Help BPAA Set New Directions (and eat cookies) at the Member Meeting June 12, 7:30 p.m.

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Vicki
on June 4, 2010
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A message to all members from new BPAA President Stephen Ruhl:

I am asking for your help in setting the direction of our future. At the next members meeting, June 12th @7:30 at Ritchie Observatory in Battle Point Park, I would like to have a discussion with everyone about what they would like to see in the association. I assume that everyone who joins has some level of interest in astronomy. How can BPAA enhance your interest in astronomy? What education programs would help? What level (or levels) should we focus on? Are you interested in equipment and how to select it? Any and all suggestions are welcome, including out-of-the-box, pie-in-the-sky, and over-the-moon.

If this does not inspire you enough, I am also bringing cookies.––Steve

Remember the Giant Robot, Forget the Sea-Shell Bras

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Vicki
on February 8, 2010
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The Battle Point Astronomical Association is screening classic science fiction movies at selected member meetings. These twentieth century images shaped our collective ideas of outer space, aliens, and space travel. At the February 13 meeting (7:30 p.m. at Ritchie Observatory) we will be watching Pavel Klushantsev ’s “Planet of Storms.” This groundbreaking film was made in the Soviet Union during the mid-century space race, when the Russians were winning. The special effects are so good clips were stolen for several Hollywood productions, which will give some viewers an odd feeling of deja vu. (Like, I know I’ve seen this somewhere, but wasn’t Mamie Van Doren in it, wearing a sea-shell bra?) You can read a complete review at allmovie.com.

Elliot Swanson, former film librarian for the KRL, will be introducing the film and leading the discussion afterwards. We hope to see some of you there: it should be an unusual evening.

BPAA film buff and board member Russell M. Heglund has also picked out the following movies, which we are considering for future screenings:

This Island Earth, directed by Joseph Newman (1955)

Aliens are recruiting leading earth scientists to work on a secret project at a remote location. Of course the scientists are not aware they are working for aliens, in spite of their large domed heads. One  scientist figures it out and tries to escape with his love interest and is captured by a flying saucer in a great special effect scene. The rest is history. They supposedly spent two and a half years on the special effects.

When Worlds Collide, directed by Rudolph Mate (1951)

An early disaster film. The entire earth is about to collide with a another planet which has entered our solar system. Scientists are sure of it, but it takes time to convince the government (sound familiar?). A spaceship is being built, by private sources, to rescue what they can. The politics, special effects, and how they choose people for the trip is the story. It’s produced by George Pal, same guy that did War of the Worlds, and it won an Academy Award for the special effects.

Forbidden Planet, directed by Fred McCleod Wilcox (1956)

It is great to watch this movie if just for the opening scene in the space ship. The writers came up with an  innovative way for the crew to survive rapid deceleration from light speed to orbital speed. Also, the theremin music, which is pervasive throughout the movie, is excellent. The story is basically about a rescue mission to a remote scientific outpost. There is a fight with an alien that is not alien, and of course a “love” interest. Robby the robot stars: the actors are mediocre players, but the story and special effects are excellent. It’s well worth watching just for the beauty of the backgrounds in the sets on an alien planet (it’s supposed to be Altair 4…for you astronomy buffs).

Let us know if you have any preferences.–Russell M. Heglund and Vicki Saunders

The Night Sky . . . Or Not

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Vicki
on January 25, 2009
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written by Diane Colvin and Vicki Saunders

“The Night Sky” exhibit at Bainbridge Arts and Crafts January 2-February 3

BPAA member David Warman’s astrophotographs are now gracing the windows of Bainbridge Arts and Crafts on Winslow Way. Well-placed and displayed, the photographs in turn display the skill and experience of the photographer. The images include six Messier objects: the Lagoon Nebula (M8), the Wild Duck Cluster (M11), the Swan Nebula (M17), the Dumbbell Nebula (M27), the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51), and the Ring Nebula (M57), as well as a spectacular moon image, “Snow Moon.”

These images are part of BAC’s exhibit “The Night Sky.” BAC encouraged the artists to “to reveal the mystery and beauty of the night sky.” To the eyes of amateur astronomers, David Warman’s photographs do that, but the other works in the exhibit? Not so much. There is a gulf between amateur astronomy’s information-driven ideas of the sky and these artistic allusions and re-creations.

Only one work in the exhibit recreates a night sky recognizable to an amateur astronomer. “Seattle Galactic,” a photograph by Ken Brookner, is a 54″ long panorama of the Seattle skyline at night. The title likens the city to a galaxy. The element, we are sad to say, that attracts the amateur astronomer’s eye is the vivid sky glow above the cityscape: quite lovely in the photograph, but grim reminder of the light pollution that blocks our view of actual galaxies.

The works are not about astronomy, any more than a floral-patterned wallpaper is about botany. Astronomers may find some of the off-hand references to the sky off-putting. There are starry skies here that look more like spatter-painting than actual skies and works that refer to astronomical ideas and instruments but lack the precision, beauty, and craft of the source material, and sometimes misunderstand it.

However, that is not to say there is nothing to interest astronomers. “Night Writer,” by Gennielyn Martin, spins on the story-telling, moody, and creative aspects of the night. In “Nomad,” by Jeff Bruce, words and spiral forms surround a human figure. Words imbedded in the work describe “within the turbulence a spontaneous self emergent.” The shapes and words connect the birth of self to the formation of planets, stars, and galaxies.
Many pieces in the show evoke the complexity, age, and depth of the human relationship with the night sky, a relationship that lies at the heart of astronomy, and astronomers.

You can see these works in paint, collage, digital media, mixed media, and photography until February 2 at 151 Winslow Way E. (206) 842-3132 Mon-Sat 10:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m. Sun 11a.m.-5 p.m. www.bacart.org.

Dark Skies (aka Skies of Glory)

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Vicki
on October 1, 2008
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Man Sticking His Head Out of the Sky Into the Universe
I grew up in a place like many places, where the sky was never dark and night was tinted a dull orange by sodium vapor street lamps. Sometimes pollution colored the moon blood-red. On ‘clear’ nights the Big Dipper or Orion might show through. We were supposed to be living in the space age, but most of space was hidden away. We hated and feared the dark, and turned on every light we could, porch and street and yard. It was ugly out there.

When you ask astronomers why they observe the night sky, they may say that they enjoy looking back through time, seeing objects light-years away, or that they like finding their way around the sky, watching seasonal changes, or want to make observations that add to scientific knowledge. But if you keep them talking, they may bring up the effects of the astronomical view. Plato says “Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another,” and  J.R.R. Tolkien’s Sam Gamgee agrees: “the beauty of [a white star] smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”

The night sky provokes awe, but also comfort. It’s no surprise we place gods there and call it heaven. Even when our world goes awry, the stars still swing round, rising and falling in patterns that we can steer by, plant by, marvel at, and wrap stories around.  

Sure, and very high-falutin’. But who needs it, now that we have GPS, calendars, TV and the World Wide Web? Runaway slaves may have “followed the drinking gourd,” but we have Google maps. 

That is, we have constructs and virtual realities innumerable. Kinda like the medieval Christian church. And, as Copernicus or anyone who has made use of online maps knows, there’s a difference between human constructs and reality.

So raise your eyes to the sky and marvel. And if your sky is opaque and dirty, then go to a dark-sky site, such as Escalante, Utah, or Death Valley, California and see the Milky Way shine from horizon to horizon.   This glory used to be visible everywhere. On your return, go to www.darksky.org and see what you can do about bringing it back, because we will always need the astronomical view.

 

Late June 2008 Star Party

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Ben Krokower
on July 7, 2008
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I’m an astronomy newbie, anxious to get my feet wet; trying to learn the constellations, fumbling with my borrowed telescope and pining desperately for a clear, warm night in which to actually spend some time looking at stars.  Well, after months of windy, cloudy night, we got a beautiful, still, clear sky on June 26th, 2008, coinciding perfectly with a planetarium show and star party.  I missed the planetarium show, but got to BPAA around midnight.  Maybe at a later date I’ll discuss why I couldn’t make it earlier.  But, suffice it to say that it had to do with scheduling conflicts of the marital variety, combined with…ahem…disagreements about the relative importance of seeing friends versus, say, looking at the sky.
M51 - courtesy of NASA
So, after reading some tips about attending a star party, I loaded up the 6 inch Dobsonian that I had borrowed (a nice perk of becoming a BPAA member) and headed off into the warm, clear night.  When I showed up, I drove up with just my fog lights on, not  wanting to ruin anyone’s night vision.  I set up just next to Stephen Ruhl, Education Director of the BPAA, who has a telescope set up that is, to use a newly-learned astronomical term, completely kick-ass.  He’s got a rig that he controls with his laptop (which has a red tinge to it, of course, so as not to ruin your night vision).  Once it’s calibrated nicely with the Pole Star, all he has to do is punch in the name or catalog number of what he wants to see and his telescope points directly at it.  He had it centered on the Ring Nebula, which blew me away.  I asked if I could see it with my manual scope.  He showed me how to star hop to it, by first finding Vega, then using the points of a parallelogram to get to it.

15 minutes later, I had centered on Vega, trying to make it look like I wasn’t absolutely frustrated being nowhere near the Ring Nebula.  While doing this, I had heard the gears of the big honking Ritchie telescope moving, meaning someone was up there doing all of the hard work of finding cool stuff to look at.

Indeed, Malcolm Saunders and Russ Heglund were up there, crouched in the dark, looking for M51, the Whirpool Galaxy.  It took them a while, but when they found it, it took up nearly the entire field of vision of the monitor we were looking at, with clearly defined spirals and shape.  Holy smokes, what a sight. (Thanks to NASA for the image to the left).

We tried finding a couple of other Messier Objects to no avail.  Some other visitors arrived at that point, so I relinquished my spot in the cramped quarters of the Ritchie Observatory.

To wrap up: Stephen Ruhl’s telescope: kick-ass.  Whirpool Galaxy: mind-blowing.  Astronomy: good wholesome fun.  I’ve already got next month’s Star Party on July 26th pencilled in and will definitely be in attendance.