October 18, 2023
Astronomical Society of Greater Hartford
Hybrid Online/In Person BusinessMeeting Minutes
Date: October 18, 2023
The October 18, 2023 meeting of our new Astronomical Society of Greater Hartford was called to order over Zoom and in person from the Rocky Hill Community Center in Room 2, at 7:37 PM by President Markiewicz. There were 22 people in attendance. 7 were in the room at the Rocky Hill Community Center and 15 were online over Zoom.
Tonight’s featured speaker was Tom Hoffelder, a retired Pratt & Whitney Engineer, former ASGH member, now living in Maine. Tom was the progenitor of the Messier Marathon and gave a talk to ASGH last year on how it came to fruition. He is the author of the only article published to the ASGH website not written by someone from the Night Sky Network and the founder of NITELOG, the NorthEast InTEurban Local Observers Group. This group of interested astronomy people who lived in or around Tolland and a few ASGH members brought in by J. Sillasen and B. Geoghegan to observe at Heron Cove after hours. Tom had secured permission to allow us to use the park after dusk – assuming one of the members in attendance was from Tolland. Now that Hoffelder has moved to Norway, Maine, NITELOG was just re-acronymed to Norway InTeurban Local Observers Group or now we have two NITELOG’s. There’s no membership, just friends from Tolland and their friends.
As if this wasn’t enough, Tom Hoffelder is also a Docent at the Maine Mineral & Gem Museum in Bethel, ME. Tom’s presentation tonight is: METEORITES – THEY CAME FROM SPACE! His talk was well received and generated several interesting questions – including questions about the Wethersfield meteorite fells. Fortunately for us, in attendance was Bob Hammond. Bob’s father, Charles, an ASGH member and mentor to many, was brought in to study the meteorites and sent them to the Smithsonian for further analysis. The talk ended at 8:41 PM with Q&A going through to 8:51 PM after the questions asked during the presentation.
If you didn’t make the meeting, you should look this one up on the ASGH YouTube Channel for sure! https://youtu.be/eDz4tkW4fPo
New member in attendance was Maya Jager, joined by her mother, Magaly Jager who happily provided transportation. Welcome to the Jager’s both! They recently moved to Vernon from NYC and were very happy to be able to see stars in Vernon’s night sky. Compared to NYC Vernon skies are a huge improvement! One other guest was in attendance, Hanif Girach. Hanif is an invited guest as a member of the Litchfield Hills Amateur Astronomy Club, LHAAC. Hanif joined the ASGH shortly after the meeting ended! Welcome to Hanif as well who is a Rocky Hill resident. These meetings are very convenient for him to attend.
Secretary’s Report:
The September minutes were approved by the membership in attendance. The Secretary apologized for their late posting due to a temporary medical problem.
Public Observing at the Van Vleck Observatory:
J. Sillasen reports the next session will be the biggest evening of the entire year (weather permitting of course), making it an all hands on deck event. He asked if any non-committee members would like to help out to send a private message through the Zoom chat. No messages were received. This event will be Saturday, October 28th and is a combination of both International Observe the Moon Night event and Wesleyan University’s HomeComing Weekend. It would not be unlikely to see 200 people come through the Observatory on a clear night for an event such as this.
Treasurer’s Report:
C. Barron reported to the President and Secretary that she was unable to attend the meeting due to work commitments. She reports that there is $25,347.36 in the Savings account and $2,438.13 in the Checking account. She has not yet done anything with the T-Bill investments that came due but plans to invest 4 of them at $5,000.00 each. The Treasurer’s report was accepted by the membership as reported.
WebMasters Report:
M. Ollenschleger reports that all speakers for meetings known to date are up to date as well as the outreach dates for venues.
Solar Observing Committee:
M. Ollenschleger reported that final drafts were to be updated soon and stored on the Groups.IO File share once done. Currently, drafts are shared with committee members via a private OneDrive share. Members will be notified when all drafts are ready for member comments and potential ratification at a future meeting. The end goal with these documents is to adopt reasonable, safe guidelines for public solar viewing at an outreach event in order to overturn the Presidential ban on ASGH Solar Outreach estabilished in 2001.
https://groups.io/g/asgh/files/ASGH%20Solar%20Observing%20Committee
(If the above link does not open for you and you are a paid member, create your individual Groups.IO password by going to a browser tab for https://groups.io if you do not have an individual login, enter the email where you receive ASGH Groups.IO emails and have the system ask you to enter a password).
Outreach:
October 19: Glastonbury Wellness Committee, Talk on “Stargazing and Wellness/Mindfullness” has been postponed until December.
October 20 5-8pm: Connecticut Science Center (Hartford), IOTMN
October 21/Rain date October 28: Bloomfield Public Library, IOTMN
October 21: Lebanon Jonathan Trumbull Library, IOTMN
October 26: Windsor Public Library (Childrens’ Library), Halloween-themed talk on “alien life” or “constellations”.
November 10: Talcott Mtn – Assist w/Telescopes at facility
December 13: Rocky Hill Public Library – Chris to handle
Old Business:
NONE
New Business:
The Rocky Hill Community Center is offering the Astronomical Society of Greater Hartford price of $40 for evening room rental. (2 hours as they want the rooms to begin closing the facility at 9:30 PM. Their normal rental price is $40/hour.
J. Sillasen made a motion to accept the $40/evening rental fee at the Rocky Hill Community Center for Wednesday evenings. Al Johnson, Jr. Seconded the motion. Motion passed unanimously. C. Markiewicz to deliver another program in January for the facility. He will find out how long the evening rental fee prices will be sustained and report back to the group.
J. Sillasen made a motion at the September meeting to limit business meetings to 2 hours which includes one hour for a presentation. As the motion was tabled to notify membership in advance of the meeting and in deference to the above motion being passed, Sillasen’s motion became moot since the meetings will now be contained at two hours.
Points of discussion needing more in depth focus can be brought to the board and discussed at board meetings should one be necessary based upon content available. The rationale for the motion was that meetings are too long so many people have notified the Sillasen and other vocal members that they will not be attending future meetings because they appear to be fruitless with a lot of unnecessary bickering. Meetings just plain last too long. Members not in attendance have lost interest and therefore fail to attend &/Or fail to renew their memberships! Anything that important needing discussion should be tabled for offline discussions via the newsgroup or can be brought to a board member to be discussed at a Board Meeting. Members not interested in the topic being discussed can Mute This Topic at the bottom of every ASGH Groups.IO received. They should never select Unsubscribe when Muting a topic is in general what they wanted to do. Motion seconded by Membership Chairman, Dave Allen.
Telescope Loaner Program Status Update:
Tolland Public Library has received funding to purchase their own telescope. They would like assistance with how to proceed with the purchase, Chris Markiewicz to send the library specifications on library loaner telescopes and Bill DeNio to help with setup and with the modifications and support afterwards.
This equipment is again on backorder with all dates provided then pushed back to later dates. No current ETA is available.
Observing reports:
Member observing reports – None locally. More to follow, Greg Shanos did travel to view the Annular Eclipse. The weather here has been atrocious!
John Sillasen did attend the Annular Eclipse, October 14th at the Van Vleck Observatory as an Eclipse Ambassador. There was no opportunity to ever see the Sun before the rain had us chased indoors. Fortunately we had all the telescopes put away by that time. Indoors, they live streamed NASA’s Ring of Fire Annular Eclipse broadcast. In the classroom their new digital Planetarium replacing the very aged StarLabs Planetarium had regular shows depicting the Annular Eclipse.
Middletown’s Russell Public Library was also there with a table of bilingual astronomy resources. Through a grant provided to the Russell who is serving a bilingual population, they were able to purchase a telescope and provide regular programming.
Sillasen, in support of the upcoming IOTMN, held up his hard cover copy of Robert Reeves Exploring the Moon with Robert Reeves.
Observing opportunities until next meeting:
Check out https://in-the-sky.org/ for a list of observable objects/events in your area.
10/21 – Orionid Meteor Shower
10/23 – Venus at Greatest Western Elongation
10/28 – Full Moon & Jupiter very close to one another for easy viewing.
Good of the Organization:
Please search your heart to see if the spirit moves you to run for an office. A list of current officers and committee chairs can be found at https://asgh.org/about-asgh-2/officers-and-committee-chairs/.
Please consider volunteering for a meeting presentation,
Upcoming Speakers:
November – Donya Douglas-Brahshaw, Deputy Director for Planning and Business Management for NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, (GSFC) Engineering and Technology Directorate. She is also the current Project Manager for Mars Sample Return Mission.
https://mars.nasa.gov/msr/
Prior to this she was the Project Manager for the Lucy Mission. That’s a talk we heard from two members of the West Hawaii Astronomy Club last year if you’d like to look it up on our YouTube Channel.
Future & Beyond – Brendan Hall SpaceX Passenger, TBD.
January 2024 – Leonard Specht, Past and future director of the Gengras Planetarium & for Part II.
Leonard was a long-time director of The Gengras Planetarium at the West Hartford Childrens’ Museum. He designed and put on many of the laser/music/astronomy shows that the Planetarium became famous for. Leonard is presenting a plan to build a new ‘world-class’ Gengras Planetarium in the Hartford area in partnership with area organizations, including ASGH.
Meeting adjourned at 9:38 PM.