Meeting: Tuesday, November 7

The club approved the purchase of a SkyScout for club use. The observing which was cancelled earlier in the semester will be rescheduled in the spring. The links of sites we looked at during the meeting are here for the data-matching on the extrasolar planet search(or here for the less cryptic page), and here for the site on black holes. We also found out some information about the recently recovered documents chronicling the history of the observatory, especially its early years; watch for a new page to the site detailing some of this information and its loss and retrieval in the next few months. Quick facts: the observatory was dedicated by famous astronomer Heber Curtis, the cost of the telescope was $8910, and many famous astronomer were written to for advice on things like who should manufacture the dome or the telescope. The club is also considering sponsoring a public showing of the movie A Brief History of Time.

Observing: Friday, November 3

An 8:00pm observing session in Weaver Observatory. Lots of Circle K members from many different universities came (even though it was really cold), and everyone got to see something. Outside, the sky was clear but the moon was just a couple days shy of full, meaning that a large portion of the sky was washed out. The Summer Triangle is on its way down, so as the night went on the people viewing Albireo through the telescope had to climb higher and higher on the stairs to see it. In the east, Auriga and Taurus are rising toward the middle of the evening, while later, around eleven, Orion is just visible over the chapel. Click here for a guide to the more obvious winter constellations or here for a guide to winter Messier objects.