| May 17, 2008 | ||
| 6:30 pm | to | 9:30 pm |
Our first annual Trivia Night will be held Saturday, May 17, 2008 at the Elks Lodge in O’Fallon, Missouri. Doors open at 6:30 pm and games begin at 7:00 pm. The theme will be "The Universe" with questions about stars - sports stars, Hollywood stars and more. Download the PDF flyer here for complete information.
 |
| June 21, 2008 |
The 2008 convention of the Mid-States Region of the Astronomical League (MSRAL) will be Saturday, June 21, 2008 at the St. Charles Community College campus in Cottleville, Missouri. See maps below.
Registration Family registration (one or more) has been set at $15. Only one door prize ticket will be issued to a family, though, to protect the single registrants. Please download and print out the registration form here. Please register EARLY to help us with our planning. We are offering each member club two "scholarships" for free registration for students (up to 21 years old with student ID). See registration form.
Meals After many requests and much bargaining, we will offer a buffet banquet dinner on Saturday evening. We have arranged for a good meal at only $10 per person and everyone can dine together and be in place for the evening program. As you know, caterers MUST have a good count before the event to prepare the right amount of food. Failure to get enough confirmed reservations was cited as one of the reasons the last convention was canceled. We won’t cancel the convention in any case, but we will cancel the catered banquet if we don’t receive a MINIMUM of 25 paid reservations by June 15, 2008. Should that happen, we will fall back to dinner on your own. So help us, and yourself, by getting those reservations in on time. The registration form has places to make your meal reservations.
The same general rules apply to the Star-B-Q to be held on Friday, June 20, 2008 starting at 4:00 pm (eat at 6:00pm). The Star-B-Q will be held at the ASEM observatory and, weather permitting, will continue into observing with the 32-inch when it gets dark. The fare will be hamburgers, brats, hot dogs, potato salad, chips, soft drinks, etc. The price will be $8.00 per person. You don’t have to eat, of course, to join in the visiting.
Program Notes Our overall theme for the convention will be outreach and sharing astronomy with others, especially young people. We want to have a panel discussion on how we, as Clubs and individuals, can do that. We are asking for panelists from around the Region to sit on the panel and to share what’s going on in their local area. We have invited Mary Masterman from Oklahoma City to sit on the panel and describe how she found inspiration for astronomy and science in her life. Mary is a freshman this year at MIT funded (in part?) by a $100,000 scholarship awarded by the Intel Science Talent Search as FIRST PLACE in their 2006-2007 program. Mary’s project was a home-built Littrow spectrograph that she developed over several years as a high school student at Westmoore High School in Oklahoma City (ranked first of 658 students there). Some of us had the pleasure of watching her progress over the past few years at the Mid-States Region Astrophysics Conference held each April in Kansas City. There is a better description in the June 2007 Reflector published by the Astronomical League. Mary also won an Astronomical League National Young Astronomers Award in 2006. We have asked Mary to tell us about what inspired her to pursue science in general so that we can, hopefully, learn some ways to attract even more young people into astronomy.
Our Banquet speaker will be Dr. Pamela Gaye from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. Pamela is an enthusiastic, fun speaker, very much into outreach and popularizing astronomy. Check out her many podcasts on Astronomy Cast and her personal blog . Her topic will be:
Pro-Am Collaboration and Community Data Analysis
Today’s astronomical community is making great headway in answering the sky’s biggest questions: How did the universe evolve? What is the shape of space? What world’s await discovery around other stars? Tomorrow’s astronomy data is going to come from instruments ranging from the 10m Keck telescopes to your club’s 10-inch SCTs. Data from all manner of scope are necessary for a complete understanding of the cosmos, and a community of people doing analysis for fun will be required to analyze the data. In this talk, Dr. Gay will discuss Professional-Amateur astronomy show you how you can become part of tomorrow’s great new discoveries in extragalactic astronomy, extrasolar planets, variable stars and more.
Paper Sessions Consider this a call for papers. We want to know what our various members throughout the region are doing. Send a title, abstract and your projection needs to our Papers Chairman, Wayne Clark at wclark3[at]cs.com. We have three papers scheduled already, so use them as examples of the subjects we are looking for;
Mellow out with Didy’ Shots by Doug Kniffen, CMAA - How to get rid of that ugly orange tint in your DSLR shots of the night sky.
Design, Construction and Use of a 8-in Binocular Telescope by Mark Shea, ASEM
Mars summary by Jim Melka, ASEM/SLAS
Tentative Schedule of Events
Friday, June 20, 2008
4:00 pm - ???? Star-B-Q and registration at ASEM observatory (32-inch telescope). Dinner tickets required.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
7:30 - 9:00 am Registration Table open
8:00 - 9:00 am MSRAL Business Meeting
9:00 - 12:00 pm Paper Sessions
12:00 - 2:00 pm Lunch on your own. The College Cafeteria downstairs from the meeting room will be open for reasonably priced lunches. There are many eating establishments along Mid-Rivers Blvd and around Mid-Rivers Mall. There will be time to visit the Astronomy as Art show featuring the astronomical images of Gregg Ruppel.
2:00 - 5:00 pm Paper Sessions
6:00 - 7:00 pm Awards Banquet - tickets required.
7:00 - 8:30 pm Featured speaker Dr. Pamela Gay, SIU-E and awards presentations.
8:30 pm Adjourn to ASEM observatory
Map to Campus
Campus Map - Meeting is in Student Center - #8
Camping There appear to be two camping possibilities in near proximity to the ASEM observatory and the meeting site. Check out the Google map that shows the ASEM observatory (Big Green Arrow) and several other sites. Most likely will be E and H on the map. Contact them directly for more information and reservations.
Motels There are LOTS of motels along Highway 70 in St. Charles County. If you have a favorite, you can probably Google to get their website and make reservations on line. Here is a representative sample.
Wentzville Area (nearer ASEM observatory)
St. Peters Area (near meeting site)
| June 20, 2008 | ||
| 4:00 pm | to | 11:59 pm |
The 2008 convention of the Mid-State Region of the Astronomical League (MSRAL) will get underway with a Star-B-Q at the ASEM observatory. Festivities will start at 4:00 pm with snacks, visiting, re-newing and making new astronomy friends from around the region, observatory tours of the 32-in and general merry-making. We will eat at 6:00 pm. Tickets required.
| June 13, 2008 | ||
| 6:00 pm | to | 8:00 pm |
There will be a reception inaugurating the opening of the Astronomy as Art exhibition featuring the astronomical images of member Gregg Ruppel from 6:00 - 8:00 pm at the St. Peters Community and Arts Center at 1035 St. Peters Howell Road. The exhibit opens to the public on Saturday, June 14, 2008 and will run for one month.
| November 21, 2007 6:00 pm | to | November 25, 2007 11:00 pm |
Have a safe and happy Thanksgiving!
Powered by WordPress
