Important announcements

	Our next meeting will be on Wednesday, December 2, at 8 PM at Poricy Park . Our speaker will be Jim Flood, who will talk about the Hubble Space Telescope. We also will have scopes set up on the lawn in front of the hall where you can observe the parade of winter constellations, as well as jupiter and saturn.
	The 1999 Desk Calendars are in.
	One of the club's biggest expenses is printing and mailing this newsletter. If you have internet acces and would like to save the club time and money (and save trees at the same time), send e-mail to mikel@att.net , and I'll stop sending you a paper copy. Instead, you can get the newsletter on-line at http://home.att.net/~mikel/star.html .
	Got an idea? Would you like to write an article for the Spectrogram about it? See http://home.att.net/~mikel/star/author.html for article submission guidelines, or ask me for a paper copy at the next meeting.

Events

George Zay, of the IMO writes: ``I want to remind you that next month there will be another good meteor shower to watch. They are the Geminids with a ZHR in the range of 120. It usually has lots of fireballs. The Geminid peak is on Dec 13-14, but you can usually see a lot on Dec 12-13 as well. It's essentially an all night meteor shower with activity starting around 7 PM with the most activity occurring near 2 am. So....dust off your sleeping bags and other stuff and get ready for another possible round of celestial skyworks.''

Notes from November

by Michael Lindner

Over 60 people were present at November's meeting, including a lot of new or potentially new members. First up, we voted on whether to accept the money to pay for our new web site for 2 years (a resounding ``yes''), and what to do about the S*T*A*R phone line (Joe Cascella is investigating having the machine and a phone line put in his house).

Dan announced a star party at Holy Cross School in Rumson Nov 23, 6:30 to 8 PM. We are expecting 29 children and their parents, and need about 8 scopes for things to go smoothly. He also announced a possible astronomy day at Monmouth Museum, and a sidewalk astronomy event in Red Bank. Poricy is apparently considering our observatory plan.

We reviewed the solar observing day at Poricy, which was a great success. More than 50 kids and families showed up. Dan exhibited several interesting articles from the Times about John Glenn and space exploration.

David Segelstein showed off his great beast of a scope and mount, and talked frankly about his forays into astrophotography (which is not for the faint of heart). He had his 10`` f/5.6 scope all set up, on it's mammoth modified starfinder equatorial mount, with the C-5 guidescope mounted piggyback, the ST-4 autoguider on the C-5, and a camera body at prime focus. That is one nice scope! It can be seen on the Internet at http://home.att.net/~dsegelstein/David_Stuff/Scope.html

Maybe I'll even stop teasing him about how long it takes him to set it up (David says it takes him 45 minutes to assemble the scope, then up to 90 minutes to polar align if he's doing photography). He passed around the pictures he has taken so far. Those pictures are also on-line at http://home.att.net/~dsegelstein/David_Stuff/Astrophotos.html

Dr. Michael Corcoran of Goddard gave a very interesting talk about Eta Carinae. I'm sure I can't do it justice, but here's the jist of it.

Eta Car is a very massive cataclysmic variable double star in the southern hemisphere (declination -59). Each component is about 70-80 times as massive as the sun, and they apparently orbit each other every 5.5 years in a very elliptical orbit (from 5 to 20 AU separation). It is about 8,300 light years away, and visual magnitude around 6, currently.

Records of this star go back many years, and until about 100 years ago it was about magnitude -0.5, until it changed suddenly. The stars themselves can't be seen because they are throwing off so much material, the dust and gas hide them. Only in X-ray light can they be studied in more detail. The X-rays are being given off by the 2,000,000 degree solar winds of the two stars colliding with each other.

We learned that a massive star, after it fuses most of its hydrogen into helium, starts fusing helium into carbon, etc. until it's fusing silicon into iron. When it's used up the silicon, the iron can't be fused, so the star collapses of its own gravity, and becomes a hypernova (bigger than a supernova), throwing off most of its energy in 1/2 second or so. What's left of the star becomes a neutron star or black hole.

Since it is so big, eta car is burning up its fuel fast. We think it's already at the stage of burning helium or carbon, and it may be a few thousand years to a few hundred thousand years before it goes nova. At that point, it may give off enough gamma rays to destroy the earth's ozone layer completely!

We learned about several satellites used to observe in X-ray light, and a little bit about how an X-ray telescope works (there are 2 group of mirrors made of gold - one is an off-axis paraboloid, the other hyperboloid. The X-rays hit them at a glancing angle, and are focused onto a CCD-like device that can measure the X-ray's position and in some cases energy).

After the meeting came observing. There were only 3 scopes set up out front, and mine was one of them, so I wound up spending quite a while just showing new people some favorite objects. The sky was great, and the planets were sharp at 300x. I spent quite a bit of time gazing at Saturn and Jupiter. After a while it clouded over and we all went home.

S*T*A*R Observatory: Another Try?

by Joe Cascella

When I first joined S*T*A*R nearly 15 years ago, the club seemed well on its way to establishing an observatory. A small fund had been started. Talks were under way with the Monmouth County Park System. It seemed Holmdel Park would be the place. A sketch of the roll-top ``dome'' had even been put together; or a real dome could be purchased. But the observatory never materialized. Not for lack of trying on the part of the S*T*A*R members working hard to make it happen. The Park System turned down the proposal. Then, about five years ago, we tried again. We were open to all sorts of ideas, including a possibility of establishing the observatory at the UACNJ Jenny Jump site. This time, the project didn't get far off the drawing board. It seemed there were too many obstacles in our path to make the observatory a reality.

Last year, many of those obstacles were put behind us. Funds were offered for a telescope and the dome. More S*T*A*R members were interested in the project. A full proposal was put together and again presented to the Monmouth County Park System, and the Park System seemed more interested than they had been years before. We even spoke of various park site possibilities. The public was more in tune with amateur astronomy due to the publicity surrounding Comet Hale-Bopp. S*T*A*R received a lot of publicity through the many star parties we held to make it easier for everyone (the general public) to view the comet. But again, and somewhat to our surprise, our proposal was turned down. This time it hurt. We had everything we needed for an observatory. Everything but a site. S*T*A*R does not own any of its own property. We are a guest at each location we meet. We had been guests of the Park System for many years, providing public programs throughout. So it seemed our proposal was a natural for the Park System, at least to us.

Why do I go on with a history lesson on the yet-to-be S*T*A*R Observatory? Call us stubborn. But we think the idea of a S*T*A*R Observatory has enough merit to not let the idea die. Not now. Not when S*T*A*R's membership has more than doubled. Not when we are finding more interest in amateur astronomy throughout our footprint. Not when our membership has a resurgence of observing activities, and more members have expressed interest in an observatory. And especially not when the only thing holding us back is a location to put the observatory.

Let's face it. There are no GOOD sites in Monmouth County for an astronomical observatory. Everywhere we go we are confronted with light polluted skies. Even our preferred observing site, Colliers Mills, is actually outside Monmouth County, and light is encroaching even there. So placing an observatory within the county will not be anywhere near an ideal site. But such an observatory would still be useful for lunar, planetary, and CCD work. Filters could help with the light pollution And it could still be a focal point for S*T*A*R's public programs. So we would like to try again.

We've always considered the Monmouth County Park System for the observatory. There would be a number of possible locations, on publicly owned land. Most of the parks are sizable, providing at least some shelter from local lighting. And the focus of the observatory would be for public programs. Perhaps we will be able to revisit with the Park System and try again. Perhaps there may be alternative sites. But we need input from S*T*A*R members to make sure an observatory really is worth pursuing. We are open to any and all input from our members. Should we continue this effort? We would like your opinions. Please e-mail me with your thoughts on the matter. My address is jcascella@monmouth.com

If you prefer, jot down your thoughts and deliver them at the next S*T*A*R meeting. At a future meeting, we will discuss any and all issues raised. Hope to hear from you.