| Robinson Telescope Meeting | February 22, 2003 |
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At the Robinson Observatory meeting, the objects
which we could find could looked pretty good. After some time searching,
and several The picture at left is a combination of three separate 15 second black and white exposures, and three flat-field exposures, all combined to give the resulting color image. Click the image for a larger version. -Andy Green |
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| Mount Gleason Star Party | January 31, 2003 |
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We took advantage of the new moon and went up to Mount Gleason, an hour away from Tech, to watch some stars. We set up our two telescopes, the refractor and the 8" schmidt cassegrain. We got superb views of jupiter, saturn and the orion nebula. Around midnight, the sky got a bit hazy, but it was a lot of fun. As a side note, it is crazy how much light pollution there is in the LA basin. From the top of the mountain, the valley is glowing with light -- it's quite a site. -Ben Granett |
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| Honeywell Trip | January 18, 2003 |
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Ben Granett and Andy Green went to Honeywell for a tour and to deliver a presentation. They got to see part of the companies space components testing facilities. Also they saw a large part of the environmental control systems division. These systems, which work passively with a turbine engine, are used on the M1 tank, F-22, and in comercial jet liners, all of which were part of the tour. Honeywell then presented themselves, followed by presentations by two SURFs, the Caltech Electric Vehicle Club, and Ben and Andy. The presentation went fairly well, but Ben's laptop couldn't use their projector, so they gave the presentation without the displays. Apparently, Honeywell gives Caltech about $80,000 a year in return for this annual trip. This money goes to professor's research, SURFs, and student clubs. Whether or not SEDS will receive any money this year is yet to be determined. -Andy Green |
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| Website Updated | January 12, 2003 |
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Finally we have a new web site up. This site is intended to follow the new design of Caltech's web pages. However, they have not made the templates available as they promised, so I decided to build the page from scratch. The software used is Macromedia Dreamweaver 4 and Flash 5, with a little help from Photoshop 7.0. I have tried to make this look as clean and as inviting as possible. Hopefully this new site will give the astronomy club a more central calendar and information on ongoing projects. This site is also intended to help give us a better, more available public image. Hopefully it will help draw new people into the club as well. As noted at the bottom of every page, comments are welcome! -Andy Green |
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| Meeting with Dean Rivel | December 3, 2002 |
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Three students met with Dean Rivel to try and find a lab/room where we could work on ongoing projects. He suggested that we write him a letter which he could use to talk to various people who might be able to give us a room. He also suggested that we find a sponsor. He said that he could help us find someone if he had a better idea what we were working on, and therefore what kind a person could be the most help to us. -Andy Green |
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| Joshua Tree Trip | November 24, 2002 |
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The astronomy club went out to Joshua Tree National Park to view the beginning of the Leonids meter shower. The overnight trip was planned for Saturday evening to Sunday morning, despite the shower's peak early the following Tuesday morning. Unfortunately, a failure of communication separated the group, but I think everyone still had a lot of fun. The temperature dropped to a chilly 25 degrees, which made it difficult to set up and take down radio equipment which Andy Green brought along. His plan was to try to bounce radio waves off of the ionized path left by meteorites as they burn through the atmosphere. The generator he and Scott Medling had planned to use failed, so they couldn't use the equipment. -Andy Green |
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