by Gene Allen, Secretary

The meeting was convened in Peyton Hall by Director Rex Parker at 1930. His announcements included crediting India’s Chandraayan 3 lander with capturing the best images for his Lunar South Pole Observation Challenge, Member Dr. Bob Vanderbei’s excellent solar image using only the smoke from the Canadian wildfires instead of a filter, Rex’s plotting of the light curve as the M101 supernova has aged since its appearance on May 19. It has also turned much redder, as seen in both the images at the observatory on his heavily-attended Team 5 Public Night and in the data he collected for the light curve.

At 1943 Program Chair Victor Davis introduced Speaker Dr. Suzanne Staggs, Professor of Physics at Princeton University. Her lecture was entitled “Looking Backward with the CMB” and dealt with the discovery and the subsequent detailing of our knowledge of the Cosmic Microwave Background. After the talk, a few questions invoked very long answers.

The business meeting convened at 2120 with Member Peter Wraight describing of another impressive set of 3D printed right angle binoculars that he has built. These include a bracket for a smartphone running a planetarium program that is masked to match the 6.5 degree visual field. With a collimated laser pointer they serve as a simple but very effective non-electronic finder for a larger telescope.

Member Tom Swords was checking out a recently refurbished and collimated scope. When he used SkySafari to aim it at M39, there was a white streak across it because he had “show comets” turned on and comet C/2023 E1 Atlas was passing by. He had accidentally encountered and was able to image a comet!

The many Outreach events that have been requested were recapped again by Outreach Chair Bill Murray. While they have not been entered into the AAAP online calendar, they have previously been emailed to all members. He has adequate volunteers for most of the events, but members are still welcome to add on.

Rex wrapped up by sharing a special visit he managed to arrange to see the 20 inch refractor in the Van Vleck Observatory on the campus of Wesleyan University in Connecticut.

The meeting was adjourned at 2150.

We had 33 attend the speaker in person and 30 online. During the business meeting we had 17 remain in person and 18 continued with us online.

Membership currently numbers 205, with 40 having joined in 2023. There have been 80 renewals while 30 have allowed their membership to expire, giving us a 73% retention rate.