The President opened the meeting and welcomed members and guests.  She reported sending Stan’s video of our SEED experience to Laura Lincoln at JPL, NASA, who have sent wonderful materials for use by our club.  Her reply is as follows:

Hi Tedda,   Thank you so much for sending the DVDs showcasing the AMAZING event your club had on October 15th.  It was so nice to put faces to names and to see the tremendous work that your club does (and this was only one day!).  It was also great to see some of the items we’ve sent being put to such good use.  Thank you again for sharing this with us – we have all greatly appreciated it.

All the best, Laura Laura K. Lincoln,Outreach Coordinator, NASA's Space Place Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA.   Check out our great sites for kids:  http://climate.nasa.gov/kids, http://scijinks.gov, http://spaceplace.nasa.gov.

We can all be proud of our effort and the results.

Mark Moffatt presented a 2-minute talk on The Pleiades, with astronomical references to them in the Bible and Greek mythology, and placing them in the sky near Taurus.  He proposed several possible reasons that ancients usually refer to them as the Seven Sisters (We still do!), while more recently we observe only Six very bright stars.  In the discussion, it was noted that the beautiful blue glow around these stars is a reflection of the surrounding gas clouds.

Eddie Blaxton also gave an interesting talk on proposed explanations of How Water Came to Earth.  Satellite mappings of chemical isotopes confirm comet crashes into a dry earth are sources of terrestrial H₂O.

Our March 2 program will be on The Interstellar Medium, by Jay Dunn, who is coming from Atlanta. On March 3, ACA and ASU will collaborate to present Astronomy Night at ASU. Carol will send us the advertising.  Some members have already volunteered. We need more, so please volunteer.

Our Roper Mt. Road Trip is continuing to find new participants. See our January Minutes, bottom of the page, for more details.

Stan asked for volunteers to help prepare for National Astronomy Night on April 28 at RPSEC.    We will meet before our Star Gazes on Feb. 18 and Mar. 17 from 4-7PM. Last year’s Challenge was such a great success, that we are now held to a higher standard.  It wasn’t that any one person did so much, but that we all did a little. We appreciate whatever you can do.

Our younger members (Brittney, Charlie, Noah, Pepper, and Kolby) were refreshing and enthusiastic participants in the Observer Challenge of Astronomical Facts.  Check out the Q&A at the top of our Calendar of Events page. 

We congratulated Kenneth for learning the value of knowing the 11 major maria on the moon, just like knowing our seven continents, their shapes and locations.  We hope everyone will learn them.  Kenneth now has the geographic, lunar processes, and telescope technical skills to make real progress on completing his AL Lunar Award.

Our Main speaker was Louis Rubbo, Professor at USC Coastal Carolina, on Astronomy’s Counter Arguments to the 2012 Doomsday Prophecies.  As all who heard his previous talk to us know, he is an excellent, not-to-miss speaker.  His charts and media examples illustrated his thesis that continuing rumors of cosmic disaster on December 21,2012 are bad science, and that we can debunk each and every one of these false claims using the scientific process and known astronomical facts.  He itemized the rumors, systematically, and told us how they got started.  Then Dr. Rubbo explained scientifically what we really know, concluding that Dec. 21 is not really a very important date astronomically.  We look forward to his next program and visit with us.

We enjoyed delicious refreshments brought by Eddie and Michelle, and continued the fascinating conversation with Prof. Rubbo and each other.

Respectfully submitted,

Kenneth Beard

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The Astronomy Club of Augusta held its February 25, 2012 Observing at 6PM at Nine Mile Range - DSO. Attendance  totaled 5.