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October Meeting Minutes

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The general meeting of the Kalamazoo Astronomical Society was brought to order by President Richard Bell on Friday, October 5, 2007 at 7:14 pm.  Approximately 30 members and guests were in attendance at the Kalamazoo Area Mathematics & Science Center (KAMSC).

Long standing KAS tradition says that the October meeting shall be forever known as “Astrophotography Night” featuring the Thirteenth Annual Astrophotography Contest.  After given instructions, everyone proceeded to the Commons Area to vote for their favorite photographs in the five main categories as well as Best First-Time Entry and Best of Show.

This year’s contest featured only four entries, which was at least better than last year’s two.  Most categories, with the exception of Solar System and CCD, had a single competitor.  Once the ballots were handed in everyone enjoyed the traditional October snack of donuts and apple cider courtesy of Jean DeMott.

After voting and snack time was over everyone returned to their seats for the slide show part of the tradition.  Bill Nigg began by showing some slides on a traditional projector.   His first slides were of sunsets, which is perhaps the most basic (and common) form of astrophotography.  A nice image of a solar halo was then shown.  Bill then went a tad off topic and showed slides of past KAS members and the equipment they constructed, plus some shots from Bill’s eclipse chasing adventures.  Bill finished up by showing slides of a Lunar Eclipse, Solar Eclipse, the Coat Hanger asterism, and Comet Hale-Bopp.

Dan Morgan was up next and showed many fine images he shot with his Olympus E-300 Digital SLR camera.  He began with an image of an Iridium Flare and then showed several images from the Northern Lights display on December 14, 2006.  He concluded with some shots of Orion the Hunter.  Everyone agreed it was a shame he didn’t enter any images in the astrophotography contest.  Maybe next year, eh Dan?

Last up was Richard Bell, who showed images taken within the past year with his Canon 300D DSLR camera and ToUcam web cam.  First up were images of the solar system.  These include Comet SWAN, last December’s Triple Conjunction, Northern Lights (taken the same night as Dan’s), and the Moon.  He then showed some wide-field images of the Milky Way and concluded with deep sky images shot with his equipment and the 12” SCT in Owl Observatory.  As usual, Richard encouraged everyone to check out all his images on his personal web site, Stargazer Online.

Richard then jumped into his president’s report.  He ended by giving Don Stilwell his Lunar Club certificate from the Astronomical League.  Congratulations!  Don then discussed his trip to the Black Forest Star Party (see page 5) and Bill Nigg talked about his weekend at the Great Lakes Star Gaze.  Under astronomical news, Jack Price mentioned the recent success of the Japanese Kaguya spacecraft.  It was placed into Lunar orbit on October  4th (50th anniversary of the start of the Space Age).  Jack Roach discussed the installation of dark-sky friendly lighting along Columbia Street in Battle Creek.  Bill Nigg encouraged everyone to check out Comet LONEOS, which is predicted to brighten to magnitude 4 toward the end of October.  Tim Kurtz showed off his new Tele Vue Ethos eyepiece, which sports a 100º apparent field-of-view.

Mark Miller announced the 2007 Astrophotography Contest winners: 

• Best First-Time Entry:  Tim Kurtz
• Waxing Gibbous Moon - March 26, 2007

• Best Artistic Photo:  Richard Bell
• Dusk at the IDSSP - September 15, 2007

• Best Solar System Photo:  Richard Bell
• Total Lunar Eclipse - August 28, 2007

• Best Wide-Field Photo:  Richard Bell
• Cygnus Star Cloud - September 13, 2007

• Best Deep Sky Photo:  Richard Bell
• North American Nebula - September 14, 2007

• Best CCD Image:  Jim Kurtz
• Andromeda Galaxy (M31) - September 1, 2007

• Overall Winner of 13th Annual Astrophotography Contest:
• Richard Bell - North American Nebula

The meeting concluded at 9:31 pm EDT.

Past Astrophotography Contest Winners