We will be having a "space booth" at the opening of Star Trek: Generations where we will be disseminating information about NSS, SEDS, Planetary ociety, JPL and various other space related organizations. Asked for 2 volunteers to fill 2 hours. Joe Trela volunteered.
On Saturday, November 19, we will go to JPL for a lecture on amateur efforts in the space industry. Please bring your car.
We had a meeting last week for the Space 101 conference. We're going to be having 60-150 kids and the theme will be "Inhabiting and Mining Comets, Asteroids, and Meteors". Our next meeting will be at 3:00 p.m. on Saturday, November 19 in SAC 15, Clubroom B.
There will be a star party on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Please e-mail css@cco if you are interested in coming.
If anyone is interested in corresponding with high school students from a SEDS chapter in Virginia, please e-mail css@cco and we will send you a form to fill out. That will be sent to Virginia and you should receive a letter from one of the students there.
Devon stated the objective as building a telescope for CSS. He also said that we would decide tonight on the main points of the telescope.
First he introduced the three types of telescopes which we could build. A refractor is rather long. A Newtonian is a reflector in a tube which has a tripod for a base. Finally, a Dobsonian is a reflector with a squarish wooden base. The tube can be solid or made of poles.
The biggest considerations in making this telescope were portability, usability (it can't be so big we can't get to the eyepiece), and endurance. Devon suggested it could have a 16"-20" lense if we did a Dobsonian. It would probably be smaller if we did either of the other type of telescope.
We agreed not to try a refractor because it would take two lenses. The next question was creating a tracking system. It would be more complex for the Dobsonian because of the type of mount (ground mount instead of equatorial).
Next we talked about grinding the lense and its size. (We concurred that there wasn't enough money to buy a mirror at between $800 and $1200.) It was possible to do it robotically but it would have to be checked daily. We could also buy a template to fit the mirror into. We would probably spin cast the mirror.
Finally we talked about the tubing. Cardboard tubes used to cast concrete pillars are available in all sizes very cheaply. We could also use poles and cover it with black cloth. This would be more portable, but not necessarily lighter.
We finally voted and decided on building an 18" Dobsonian with poles.
The last thing we discussed was the constitution. No one had any problems with it, so it passed unanimously.
Meeting Adjourned