By Gene Allen, Secretary
Director Rex Parker opened the meeting at 1940 with the night’s agenda. He shared recent news about LUX-ZEPLIN, a xenon tank a mile underground in South Dakota that has detected a particle that has the expected characteristics of dark matter. He introduced Outreach Chair Bill Murray, who called for members with scopes to help out at two stargazing events:
October 17 at Tulpehaking Nature Center in Hamilton
November 13 at St. Catherine School in Spring Lake
Rex then proposed a game he called Astro Flashback, trying to put seven great discoveries in chronological order:
1619 Johannes Kepler publishes his third law of planetary motion and notes it applies to the moons of Jupiter.
1638 Galileo Galilei speculates that light has a measurable velocity but his experiment fails to detect it
1662 Christian Huygens invents the first compound telescope eyepiece with two lenses.
1669 Jean Picard determined the the earth’s diameter accurately using a quadrant device that he invented.
1673 Giovani Cassini, Jean Richer, and Jean Picard determine the Earth-to-Mars distance by measuring parallax using telescopes in France and French Guiana.
1676 Ole Romer determines that light has a finite speed using the timing of eclipses of Io at the Paris Observatory.
1687 Isaac Newton publishes his revolutionary theory of universal gravitation.
Program Chair Victor Davis introduced our speakers for tonight, Assistant Director Dr. Robert Vanderbei and Astroimaging Chair Dr. Michael DiMario. Their presentation is entitled Intro to Astroimaging.
At 2110 Rex introduced Member Tom Angle and his presentation, The Accidental Eclipse Photographer, describing his trip touring Spain and casually photographing a solar eclipse.
As of September 7, we have 203 active members. So far in CY2026, renewals number 79 and expirations number 40, giving us a 66% retention rate. We have added 36 new members, but only 45% of first year members are renewing.
Submitted by Secretary Gene Allen, October 9, 2026. Unable to attend the meeting at the last minute, these minutes have been created from what is available in the edited YouTube video of the event that was posted online.
