I wanted to get our next club meeting on your calendars and with a new time­ for this meeting only – 8 p.m. Our meeting will feature a preview of our Electronically-Assisted Astronomy (EAA) project, combining a “What’s Up for May” with live images being taken of a few deep sky objects. As you’ll recall, the Club was recently awarded a grant from the Bangor Savings Bank Foundation to develop its own EAA project as a way to conduct star parties in a COVID world. The plan is to combine laser-pointer tours to star party guests, socially distanced, with real time deep sky images being captured by the equipment the grant enabled us to buy – a refractor, camera, mount – projected onto a screen for all to see with our narration of what is being shown.

At the zoom club meeting in May we will attempt a dry run of the image capturing side of the star party. We will tie in to Ara Jerahian’s observatory where Ara will capture and share several images over the course of the meeting to show what we plan to do in actual star parties. Because of later sunset we are moving the start date of this meeting to 8 p.m. Now, just pray for clear skies! Ara will also give us more of a cook’s tour of the process, explaining all the steps he is taking to capture the images. In lieu of an actual laser pointer tour Russ Pinizzotto will narrate a tour of “What’s Up in May.” Departing from his popular tours of individual constellations, Russ will provide a tour of interesting things to see high in an early May sky.

We are all the guinea pigs for this process. When we conclude, we’d like to debrief and get your feedback as observers of what worked, what didn’t, where the rough edges were in the presentation, and other ideas you may have to improve the experience.

Please mark this on your calendars for 8 p.m., May 6.

We have a great meeting lined up for April 1. Don’t be a fool, attend our meeting! Our guest speaker will be Prof. Chris Magri, Assistant Professor of Physics and Chair of the Natural Sciences Department at the University of Maine at Farmington. Prof. Magri is a radio astronomer who concentrates on asteroids. The topic for his talk is “A Radar Analysis of Asteroid Bennu.” This is especially timely considering that Bennu was recently explored by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission that grabbed samples from the asteroid’s surface and is returning them to Earth. The capsule containing materials is set to arrive in late September 2023.

Prof. Magri also spent considerable time in his career observing from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. The facility recently had a catastrophic failure in its infrastructure rendering the telescope unsalvageable. It will be instructive to hear Prof. Magri’s assessment of radio astronomy without Arecibo and what might be being planned for its replacement.

Prof. Magri spoke to SMA several years ago about Asteroid Apophis and its potential as a threat to Earth. Apophis is back in the news this week with updated telemetry and a determination that the threat has abated – at least for the next century.

Prof. Magri obtained his undergraduate degree at the University of Virginia and his MS and Ph.D. in Physics from Cornell University. Known for his animated and humorous style, you’ll want to attend Prof. Magri’s talk.

The meeting will also feature short topics and member input. Russ Pinizzotto will then take us on another exciting tour – get your combs ready – of the constellation Coma Berenices – or Berenice’s hair. The meeting will conclude with the Annual Meeting of Members and the Annual Meeting of Directors in which we will elect two new directors to the Board, and the Board will elect club Officers. These are legally required meetings and we therefore ask members to stay tuned in so we can have good input and also meet our quorum requirements.

The meeting starts officially at 7 p.m. with Prof. Magri’s talk. Doors open at 6:30 for socializing. The link was sent out to our Google Group. Please attend if you can and we look forward to seeing you.

• 2021/03 - Dr. Neil Comins, Professor of Physics & Astronomy at Univ. of Maine, Orono, "Heavenly Errors: Misconceptions About the Real Nature of the Universe."
• 2021/02 - Chuck Allen, Vice President of the Astronomical League
• 2021/01 - Telescope Workshop
• 2020/12 - Dr. Aileen Yingst, Planetary Science Institute, “Big News from a Dwarf Planet: The Story of Vesta”
• 2020/11 - Sarah Betti, Ph.D. candidate, UMass, “Planet Formation in Protoplanetary Discs”2
• 2020/10 - Tom Field, President, Field Tested Systems, LLC “You Can Almost Touch the Stars” – Spectroscopy for Amateur Astronomers
• 2020/09 - Dr. Jack Gelfand, club member – building a backyard device to measure the temperature of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation
• 2020/08 - Member Short Presentations: reprise of Birr Castle telescope; The Perseids; Voyager update
• 2020/07 - Dr. Ryan Hickox, Dartmouth College – “Light from the Void: the Next Generation of Space-based Telescopes”
• 2020/06 - Ralph Pass, former mathematician at NASA – Apollo Mission reminiscences
• 2020/05 - Ara Jerahian, club member – Introduction to Astrophotography
• 2020/04 - Dr. Russ Pinizzotto, club member – What to See in Ursa Major
• 2020/03 - Dr. Russ Pinizzotto, club member – The Color of Stars