, member Dr. Rick Goulding. Rick began by guiding us through some of the history of the sundial, from the simplest stick to find north (shadow is shortest), to some of the more fancy, modern types. Rick also singled out four main kind of sundials: the horizontal, the vertical, the equatorial, and the analemmic. These were explained with some diagrams and pictures of examples. In order to properly explain the analemmic type, Rick also had to explain a bit about the equation of time. Another unusual kind of sundial is the polar dial, and Rick briefly showed us an example. Rick touched on the armillary here at MUN and suggested it might be nice if there were a sundial at MUN.
Some of the sites Rick visited:
Randy distributed some posters and business cards. We are asking people to post these in useful places, if they want to help the Centre develop its membership.
Tim Caruk showed us a movie of the approach of the New Horizons probe to Jupiter. Animations can be found at the JPL website: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu .
Also, Phil showed some meteorite samples during coffee.
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